Tackling heavy themes, especially in a school setting, requires extreme care and delicate writing in order to fully capture these themes within the nature of the average teenager that can often be characterized as moody, unpredictable and unstable. Aku no Hana tries to present its dark themes through playing with the regular archetypes of a calm and collected main character simply seeking normality, an outcast girl with an unexplainable interest in him and the nice popular girl. Aku no Hana introduces these 3 types in its 3 main characters; Kasuga, Nakamura and Saeki. Upon establishing the groundwork for the characters, Aku no Hana abolishes them completely, showcasing the flaws within each of these characters and it does so in a fairly normal manner with an intriguing twist which sets the groundwork for later character interactions. With the first few episodes presenting interesting themes and the dark groundwork being set decently, Aku no Hana unfortunately flopped later on.
Handling character interactions within a school setting and adding onto the delicate themes that need further exploring but also leaving enough room for the characters to get explored is a difficult task. Aku no Hana fails in doing most of these, leaving only a very lackluster amount of its core themes to be explored and fully dove into by the show. The characters are stagnant for most of the series without any exploration of them whatsoever. This only works in Nakamura’s case since she was made to be a mystery and an enigma to both the audience and Kasuga, putting further emphasis on her archetype. While that does work with Nakamura, the lack of exploration and development heavily hurts Saeki’s and Kasuga’s character, leaving them to be empty characters with futile attempts to add to their personalities. In Kasuga’s case, his character is attempted to be put into the show through literature and some deeper meaning which does not really exist in the show. All it does is put further emphasis on Kasuga altering his archetype with him not fundamentally understanding the literature he is reading.
Kasuga and Saeki have such a mind boggling relationship. It is not really a romance but more so a random thing they decided to start. It is not explored at all throughout the show. All the screentime their relationship and dynamic got were the 2 dates and one house visit they did together. Apart from that, it was nothing more than just a plotpoint which existed for no real reason other than to slow the pacing of the already slow adaptation even more. While it did have potential in the way of putting emphasis on their flaws and overcoming them together or bringing out the dark in each other, it ended up just doing nothing. The show had slow pacing for most of its run time, yet the only part where it truly needed to slow things down and thoroughly explain the deepness of the relationships and the interactions between Saeki and Kasugya, was rushed to the point of it feeling like a random 2 date thing where they did it for fun and not for any sort of attraction towards each other.
Aku no Hana portrays normality as a bad thing. A character having a skewed view on the concept of normality and what it means to be normal is fine, as long as that view is brought to light as a genuine flaw and not used as a way to bring out the core theme of the show. Aku no Hana repeatedly presents normality as the worst thing a human can be. With Kasuga’s main theme being his desperate attempts at being special but ultimately being like everyone else and him truly reaching uniqueness through finding himself within Nakamura whilst Nakamura sees the unique in Kasuga and repeatedly attempts to bring it out. This dynamic works simply because of the wrong message the show is trying to send. Normality is fine and should be viewed as such.
Aku no Hana tries way too hard to be scary. The tone of the show is amazing and portrays how bizarre Kasuga’s and Nakamura’s relationship truly is and it repeatedly manages to put emphasis on the dark side of humans and how flawed our mentality truly is. The atmosphere it sets up, however, fails miserably at following up the tone. With repeated sound effects mimicking a heartbeat, breathing and sweat dropping all comically failing in enhancing the horror aspect of the show, instead just making the scenes feel awkward instead of genuinely creepy like it should have stayed at. Genuine fear is incredibly difficult to showcase, especially within animation and should not be attempted without full focus being put on it. Aku no Hana attempted to enhance the importance of scenes with the atmosphere it sets but it ends up doing nothing.
The animation and art are neither good nor bad. The whole show is done in rotoscope, which is actual actors getting animated, including their mouth movements. The backgrounds are absolutely gorgeous with insane attention to detail within them as well as the music. The music uses subtle noises and tones which serve not to grab the viewer’s attention but to enhance the viewing experience without the viewer even noticing and it does what it intends to do with insane precision and care.
With all of the bad things about Aku no Hana and its characters, the final scene of the show might be one of the best climaxes in animation. With the core themes of rejecting normality and having truly free will, the final scene of the show brings out these themes to their fullest and encapsulates everything Aku no Hana had tried to accomplish in its whole run time. What could have been as amazing as the final scene was, Aku no Hana feels disappointing to look at. It is experimental with both its visual and story aspects which it deserves credit for, but those aspects were not utilized to their full potential. At the end of the day, while it is not entirely bad, Aku no Hana feels like a failed experiment that was meant to achieve great things but fell flat with its weak character writing and the story direction.
To articulate a thought is to truly be free.
