The Flowers of Evil - Complete

Middle-school student Takao Kasuga is caught reading Baudelaire's poetry collection Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil) and impulsively steals the gym clothes of Nanako Saeki, the classmate he's infatuated with. His act is witnessed by Sawa Nakamura, an unpredictable classmate with a cruel streak, who forces him into a "contract" to keep his secret — the start of an escalating, destructive relationship between the three of them.

Written and illustrated by Shuzo Oshimi, the manga ran in Kodansha's Bessatsu Shonen Magazine from 2009 to 2014 and was collected into 11 volumes in Japan. Vertical Comics published the English edition, later reissuing the full series as two "Complete" omnibus volumes. The story follows the fallout of Kasuga's one act of shame as it draws him, Nakamura, and Saeki into a spiral of obsession, cruelty, and violence, using surreal, unsettling imagery to render adolescent guilt and sexual awakening as something closer to horror.