The story starts in a small town in Gunma Prefecture[8] and follows Takao Kasuga, a

middle school bookworm whose favorite book is Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du
mal. One day after school, he impulsively steals the gym clothes of Nanako Saeki,
the classmate he idolizes. However, a girl named Sawa Nakamura sees him and
blackmails Kasuga into a "contract". At the same time, Kasuga grows closer to Saeki
and manages to become her boyfriend.

As Kasuga spends more time with both girls, he finds the guilt of his theft
weighing down on him. He attempts to confess by vandalizing his classroom with
Nakamura, but Saeki refuses to break up with him. When his mother finds out he was
responsible for the vandalism, he runs from home and attempts to bike with Nakamura
past the mountain adjacent to the town. Saeki catches up to the pair as they rest
and tries to make Kasuga come back. Unable to choose between them, he estranges
both girls and the police collect them.

A month later, Kasuga breaks up with Saeki and resolves to help Nakamura. He writes
a composition to convey his feelings to her. When she runs from him, Kasuga goes to
her house and reads in her diary about her disappointment in not being able to
reach "the other side". He steals the panties of all the girls in his class except
Saeki's and uses them to decorate a makeshift hideout, winning Nakamura's approval.

At the start of summer vacation, they create a plan to nail the panties to a piece
of plywood to display at the upcoming festival. Saeki discovers the plan and lures
Kasuga to the hideout, trying to seduce him and make him stay in their town. When
he chooses Nakamura over her, she rapes him but Kasuga resists, causing her to burn
the hideout down.

Saeki later turns herself in to the police for setting the fire, prompting her best
friend Ai Kinoshita to tell their school about Kasuga's crimes. The school doesn't
involve the police and his parents decide to move over the vacation. The day before
the festival, Nakamura breaks into Kasuga's house, attacking his father, and the
two escape. At the festival, they don disguises and climb to the top of a float
while wielding a knife. They curse their town and pour kerosene on themselves, but
before they can use a lighter, Nakamura pushes Kasuga over the float and she gets
tackled by her father.

The beach in Tokawa Town where Kasuga and Tokiwa speak with Nakamura
A few years later, Kasuga is going to high school in Omiya-ku, Saitama and still
can't forget Nakamura. Kasuga finds his classmate Aya Tokiwa looking at Les Fleurs
du mal in a used bookstore and she starts lending him novels, rekindling his love
of literature.

Kasuga discovers that she is working on a novel and is brought to tears upon
reading the manuscript because he can identify with the protagonist. Kasuga
encounters Saeki and when they meet up for lunch, she accuses him of using Tokiwa
as a stand-in for Nakamura. Kasuga visits Tokiwa at her workplace and asks her out,
saying that he will save her, and she accepts.

Kasuga visits his hometown for his dying grandfather and ends up meeting Kinoshita,
who regrets being left behind by Saeki and tells Kasuga where Nakamura moved.
Tokiwa finishes her novel, but Kasuga tells her about his past and his desire to
meet Nakamura again. They take the train to Tokawa Station in Choshi, Chiba and
find her eatery, where her mother warns them that Nakamura is "peaceful now", but
Tokiwa insists on speaking to her.

They talk at a nearby beach and Kasuga questions her, but doesn't get satisfactory
answers. The three roughhouse and Kasuga tells Nakamura that he is happy that she
didn't disappear. Later, Kasuga is in college and still dating Tokiwa, who is
working on another novel. After falling asleep, Kasuga dreams of the wilting flower
of evil, its scar no longer present on his hand. In his dream he envisions the
futures of the series' characters; he marries and has a child with Tokiwa, Saeki
starts her own family and reunites with Kinoshita, and Nakamura finds contentment,
eventually moving away to the city. At the end of the dream Nakamura looks up at
her own wilting flower of evil. When he wakes up, Kasuga starts writing in his
empty book just as he was in his dream, presumably about the manga's events.

The final chapter depicts Nakamura's perspective of her first meeting with Kasuga.
Through her eyes she sees everyone and everything around her as monochrome and
deformed, symbolizing her distaste for normality. When she sees Kasuga steal the
gym suit, his features become clear to her. Later on, Nakamura feels herself
reverting to the normalcy she despises. Before she does, Kasuga appears on his
bike, fully defining her world in both detail and a deep crimson color.

