Aku no Hana 11
Well, this just got even funkier. But first, some pictures:
Is it just me or is Kasuga getting handsomer?
Is it just me or is Saeki becoming more alluring?
Is it just me or is Nakamura…nope, never mind.
OK, now let’s get right down to business. What is the dream all about, shed of all the (beautiful, lovely and dazzling) imagery? Two things, I guess:
1) Kasuga likes Nakamura.
2) Kasuga likes what Nakamura forces him to do.
Of course these two are related, but I think they can still be kept distinct. Kasuga is attracted to Nakamura (in all sorts of way, including sexually, as we saw from his stares in the last episode). He admires and is in awe with her antics, as we just witnessed poolside. But he also wants to do all of the weird, perverted stuff she sets him up to do. What he ends up doing when he is with her is a big component of the attraction.
It’s a big switch for Kasuga. His attraction for Saeki was at least theoretically all about distance. I am worm, she is god. Something out of Dante and Beatrice or Petrarch and Laura, feeding off glimpses and nothing more. It’s crazy for a kid obsessed with Baudelaire when you think about it, since as far as I know the poet usually slept and fought and in general got very intimately involved with his “muses.” Kasuga calls Saeki his “femme fatale,” but a survey of all the great films noir will quickly lead us to the realization that the the whole reason these women are called fatal is because of what they lead the men to do. Although then Saeki could be seen as a gateway “femme fatale,” since she “drove” the boy to do the deed that set in motion this entire sequence, Nakamura seems far more deserving of the title. So that maybe now, when Kasuga breaks Baudelaire’s portrait, he is in fact beginning to emulate the man in a recognizable fashion.
Nothing I’ve said so far, however, has anything at all to do with what Kasuga rationalizes to be his mission hereon out. It’s super shocking and yet somehow totally predictable: dreaming Kasuga ends up moefying Nakamura!! Saeki will fend for herself, since she’s fundamentally normal (never mind that the trickle of evidence that she isn’t that at all is by now starting to become a flood) but Nakamura is an outcast and she needs my help, the poor child!!
What on Earth could Kasuga possibly do to help Nakamura out, we wonder. The answer: become the best pervert he can be. Well, he’ll make Nakamura happy, he’s right on that score I guess…just as long as he doesn’t talk about this dream or dare suggest that he’s somehow protecting her.
Kritik der Animationskraft 
I do not have the faintest idea how they’re planning to wrap this up next episode.
Especially given there’s as much source material to adapt between here and the next good stopping point as there was between the beginning and here.
It’s clearly going to be him going up to Nakamura, telling her he’s going to be a pervert, and she smiling like “Oh yeah”, the end.
But wait, I thought this was 13 episodes long?? Is it only 12?
The moefication of Nakamura was as scary as Saeki’s uptight friend giving Kasuga-kun hell for dumping Saeki.
Am I the only one who found Kasuga’s action plan -writing an essay- mildly smusing?
I swear I’ve been around this sort of situation in my youth, more than once. The girl-friend of a girl questioning the girl’s boyfriend about his terrible behavior toward her. But of course none of the boyfriends involved were Kasuga-levels of weird.
I’m looking forward to the essay. They should post it online 😀