Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Flowers of Evil: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 29, 2014

Anime is frequently the refuge of strange bedfellows, but Flowers of Evil combines a number of patently weird elements that may put the series permanently in First Place in this highly specialized category. A mere smattering of personages and ideas running rampant through this odd but almost hallucinogenically compelling series includes French poet and provocateur Charles Baudelaire, a stolen gym outfit (with an unstated emphasis on panties), the oddly guilt prone psyche of a Japanese adolescent, blackmail, school cliques, and (just for good measure) an animation aesthetic that utilizes rotoscoping, giving the whole enterprise a kind of quasi-surreal look at times. Flowers of Evil takes its name from Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal, a volume of poetry that pushed the envelopes of both content and style to the point that the book and Baudelaire himself were put on trial for public indecency. The anime takes some of Baudelaire’s ideas, notably the almost proto-Nietzschean concept of evolving by breaking taboos, and twists them into an often overwrought story of a young boy who finds his life devastated when he makes a rash decision to purloin one of his (female) classmate’s gym bag which contains her physical education outfit. It may seem like something rather feeble upon which to base an entire series, and in fact it probably is, but Flowers of Evil casts such a hypnotic spell that despite its really kind of unsettling ambience, those who have grown tired of the many anime tropes which are regularly trotted out again and again with little to no innovation may cotton to this series if for no other reason than it at least is something different.

Flowers of Evil begins slowly, with an extended sequence which shows kids rising and getting ready for school. There’s nary a word of dialogue—other than snatches of conversation—throughout this almost somnambulistic opening, which is so dreamlike that you might be forgiven for thinking the show is going to be about the walking dead or some zombiefied alien possession of Japan’s youth. What this almost abstract opening does, however, is set a very oddly bifurcated tone, one which is both ultra realistic and also highly stylized. These two seemingly opposite tendencies continue to coexist throughout Flowers of Evil and give the anime much of its distinctive edge.

There’s a similar dichotomy to the emotional element. One of the oddest things about this series is how its putative hero, a teenaged boy named Takao Kasuga, has a few peculiarities but is not in fact a social outcast. Kasuga has friends, he interacts with his classmates, and despite a somewhat unusual obsession with Charles Baudelaire and Les Fleurs du mal, he seems about as “normal” as any overly hormonal teen kid ever is. And yet there are already signs of a psychological battle of sorts roiling Kasuga’s inner world, even before his misstep when he purloins the gym bag of Nanako Seiki’s, one of the most popular girls in the class and the object of Kasuga’s unconsummated affection.

That decision highlights what is ostensibly the biggest dichotomy in Flowers of Evil’s layered emotional ambience: Kasuga guilt trips himself to an almost absurd degree, while at the same time being somehow inherently restrained from ultimately doing anything about it, despite some intentions otherwise. Here the viewer is confronted both with hyperbolic private reactions (a couple of Kasuga’s facial expressions suggest his head is about to explode) which are mirrored by an almost lobotomized public presentation. In this way especially Flowers of Evil reveals a certain tendency toward social criticism that indicates—as if the inclusion of Charles Baudelaire and Les Fleurs du mal didn’t already—that this is an anime out to provoke.

That provocation is probably nowhere more present than in the third character of what is certainly one of the more bizarre “love triangles” in the world of anime, an orange haired girl whonamed Sawa Nakamura, who is also in the same class as Kasuga and Saeki. Nakamura is the kind of girl your parents would probably warn you to stay away from (no matter what gender you are). She’s curt, nasty, sullen and may have the sort of psychological problems that truly require professional care. Her first outburst in Kasuga’s class to an outraged teacher is shocking simply by dint of the fact that it’s the first really emotional piece of dialogue that’s been uttered by any character. (The series unwisely utilizes the epithet Nakamura calls the teacher as a punch line for buttons promoting the next episode.) It turns out Nakamura knows Kasuga took Saeki’s gym clothes, and an almost frightening game of “contracts” (thinly disguised blackmail) which Nakamura foists on Kasuga hints that Flowers of Evil may exploit a kind of Svengali-esque relationship between the two.

But it’s here that Flowers of Evil takes perhaps a slight step backward into conformity by instead proffering the aforementioned love triangle. It’s masked—heavily so at times—but it’s still a patently obvious framework around which much of the rest of this series’ roiling emotionalism (both displayed and completely tamped down, sometimes simultaneously) is constructed. Ironically it’s hard to really develop an emotional link to this anime, though. While Saeki is probably the all around easiest character to like (and/or approve of), each of the focal three has “issues”, so to speak. This makes it hard to really root for any of them, at least all of the time. That perhaps may be part of this series’ intent anyway, for it certainly doesn’t shy away from moral shades of gray and ambivalence.

There are some other elements that are questionable at the very least. The unneeded inclusion of the “living” flowers of evil capping each episode is too on the nose and undercuts some of the subtlety that’s on display elsewhere. And the whole central plot conceit that gets this thing rolling seems so absurdly minor by anyone’s standard (probably even a teenager) that right off the bat Flowers of Evil is trying to dance on a wobbly floor. But the very unusualness of this show is probably its strongest calling card. Perhaps for that very reason, Flowers of Evil itself is going to elicit dichotomous views in the anime fanbase. Some will tolerate its excesses because it at least tries to do something a little different. Others will see this as a lot of over the top elements, from plotting to style, desperately in search of entertainment value.

Flowers of Evil: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Flowers of Evil is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Sentai Filmworks with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. If one simply accepts the fact that this series is not going to look like "traditional" anime, there's some really interesting visual content here, most of which pops excellently in high definition. The characters appear to have been rotoscoped, and that gives a hyper-reality to humans, at least when they're fairly close up. Unfortunately, the animators choose not to give any detail—as in any detail—to humans when they're further back in the frame, and so you'll have elements like a very real looking body with absolutely no facial features whatsoever. This is not an overly colorful series by design. Even fleshtones are fairly pallid, and one of the series' most striking uses of hue—the odd orange color of Nakamura's hair—really isn't an overly vivid event. Line detail is exceptionally sharp in this presentation, and occasionally backgrounds will offer more in the way of a varied palette. There were some very brief instances of negligible banding on display here, but this is overall a beautifully sharp and clear high definition experience.

Flowers of Evil: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Flowers of Evil's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mix gets the job done quite nicely here, for there really isn't that much opportunity to exploit massive immersion or even expressive dynamic range. This is by and large a quieter show that has large scenes built out of the interactions between the three main characters. Fidelity is excellent in this problem free track.

Flowers of Evil: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no supplements offered on this release.

Flowers of Evil: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Flowers of Evil won't be to everyone's taste, and even those who like it—as I do—will be able to nitpick its various shortcomings. But it's refreshing to see a series like this that, like Baudelaire, attempts to push the envelope a little bit. This Blu-ray offers great video and audio, and even without supplements, Flowers of Evil comes Recommended.