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While rewatching The Flowers of Evil, I noticed this character in episode 2:

enter image description here

The character on the left struck me as very odd - she's wearing braids (which would normally suggest a female character), but she also has sideburns, which seem to be more or less only something men wear. (I'm assuming the character is female from the voice actor who plays at that moment.) Moreover, if the character weren't female, it would be odd for a school to allow him to wear braids.

Reddit suggests that this character also appears in the manga, so is this just intentional character design, rather than an error in the art? If so, who is this character, and is there anything (e.g. personality traits) that might explain this odd hairstyle? (I have not read the manga yet, and so can't easily look this up.)

Update: I remembered seeing some video footage of the live-action filming that the rotoscoped animation was apparently from on YouTube, so I might try to dig that out to see if I can get a better idea of what's going on here. On a second glance the braids struck me as a bit odd in terms of the shaping of their ends (one usually expects the hair to thin out somewhat and possibly curve a bit), so it occurred to me that this might be useful.

Update 2: After reading the entire manga, I couldn't find a character with identical design. (From the uniform -- notice that the character here wears a bow, instead of a tie -- it seems certain that they're probably female.) However, I did notice a presumably female character with very short hair (for a girl) that was in the corresponding chapater of the manga. I don't remember if the character was wearing a female uniform but will look it up later when I have time.

Maroon
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    I don't see anyone who looks like her in the first volume of the manga. She could have showed up later, though, given that the anime isn't a panel-for-panel adaptation of the manga. – senshin Jan 18 '15 at 02:21
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    I don't know why they decided to design a character like this, but it wasn't added in at the animation stage - here's a live action shot before it was rotoscoped http://i.imgur.com/Zg4jsAo.jpg – Toshinou Kyouko Jan 19 '15 at 09:44

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As mentioned in my comment, this doesn't seem to be an animation error. Aku No Hana is rotoscoped, which is essentially drawing over live action sequences. Here's a shot from before it was animated:

enter image description here

I suppose it was intentional if they had this character dressed up like that. I haven't seen the animated show, but the character definitely doesn't appear in the manga, having read it myself also.

Just a guess, but perhaps it was to exaggurate ugliness of a character because the animators couldn't do it that easily with the technique?

So, yes it does seem to just be bizarre character design. Especially as the character barely appears in the anime and only has a single line.

Toshinou Kyouko
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  • Makes sense, although it's an odd thing to me: as you've stated, there's no corresponding character in the manga, and moreover, it seems like an odd thing to emphasize on a minor character in a classroom of otherwise normal-looking people. – Maroon Jun 15 '15 at 21:22
  • Jeeez rotoscoping seems super expensive. – Callat Mar 18 '17 at 21:46
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I think I found her, it's on the chapter 13 enter image description here

Nanaba
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  • The one on the right? Can you explain why you believe that's the same character? I'm not seeing the resmblance. If they are the same character, was the design change deliberate or accidental? – F1Krazy May 11 '20 at 14:31