Characters
Takao Kasuga (?? ?? Kasuga Takao)
Voiced by: Shin'ichiro Ueda
Played by: Kentaro Ito
An introverted middle school student with a strong interest in literature. He feels
alienation as well as suffocation from the world around him. His view of other
people is dim-he considers them to be ignorant as well as incapable of
understanding the abstract themes present in the books he reads, namely Les Fleurs
Du Mal by Charles Baudelaire. He idolizes his classmate Saeki from afar as the
pinnacle of beauty and virtue, calling her his muse and an angel. Although he
considers his worship of Saeki to be purely platonic, he cannot help experiencing
feelings of sexual attraction to her. Kasuga is deeply disturbed by these feelings
because he thinks they devalue his worship of Saeki and are a sin against her
purity.
While initially viewing Nakamura with fear and apprehension, Kasuga gradually
develops a bond with her. The feelings he develops for Nakamura are not romantic in
the traditional sense, but rather are a combination of deep fascination, sympathy
and servitude. He rejects Saeki to pursue a vision of the future with Nakamura in
which the two of them try to make it to "the other side".
Sawa Nakamura (?? ?? Nakamura Sawa)
Voiced by: Mariya Ise
Played by: Tina Tamashiro
A classmate of Kasuga who shows utter disinterest in the world around her as well
as contempt for anyone she comes in contact with. Her existence is ignored by her
classmates, who view her as disturbed. She maintains a flat affect for most of her
interactions, which she keeps very brief. Nakamura views the world as a "sea of
shit-bugs" only interested in sex. She is deeply tortured by the inescapability of
her own sexual nature and also disgusted by the world's facade of respectability.
Nakamura views Kasuga as a person with a nature similar to hers although his is
still buried beneath the layers of respectability engendered by society. She
decides to make a contract with him in which she plans to gradually remove the
"layers of skin" he is hiding behind. Nakamura's feelings toward Kasuga start out
somewhat impersonal, with her treating him like a test subject or play-thing.
However as time goes on she develops a deeply personal investment in his progress.
Nanako Saeki (?? ??? Saeki Nanako)
Voiced by: Yoko Hikasa
Played by: Shiori Akita
Another girl from Kasuga's class, on whom he has a crush, Saeki is deemed to be the
top student of their class, and is considered to be a popular and beautiful girl.
After he defends Nakamura from the rest of their class and supports him, Saeki
begins to take an interest in Kasuga, especially his passion for Les Fleurs du mal,
though she struggles to understand the content. Viewing herself as stifled by her
parents, she particularly connects with how he is able to show his true self
without having to hide his personality, desires or interests. The two start dating
and Saeki reveals how she longs for a life in which she doesn't have to fake
herself with being well-mannered, composed and focused on study. Indeed, her
relationship with Kasuga reflects his with Nakamura, her self hatred and
idolization of him drives her commit acts of arson and rape. She later lives in
Utsunomiya, and has gotten a new boyfriend who, according to Tokiwa, "looks a lot"
like Kasuga.
Aya Tokiwa (?? ? Tokiwa Aya)
Played by: Marie Iitoyo
A character first introduced in the second part of the story, she is portrayed as a
tall, red-haired beauty of Kasuga's year, revered by his friends, but known to date
an older guy from another school. Kasuga notices her holding a copy of Les Fleurs
du mal in a bookstore and discovers her passion for books. She helps him regain his
interest in literature once more, and becomes close to him, to the point of
inciting her boyfriend Koji's suspicion towards Kasuga. Kasuga supports her in
writing her novel.
Ai Kinoshita (?? ?? Kinoshita Ai)
Portrayed by: Tsugumi Nakamura
Voiced by: Ayako Uemura
Saeki's best friend. Outspoken and hotheaded, she cares deeply for Saeki and begins
to resent Kasuga for the pain he's caused her. She later gets the truth from Saeki
when she realises her friend has been spying on Kasuga and Nakamura. She feels the
urgency to tell the police the deeds of the couple, only to be scolded by Saeki,
who believes she'll be able to pull Kasuga out of his mess. As events develops and
she realises Saeki's corruption as well, she is unable to hold out and becomes
responsible for exposing Kasuga and Nakamura, but in the process also affects her
best friend.
Yamada (?? Yamada)
Portrayed by: Katsutoshi Matsuzaki
Voiced by: Katsutoshi Matsuzaki
A friend of Kasuga. He's a chubby guy, a blabbermouth mocker and doesn't understand
Kasuga's fascination for Les Fleurs du mal.
Ken Kojima (?? ? Kojima Ken)
Portrayed by: Ryosuke Tani
Voiced by: Shin'ya Hamazoe
Production
Manga

