I have been trying to catch up on some reading and I had to revert back to volume 1 of “The Flowers of Evil” by Shuzo Oshimi since it has been a while and I had to get caught back up. I reviewed the anime a while back and since the chances of a season 2 are probably pretty slim, I wanted to see the story to the end and picked up the manga. Here is the volume 1 cover.

One of the first things you will notice is the lighter art style. The artwork doesn’t get bogged down with a heavy use of tones. Here is an image of the manga art but also the side-by-side anime adaptation as well.

As for the story, it revolves around Kasuga who lives in a small town in rural Japan. He loves books and he feels that no one really understands his love and knowledge for books.
One day while walking home from school with his friends, he realizes he forgot his book back at school and turns back to go get it. While back at the classroom he sees that someone forgot their gym clothes in the school. Kasuga walks over and checks them out; discovering that they belonged to a girl in class he likes Saeki. Suddenly, Kasuga hears a noise and in his moment of panic runs out of the school with the gym uniform all the way back home. Kasuga finds himself in a whole new predicament when he finds out a girl in class witnessed him take them clothes, Nakamura. Nakamura promises Kasuga his secret is safe with her as long as he enters into a contract with her. Kasuga must now obey Nakamura or his secret will be known by everyone in class.

One of my favorite aspects of this series is the character development. The manga and anime remain true to one another in that regards and so far the manga and anime seem to be on the same storyline for the first volume. I also enjoy some of the artist’s notes throughout the book as he usually mentions real-life inspiration behind some of the scenes, people and authors that are mentioned in the story.

I will be posting up further reviews on the series. If you are currently reading the series, volume 8 will be out in early January from Vertical.