Hey, Nakamura. You can look awesome if you try.

Recap: Kasuga tries to get rid of the gym clothes, but Nakamura keeps him on a tight leash. When she finds out he is not as depraved as she wants him to be, the proverbial shit soon hits the fan.

Up until now The Flowers of Evil was at best reasonably morbid, but this is about the point where the overwhelming creepiness in the relationship between Kasuga and Nakamura rockets up into the air, tears through three stars, circles around Neptune and crash lands back onto earth with a power so big it wipes all of Canada off the face of the planet. This here is literally a show where a girl knocks a guy to the floor, crawls up on top of him and tears off his clothes, but I can guarantee you not a single positive thought will occur to you while watching this. Director Nagahama nails the disturbing tension of the abusive, codependant relationship Kasuga and Nakamura share, and this is only really still the prologue of the story. Sawa sees in Takao a kindred spirit, and even when he does not turn out to be one, she goes to any and all lengths to mess him up as much as the world messed her up. Takao on the other hand, has no choice but to do whatever she wants, not only because she is outright blackmailing him, but also because, strangely enough, he pities her.

That, however, is his absolute biggest mistake. Aside from being expert at making the worst possible decisions at the worst possible time, Takao’s fatal flaw is that he is incapable of moving away. He cannot avoid Nakamura, even though he knows that she will only plummet him further into the darkness. He cannot throw away the gym clothes, put them back, or tell Saeki he made a ridiculously ill-adviced mistake. He lacks the power to shut down the downward spiral he has locked himself in by one incredibly poor lapse of judgement. Nevertheless, it is hard not to feel sorry for him. In fact, it’s even hard to not feel sorry for Nakamura, who, despite being utterly rotten to the very core, still has a very enchanting aura surrounding her. While her visceral malificence is rather sloppily expressed through the art, the anime makes up for it with some stellar voice acting and all sorts of subtle movements. That scene where she pulls Takao’s cheeks, taunting him like she’s bullying a five year old? Chilling.

CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAWLING IIIIIN MY SKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN!

Some bafflingly foolhardy budget restrictions aside — note the five-second long freeze frame of students “talking” without their mouths moving — the art direction and the contents seem to click together a whole lot better than at first glance. While it is now more than obvious the anime opted for rotoscoping for strictly money-related rather than intentionally artsy reasons, it still wonderfully shows off the inherent ugliness of realism, allowing for some subtle little touches that give it at least a minor redeeming quality. It must be said, the splendid directing helps a lot here. I don’t think that aforementioned disturbing scene would have looked any better with real animation. Right now, my concern lies with the pacing. While I appreciate the slow pacing and following the manga to a T, literally, one chapter per episode is really not good enough for a 13-episode anime based on a manga that should be adapted to at least chapter 32 to really amount to anything. With how faithful an adaptation this is turning out to be, I cannot see an original ending happen, and with how atrocious the reception to this show has been, a second season will happen when pigs fly.

Random observations

• The book Kasuga is reading in the final scene lovingly references Pink Floyd’s iconic Dark Side of the Moon artwork on the cover. Coincidence, or a little nod to the famous designer, Strom Thorgerson, who died last Thursday?
• When you seriously accuse someone of stealing your friend’s money and then refer to said friend as “Mayumayu” while doing so, you really should not be surprised if you get called a fuckface.
• I don’t know what is worse: the fact that Kasuga’s friends seem to think of literally nothing other than sex, or the fact that that is uncannily realistic.