In a moment where it feels like the manosphere is particularly inescapable, with right-wing influencers and their disaffected male audiences at least partially to blame for Trump snatching a second term, more than ever, we need portrayals of masculinity in media that rebuke this movement’s misogyny, gender essentialism, and prejudices.
While anime has a complicated relationship with these issues, thankfully, there are quite a few that push back on these notions, from how Mob Psycho 100 healthily addresses teen mental health struggles to any number of battle shonen protagonists, like Tanjiro or Deku, who cry freely and are defined by their compassion. And now we have another series that tackles these topics, one that’s tucked away on Netflix and will finish airing this coming weekend: The Fragrant Flower Blooms With Dignity.
The series follows Rintaro Tsumugi, a teenage boy who has struggled to connect with others. He’s tall and intimidating, with an appearance that leads many to wrongly assume he’s some sort of “delinquent” in a teen gang. These misunderstandings pile up until one day, Rintaro gives up, determining he will never form genuine bonds with his peers.
On the surface, he seems like the classic embittered young man: alone, alienated from his surroundings, and “misunderstood.” However, it doesn’t take long to see that even at this low point, Rintaro is driven by a fundamental kindness and empathy that keep him from taking his negative thoughts out on others. Instead, his doubts and anxieties are turned inward, and while this is better for those around him than lashing out, it still leaves him in a deeply unhealthy, precarious position.
Because while he’s in a better starting spot than many struggling young people, that doesn’t mean he hasn’t at least partially internalized the perceived gender expectations foisted on him by his peers. For instance, he keeps it a secret that his family runs a patisserie that specializes in delicious cakes, because in the past, his classmates had expressed disgust over the dissonance between his appearance and the family business: these students would mockingly comment how baking frilly cakes is “for girls,” not for guys who look like they could be in the yakuza. Because of this, Rintaro keeps his genuine self more or less locked away out of fear of being rejected again.
And then, there’s another essential gender dynamic at the core of this story, the contentious relationship between Rintaro’s all-boys school, Chidori, and the neighboring Kikyo Private Academy Girls’ High School. At first, the way the story positions this situation is a tad off-putting: the girls of Kikyo, who are ladies of high society, are portrayed as unreasonable, classist, and cruel, as they look down on Chidori for being made up of poor “idiots.” Thankfully, we later meet several characters who rebuke this image, and it becomes clear that elements of this initial framing are from the character’s perspective and not the author’s.
Many of the male students react with some degree of misogyny towards Kikyo’s student body, with one of Rintaro’s friends embodying an incel-adjacent resentment where he simultaneously hates these women and also wants them to hang out with him. Our protagonist never fully adopts this behavior himself, but he more or less accepts this schism between the two groups as a fundamental truth and assumes that Kikyo girls are ostensibly all the “same,” an outgroup he’ll never understand. But then everything changes when he meets Kaoruko, a student from this rival school who sees past surface-level labels.
Again, at first blush, this sounds like a setup you’ve seen a thousand times before, particularly in anime: a gloomy loner boy is “fixed” when an outgoing girl suddenly takes an interest in him for no discernible reason. It’s a premise that reeks of male wish fulfilment, especially when a Manic Pixie Dream Girl is involved. That’s not exactly how this story goes, though, because Kaoruko is a well-rounded character with underlying similarities to Rintaro, such as her readiness to help others, that entirely explain the pair’s fundamental connection. She’s the type of person able to look past outwardly reinforced absolutes, and even when she learns that Rintaro attends Chidori, which she’s supposed to hate as a Kikyo girl, this doesn’t affect her views of him at all.
Where the story really breaks with a lot of young men’s toxic behavior towards women is how Rintaro’s relationship with Kaoroku is portrayed. From the start, even before he’s developed a crush, he greatly respects her for her intelligence, compassion, and inner strength. He always views her as a person with agency while avoiding being objectifying or controlling, so much so that he’s initially afraid to inconvenience her with his romantic feelings.
And as the bond between these two grows, we see how the rest of the cast grows past judging a book by its cover: Rintaro realizes his initial assumptions about Kikyo girls were wrong, with both his buddies and Kaoroku’s friends eventually able to do the same. This “gender war” between these sides is bridged by the thing that unites both Rintaro and Kaoroku: a guiding kindness that helps them see past people’s differences. It’s something that underscores the central tenderness of a narrative that advocates for connecting with others through humanity and understanding—the opposite of toxic far-right influencers who make a quick buck off finding scapegoats and outside groups to hate, like minorities and women.
These notions come to a head in Episode 9, “Blond Hair and Pierced Ears,” which contains the most powerful scene of the season. Having begun to trust his friends from Chidori with his doubts and anxieties instead of keeping his emotions hidden behind a veil of male stoicism, Rintaro finally comes clean about his family business and invites his pals to his home, which is right above the bakery. By happenstance, Kaoruko and her best friend stop by to say hello, resulting in both groups breaking bread under the same roof.
This shared meal in his childhood home works as a symbol of Rintaro finally sharing his vulnerabilities and true self with others, but what really makes the sequence land with full emotional weight is how his mom, Kyouko, reacts to this situation. She has been deeply worried about her son for a long time, and in a flashback, we see how she went as far as dying her hair blonde and getting piercings to destigmatize Rinataro’s desire to do the same (in some parts of Japan, dying your hair any color but black is seen as an “act of rebellion”). Knowing that her son’s outward appearance belies his inner kindness, her greatest wish for him has been that he will eventually find his people, something she worried might never happen when a young Rintaro proclaimed that he was going to “stop trying” out of fear of further rejection.
It makes it all the more poignant then, when Kyouko happens to hear her son laughing with his good-natured friends, having finally found a place to belong. They comment on how it’s nonsense that he was picked on in the past, and that they were shortsighted to not see him for who he was. Tears well in Kyouko’s eyes as she reflects on how far he’s come, and frankly, it’s hard for us to avoid the same.
While The Fragrant Flower Blooms With Dignity doesn’t feature a protagonist who initially endorses right-wing internet bilge, even this good-natured kid has unconsciously adopted certain biases and assumptions that he eventually has to confront. In rejecting the type of easy answers to isolation that many disaffected young men fall into, the series endorses the opposite: seeing past superficial similarities and finding community through mutual kindness. That may not sound particularly radical, but in a uniquely hateful cultural moment, it might as well be.
