Flowers of Evil Volume 10 Review: Kasuga Spirals Again
Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
Ahahahahaha… I knew things were going to get cray-cray (a phrase I’ve picked up from a younger cousin)!! After all the sweet nothings in the second half of Volume 9 of Flowers of Evil, where Kasuga and Tokiwa simply hang out like regular teen friends – Tokiwa writing her book while Kasuga reads something – one knew the story was going to take a messy turn, right?
Volume 9 ended with news from Kasuga’s family that his paternal grandfather is severely ill, so the family rushes to their hometown. Well, that was ample hint by creator Shuzo Oshimi that something bad was going to go down, because that’s where all the trouble began, with Kasuga making it on live television thanks to his and Nakamura’s psychotic attempt to self-immolate during the town festival on the main stage in the center.
Beginning with slow but picturesque panels depicting Kasuga’s hometown as his family drives to the hospital where his grandfather is admitted, Volume 10 of Flowers of Evil starts on a subtle note of quiet grief. Kasuga’s cousins don’t say anything, but everybody looks at him funny, until finally, the animosity is out in the open. Instead of being forgiving, the cousins are bitter about how the young boy shamed the family in their town, going as far as blaming him for his grandfather’s condition.
This time around, Shuzo Oshimi lets the artwork do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of conveying emotions and the mood of the tale. One particular sequence stood out in the second half of Volume 10, where Kasuga runs into an old classmate and they have an uncomfortable, serious conversation at a restaurant, while laughter and chatter from a table nearby constantly interrupt their discussion. This juxtaposition helps establish how starkly different Kasuga’s life is from those around him, and it also subtly contrasts with his restaurant interaction with Saeki in Flowers of Evil Volume 8.
But you know, just when I thought Kasuga was beginning to do some growing up, he turns around and does something extremely shitty, displaying his lack of empathy and any sense of sensitivity. “Gah, he is such an asshole,” I exclaimed out loud at one point. It’s an interesting twist, so I won’t reveal the details. Although, let’s just say this: Kasuga’s romantic relationship with his new girlfriend Tokiwa is put to the test after months of surprising stability.
The volume ends with a solid cliffhanger: Kasuga heading to confront the biggest thorn in his past, one he doesn’t know what to do with: to embrace it or to kill it.
Rating: 4 on 5.
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