Number of Episodes: 13
What Wikipedia says: The story follows a middle school student named Takao Kasuga who's forced into a "contract" by fellow student Sawa Nakamura, after being caught stealing the gym clothes of his crush Nanako Saeki, and the series of events afterwards that follow these three characters. The title of the manga comes from Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal.
What KoanMan says: KoanMan has some mixed feelings about "Aku no hana". Firstly, it bears mentioning that the "rotoscope" technique used makes the look of this series unique. It is a method of animating real film images projected onto a frosted screen and originally each image was hand-traced to create the final animated image, although computer software has now been developed to convert images. Besides the style, it allows animation to present characters with natural movement, and it delivers here. A more more normal animation format was originally tabled, however, to allow the audience to focus on the story/characters and not the actors, director Hiroshi Nagahama used the rotoscope technique.
The story is itself unusual. The central character Takao Kasuga is a hyper-anxious, hyper-reactive, moronic simpleton who rarely thinks much beyond himself. If one can tough out the first few grindingly tedious episodes, the slow, agonising pace actually becomes tolerable, and almost unnoticeable by about Ep7. Sawa Nakamura is his rebellious muse, challenging him to confront himself and her perceived view of him, while Nanako Saeki is the muse he imagines inside his own head. The main characters are very well developed with a realistic approach. Other characters are not important to the myopic worlds of the main characters, and are not explored, not do they need to be.
How About the Music? Music at open and close is good, and is completely unrelated to the "Aku no hana" song released in 1990 by Japanese rock band Buck-Tick. In fact the opening and closing credits contain almost all the music in the series, and thinking back, KoanMan did not notice anything other than mood audio at any other time.
So How Does it End? (Spoiler free): After a dragging, painful start, the simple plot is executed with a storyline that somehow managed to keep KoanMan watching to the end. An interesting watch, more for the moods it engenders that had KoanMan reminiscing about the internal angst associated with teenage life. Ahhhhh, the angst...... Beyond that there was little in the characters to connect with, and perhaps the intent in this "Aku no hana Part 1" series is to do just that, or simply to engender the keen desire to strangle the characters? Not sure.
Overall Grade: Interesting, moody, different - gets a B. Laboriously slow and Takao is an imbecile - gets a D.
It all adds up to a C.
Addendum by tTPO: tTPO liked this more than KoanMan and it is clearly going to be a polarising series for viewers. There is little doubt that Takao is a largely spineless fool, but doing dumb things, being self-involved and being bored is pretty much what teenage life is about. Whether watching this immensely slow car crash makes good television is debateable, but I found somewhat compelling the brave directorial decisions about the rotoscopy (which immediately put off Mrs tTPO), the universally unlikeable characters, the long stretches without dialogue (which peaked with an epic 8 minutes of nothing in Episode 8) and repeated views of the decaying town. I also appreciated the positively atypical depiction of largely functional and caring parents who, in contrast to most anime series, are actually at home and involved with their offspring.
The OP /ED are worth a special mention as being quite disturbed and I think set the tone of the series well.
In summary: Interesting, moody, different. Laboriously slow and Takao is an imbecile. It all adds up to an A-.
I can only hope there is a second season so I can see the wreckage finally come to rest.
No comments:
Post a Comment