Comes with a show like Slug Come back Gala Now, as the hottest newest shonen, there was never a better time to become an anime fan. This season, one anime packed with claws, hooks and alien-like tendrils on me is nothing more than Cygames Pictures’ latest production. Hikaru died in the summer.
(Editor’s note: Episodes 1-4 spoilers Hikaru died in the summer. )
Mokumokuren’s 2012 manga adapted, Hikaru died in the summer They are following teenage boys Yoshiki Tsujinaka and Hikaru India. One winter evening, Hikaru is lost in the mountains of the town, where he is fatally wounded. His death is not the only thing that is so simple. Hikaru gains control of his body and is to be consumed by the Eldrich entity, which physically becomes one with it. It acquires his memory, but is still a creature of its own at the same time. When Yoshiki finally finds Hikaru, Hikaru’s body is already cold. Yoshiki stumbles back home and stumbles in a traumatic stumbling, assuming his best friend is dead.
Image: Netflix
The next day, Hikaru was found alive. He speaks like Hikaru. He knows what Hikaru knows. However, afterwards, a strange local woman, Matsuda, dies, suffocates with her own fist, and a strange creature appears in the forest. Just as getting to know his best friend isn’t who he is, Yoshiki faces a choice that has a major impact on rural Japan towns. Will he expose Hikaru to the town’s residents so that they can kick the group out and return to normal? Or can he comfort himself by accepting the delusion that his best friend will return?
As a horror girly, and I always preferred the play “someone comes back and comes back, but they’re all wrong.” It is a completely terrifying concept, as it feels rooted in the fear of reality. Those you know don’t need to die to return, day, week, month or year Later, you just realize that they are not the type of person they used to be. And they don’t even need to thrust spiritual beings into their bodies and turn them into puppets. Your connection has undergone a complete transformation, whether you wanted it or not. That’s heartbreaking. That’s scary. How is it left to deal with it? How can I get the pieces?
The concept promotes fear and anxiety Hikaru died in the summer. And that doesn’t work without Yoshiki’s feelings for Hikaru and the pressure they feel they come from the countryside environment of the story.
In their small town, Kibogayama, everyone knows whose business. Yoshiki has always felt like an outsider. His family is in trouble, and there is a constant debate that often spills out from the ears of everyone living nearby from the family home. Yoshiki is gay and implies that he struggles with this identity, as seen in flashbacks in episode 4 of the anime.
“Yusuke is not sick,” Yoshiki corrects. “He’s gay.”
When Hikaru expresses surprise that Kibogayama has “one of the LGBT people,” Yoshiki quickly becomes nervous and tries to shruggle the conversation. Hikaru notices his mood and brightens up as he literally pinches Yoshiki’s cheeks with a crab. The two share their smiles and the flashback ends.
It’s not the first time Hikaru died in the summer It sets up to establish a strange theme that runs throughout the story, but so far it’s the clearest. Creator Mokumokuren emphasizes that this is “adult horror” rather than romance, but it was clear that they were saying Hikaru died in the summer You don’t have to be romantic to be weird.
“Whatever the genre tag is, even if this story is not romance as an author, I guarantee it is a strange story,” Mokmuokuren said via Bluesky.
Yoshiki’s relationship with Hikaru (both the real entity that rules him and the entity of Eldrich) is not explicitly romantic, but their emotions form the mind of the anime. His desire to not part with the love that Yoshiki feels in Hikaru ultimately keeps the town at the knife edge. It is not inherently one-sided love either. In episode 2, the fake Hikaru wants to gain Yoshiki’s affection, so in the most terrifying homosexual scene we’ve seen in the anime, hikaru allows Yoshiki to “explor the inside” (I’m sorry, but there’s no better way to put it down. Hikaru brings joy from this. It’s only when it becomes clear that Yoshiki frightens and stops.
Aside from the metaphor of penetration, there are moments when Yoshiki breaks down and tries to reject the fake Hikaru in Episode 3. The entity loses its mind, feels uncontrollable, tries to consume Yoshiki, stops at the last second, and realizes that it has been done. The fake Hikaru is locked in his room to avoid hurting Yoshiki, and only returns to school when Yoshiki comes to look for him.
The creature’s “love” for Yoshiki is not the longing love that Yoshiki has for Hikaru. That cannot be done. Eldrich entities can certainly feel emotions, but they can’t understand their complexity. You don’t understand that you can love and hate something, or that humans can love animals as often as we love each other. When Yoshiki breaks down again during the episode 4 festival, the fake Hikaru reassures Yoshiki as he misses the real Hikaru. It is a possessive and dominant form of affection, but for Yoshiki, it is an affirmation of emotions, a confirmation that what he feels about his friend is not wrong – and it is too appealing to ignore it.
Image: Netflix
As a strange woman who grew up in a small town, I recognize the charm of what Yoshiki is experiencing. Verification of your oddity can be a lifeline. Yoshiki has not been exiled because he is gay (because he hides it), but he has denied the obvious all-talk Hikaru died in the summerand would have dismissed the anime premise for growing up in a conservative town while being queer. Yoshiki is warned of “mixing” with the wrong crowd. His friends tease him, and Hikaru said he was clinging to him. Yoshiki is nervous at the signs of homophobia from others. This is primarily an attractive psychological horror story with many body terror and emotional trauma, but the strange threads that run throughout the anime only add to the horror.
What do you do when a person who understands you well and loves you infects the only world you ever knew in supernatural suffering and then leaves you with death? Can either of you survive the separation and return to normal? Hikaru died in the summer I’m trying to answer those questions, and I love one of them all the moments.
Hikaru died in the summer Currently streaming its first season on Netflix. The season ends on September 20th.
