For what seems like forever now, googly-eyed saccharine cute characters have dominated Japanese anime. In the past few years, there seems to be a sea change. This is a good thing.
Granted, I don’t hate the cutesy moé style. I just like a little variety! And new anime The Flowers of Evil offers just that. Have a look.
Online in Japan, there are those who love the rotoscoping, saying it looks cool, and those who dislike it, saying it looks like garbage. Some are even adding that the backgrounds look better than the actual characters. Whatever the rationale was, the show’s visuals are different. The anime looks unsettling, and that’s probably the point. This is hardly a cute story.
The resulting anime is more like Scanner Darkly than the actual manga it was based on. Compare for yourself:
On Japanese site NicoNico, a little over 48 per cent of viewers said the show was great. 20 per cent said it was pretty good, while 8.4 per cent said it was OK. In case you are interested, 16.5 per cent said it was bad (the rest thought it wasn’t very good).
There are those who might not like the visual aesthetics or think the animation was done poorly. Others might have found the show boring. Fair enough. But at least it’s different.
惡の華 1話感想 [オタクニュース]
どうしてこうなった…「悪の華」 主要キャラの比較 [ぴょんてな]
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