The illustration of a flower by Odilon Redon in Les Fleurs du Mal which Oshimi
modified for the manga
Oshimi first read Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal in middle school and found
the book to feel "suspicious, indecent, yet nastily noble". He based the eye-flower
in the series on an illustration for the book by Odilon Redon, his favorite artist.
[9] Oshimi also makes references to other artists such as with the cover of the
tenth chapter parodying Francisco Goya's The Clothed Maja.[10]

One influence for the manga that Oshimi cited was Tetsu Adachi's [ja] Song of
Cherry Blossoms, where he could relate to the feelings of the protagonist and
described the manga as "depicting murky self-consciousness and the dark side of
youth with astounding intensity..." Other manga that influenced him were Masahiko
Kikuni's [ja] Moonlight Whispers and Haruko Kashiwagi's Dog, which he felt had in
common that they were coming-of-age stories about "discovering 'a value system of
one's own'" which he hoped his own manga could do.[11] After the publication of the
second volume of the manga, Oshimi learned of the French film Don't Deliver Us from
Evil and in retrospect he felt he could relate to the themes of the film where "the
girls worship Baudelaire and Lautr�mont, create a kingdom of evil all for
themselves, and fall into ruin..."[12]

Oshimi drew on many aspects of his life for the manga such as the settings and
characters. The settings are based on real locations from Oshimi's hometown
including: the school library,[13] the riverbank,[14] and the park where Kasuga is
splashed with water.[15] Many of the characters also have real-life models:
Nakamura is based on a person who used to call Oshimi things like "shitbug" and
other phrases that Nakamura uses.[13] Kasuga's friend Hiruta was based on Oshimi's
middle school friend who betrayed him to the class bully.[16]

Anime

An example of the rotoscoping process used for the anime with sequentially: a video
still, tracing, and the colored result
Initially, the director Hiroshi Nagahama declined the offer to direct the anime
because he felt it would be best presented as live-action, but reconsidered when he
figured out how to adapt it and pitched the idea of using rotoscoping.[17] He felt
it was the most appropriate choice because to him, the manga felt very realistic
and close to daily life.[18] The live-action filming took around three months to
complete on location in Kiryu, Gunma.[8] Along with the editing after, it took
about twice the amount of time to produce than a regular anime. The end cards at
the end of each episode were animated by Nagahama himself in traditional anime
style to differentiate them and he made Oshimi's hair wave around to emulate flash
animation.[18]

Before the premiere of the anime, the producer opted to not release any character
artwork.[19] When the anime aired, the use of rotoscoping resulted in criticism
from fans of the manga.[20][21] Nagahama knew that the rotoscoping would be
controversial, but he felt it was worth it because it would make the anime leave an
impact, even if it was viewed as "creepy". When asked at a Q&A panel at Animazement
2013 why he didn't make the adaptation a traditional live-action series, he
responded that in live-action, the focus is on the actors and not the characters.
When further asked about what kind of atmosphere he was trying to create with the
pacing and soundtrack of the anime, Nagahama replied that he wanted to make an
anime that feels fresh.[18] In an interview with Natalie including both Nagahama
and Oshimi, Oshimi said that he was aware of the rotoscoping idea and approved of
the direction Nagahama took the adaptation, especially of his intent to "leave the
viewer with a scar" which he felt aligned with his goal of figuratively "murdering"
the readers. He also felt that Nagahama had deep insight into the story and that
the anime along with the manga formed two versions of the story from his original
idea.[17] Oshimi was also involved in providing feedback on the adaptation as it
went along and when shown anime-style drawings, preferred the different look of
rotoscoping.[8]

Themes
One of the issues that Oshimi wanted to tackle with the manga was the concept of
"perversion", which he felt was misunderstood and actually a hidden quality of
everyone.[16] Another question he wanted to answer was where the process of
adolescence ends; the beginning clearly demarcated by the physical characteristics
of puberty, but the ending unclear, which he felt has to be discovered by an
individual by themselves.[22