Aku No Hana is a coming of age Manga that follows a small town kid named Takao Kasuga and his friend Sawa Nakamura as they come in terms with their feelings, their surroundings and weird lives, the Manga was written and illustrated by Shuuzou Oshimi and it ran for 58 chapters on Bessatsu Shounen Magazine from 2009 to 2014.
Takao is a quite kid and he is obsessed with books and poetry especially a poetry book by Charles Baudelaire called The Flowers of Evil, he is not very sociable and he has a big crush on the pretty girl from his class, Sawa on the other hand is a rude girl who is always in trouble with the teachers and she is very anti-social and hates the town she lives in, the two get tangled in a strange relationship and they wreck havoc on the other residence of the town and with the law too, the trouble they go to continue to rise alarms for their school and their parents to a point they had to take action to protect the other towns folks.
The story delves deep into the lives of small towns in Japan and how they feels stuck and crushed by the limitation of their circumstances, it also shows a little side of Japanese families and school lives and how all of this come into the psychological upbringing of the Japanese Youth, Oshimi does a fantastic job with depiction of the young Japanese mind and their exploration of the culture around them and some of the western influences on their culture as well.
The art of the manga is superb to say the least, Oshimi draws facial expressions like no one else and the detailed backgrounds really takes you all the way there, it is beautiful touching and really makes the reading such a joyful experience. to a point this Manga reminded me of a favorite coming of age novel that I grew up with The Perks of Being A Wallflower the difference was Aku No Hana is a lot more realistic and it takes the outcast kids and shows them the cold harsh reality that is life and being an outcast kid myself growing up did feel like that so I connected with Aku No Hana deeply and on a personal level.
Verdict: Aku No Hana is a beautifully illustrated and well written coming of age manga that sheds a bright light on the lives of outcasts and the harsh reality of coming in terms with the world. (9.5/10)
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