When Ugly is Good

Aku no Hana has gotten a bunch of flack for the rotoscope style of animation, and a lot of people are dropping the anime because of that alone. But, after watching the second episode, I understand the choice in style -- or understand it even more so, compared to my first impressions of it.

From the opening song, all the way to the ending song, this anime is trying to get you to feel a certain way, make you uncomfortable. For the most part, the art of a lot of anime doesn't have much flexibility in changing from the familiar look or what is anime; so when one deviates from that style, we get this shunning of the anime -- even if the story itself is pretty good.

I think a reddit user by the name of Exotria said it best:

The artstyle of this show does a great job at making viewers uncomfortable. It's got some uncanny valley going on, and takes us away from our comfort zone of anime eyes and moe. The characters are just as irritating as I remember high schoolers being (including myself), and the use of sound (like this ED... gehhh) to make us uncomfortable is pretty phenomenal. Especially the sudden OP. Geh.

This is a show made to be atmospheric. It is not there for us to like the characters. It's probably there to make us hate the characters in new and exciting ways. Like School Days!

Being uneasy is what you are meant to feel, with this being of the genre psychological horror, this isn't for the faint of heart -- at least not for those that don't want to see a person suffer from the torment from ones peers. Aku no Hana isn't happy or pretty, it is the ugly, both inside and out. With that ugliness comes a wonderfully sadistic view on human emotions, and that is good.

As a side note: I've been really diving into this controversy head first. As a result, I've had the pleasure? of reading a lot of comments on the subject; and one argument, that is a bit more convincing is, the studio use of rotoscoping technology was a bit lazy. The much more in depth explanation, can be read here. However, as someone who hasn't read the manga, I am thoroughly enjoying this anime and put it up there with Shingeki no Kyojin, better known as Attack on Titan.