The Flowers of Evil vol. 8

This title is still in a rebuilding phase after the dramatic events that kicked off the previous volume.  Even so, vol. 8 still has plenty of scenes that provide deliciously painful entertainment from seeing the polite veneer of Japanese society pulled back to see what lurks underneath.  The title’s “stock in trade,” in other words.  We get to see this right from the start when Kasuga gets to meet Aya’s boyfriend Koji and then gets dragged along to their hangout.  The chapter that follows is a slow pressure cooker of teenage angst as Koji subtly puts the screws to Kasuga to get the information he wants about his past and current relationship with Aya.  This eventually results in a “controlled meltdown” of sorts, yet one that leads to us finding out more about what makes Aya tick and why she’s able to get along with Kasuga.  Their relationship may have seemed unlikely at first, but here it becomes fully credible and even something that you’ll hope will blossom into something more.

Naturally, Oshimi sees this as the perfect time to throw a metaphorical wrench into things.  It’s not the return of Nakamura — that’s still a ways off and likely waiting for an even more precarious moment to happen.  Instead, something happens that causes Kasuga to question his feelings for Aya in light of what his previous “girlfriend” meant to him and essentially calls him out on not finding out what has happened to her in these past three years.  It’s an effective way of letting us know that our protagonist isn’t going to find any kind of happiness until he finds a spine.  Of course, whether or not that’s going to happen is decidedly uncertain as there’s evidence both for and against that actually happening in previous volumes.  Things could go either way at this point and the fact that I can’t say what’s going to happen with any degree of certainty definitely makes me want to keep reading.