Alternative title: Hikaru ga Shinda Natsu
Manga Adaptation by Cygames Pictures
Streaming on Netflix

Premise

Stuck in a boring countryside town with parents who do nothing but argue, Yoshiki Tsujinaka has no one but his best friend Hikaru to rely on. Their friendship is put at risk, however, when Yoshiki discovers that Hikaru has been dead for months, and his entire being has been taken over by a mysterious eldritch creature.

Aqua’s verdict: Sweltering

In the horror genre, critical acclaim is often doled out for those stories that manage to do a lot with very little. This seems to be the philosophy underlying The Summer Hikaru Died as well. Not a lot actually happens in this first episode, its runtime instead being spent on painting a picture of life in the countryside that is dull at best and miserable at worst — the blistering heat slows everything down to a trudging pace, and through strong atmospheric storytelling, The Summer Hikaru Died quickly makes clear just how reliant Yoshiki was on the original Hikaru in order to feel anything. Sparse flashbacks and strong character animation are enough to make his grief resonate with the audience; and this adaptation takes all the right cues from the extensive literature on minimalist storytelling to depict his discomfort with the truth — Hikaru is dead, and whatever is wearing his face right now is not the friend he loves.

Yet the fact that a monster now walks among the townspeople is a secret Yoshiki is willing to take to the grave, even if it ends up quite literally killing people. Is it guilt, loyalty or a refusal to accept the truth that causes our main character to cover for a creature that is indubitably bad news? Is the entity wearing Hikaru’s face manipulating him, or is there a part of the cheerful boy that still lingers within? It’s in these questions that The Summer Hikaru Died carves out an identity for itself. While similar stories might try to crank up the paranoia by keeping the confirmation of Yoshiki’s suspicions — that Hikaru is indeed dead, and that his body has been taken over by an unspeakable evil — under wraps for as long as humanly possible, The Summer Hikaru Died lays out its cards from the get-go. This might seem odd, tossing out both a central mystery and the potential for a lot of thematic depth — an obvious metaphor for having to deal with the people you love changing, first and foremost — but it does leave the show in relatively uncharted territory, sparking the potential for entirely different discussions of identity, accountability and guilt.

For better or worse, this approach of “doing a lot with very little” also extends to the technical side of the production. While the directing and storyboarding are nothing short of excellent — an absolute standout being the scene juxtaposing Yoshiki and Hikaru awkwardly singing in the school choir while an exorcist goes to town on a disturbing apparition haunting a local apartment with a crowbar — the quality of the actual animation can be quite volatile, ping-ponging between off-putting CGI, pragmatic still frames and rotoscoping that may cause some to relive a The Flowers of Evil-shaped trauma, occasionally made to step aside for a genuinely impressive flourish. The contrast can be quite unnerving, but perhaps not in the way Cygames Pictures might have intended, and I can’t shake the feeling that this show might have, paradoxically, looked better if it hadn’t tried so hard. The CGI in particular is used to accommodate strange camera swings that don’t particularly add anything to the narrative, so its presence here seems unwarranted — especially when they apparently do have enough budget to animate a cat perking up and darting off like a Loony Toon.

Questionable artistic decisions aside, though, in the end The Summer Hikaru Died is more than worth a watch. With its intriguing mystery, immaculate atmosphere and minimalist folklore horror trappings, this anime provides a fresh new take on the kind of slow-paced exploration of teenage angst that anime excels at without breaking a sweat.