I want to know what is going on in her head.

Recap: Kasuga tries to apologize to Nakamura, but she refuses to talk to him. As a last resort, he pays a visit to her house.

The Flowers of Evil has always skirted the line between a morose, atmospherical use of slow pacing and straight-up padding, but in the first half of this episode, I do think it downright crossed it. Being consumed by regret, Kasuga once again fills up eight minutes of screen time with doing a great lot of nothing. I appreciate director Hiroshi Nagahama’s efforts to efficiently convey Kasuga’s bizarre obsessions, but he himself has proven to be capable of getting this thought across in much smarter and less time-consuming ways. To add insult to injury, these scenes often run rampant with stock footage or barely animated shots. The true strength of the show’s controversial art direction lies in that it allows for very subtle movements, but more often than not, this episode featured certain characters fidgeting about while others just stood dead still. It does not take a genius to deduce that the series is once again suffering from budgetary restrictions, and it is sad to see that The Flowers of Evil cannot amass the same budget that derivative, run-of-the-mill light novel adaptations do get.

Luckily, this penultimate — yeah, seriously — episode picked up considerably after Kasuga decided to pay a visit to Nakamura’s home. For an episode all about exploring her character, Sawa had disturbingly little to say, but in that lay also its strengths. While two characters talking about a third one as a means of exploring the latter’s motives is often used by lazy writers to get some necessary exposition out of the way, this episode made some clever use of it. Kasuga’s conversation with Nakamura’s — quite possibly drug-addicted — father shows that in the end, neither truly grasps her, a fact that is nicely made evident by featuring the entire episode around Nakamura without making her utter a single word. In the end, the biggest mystery of The Flowers of Evil is Nakamura’s true motivation. Is she honestly craving someone who can understand her, or is she simply a sadistic monster screwing with everyone’s heads for her own entertainment? Even her backstory is one big mystery. All we know is that her parents got a divorce when she was five and that her father does not exactly have control over his life. Is that really the cause of her behaviour?

“Shut up and take my anguished apology!”

It does not look as if Kasuga will come any closer to solving this mystery before this anime calls it quits, however. In his obsession with his own guilt, he has developed some sort of Stockholm syndrome, and Nakamura seems all too keen on exploiting that for all it is worth. Is she really mad at him? As long as the series keeps narrating itself from Kasuga’s point of view, we will probably never know, but this only adds to the mystery. To be honest, I cannot blame The Flowers of Evil for its slow pacing and occasional padding, as it was never given the number of episodes it needed and deserved in the first place. Did the writers end up having to pad because they picked a specific point in the manga they deemed suitable to end the anime on? For now, I am interested to see what this has all been leading up to, and if the staff will manage to reach a satisfying conclusion to this controversial, yet all too interesting ride.

Random observations

• Nakamura’s dad does not know how to properly pour a beer, apparently. Even I know that and I don’t even drink alcohol.
• I love the use of frenetic shaky camera in the “chase” scene. I don’t love how I kept hearing the Benny Hill theme in my head while I watched it, though.
• Tumblr find of the week: This adorable picture of the real-life cast.