‘The Summer season Hikaru Died’ Is Simply the Finest Horror Anime in Ages

One would assume that horror and anime, two media seemingly tailored for one another, would persistently produce masterpieces. In spite of everything, anime’s visible elasticity and horror’s emotional extremity needs to be a match made in heaven. But, as a rule, their union exposes mutual blind spots fairly than shared strengths.

Anime diversifications of horror manga steadily fall into two traps: slavish recreations that beg the query of what was really tailored, or hole spectacles that depend on low cost soar scares, evoking the aesthetics of a 2011-era YouTube craze. However then there’s The Summer season Hikaru Died—an outlier, a revelation, and arguably the head of recent horror anime.

Created by mangaka Mokumokuren and tailored by CygamesPictures, The Summer season Hikaru Died slipped quietly into Netflix’s summer season anime lineup, overshadowed by the standard shonen fare. However from its first body, it introduced itself as one thing completely different, drawing from the identical properly as cult classics like Higurashi: When They Cry, horror auteur Junji Ito‘s ill-fated Uzumaki adaptation, Shudder’s Best Wishes to All, and Konami’s Silent Hill f.

It’s steeped within the iconography of Japanese horror: a sleepy countryside city with ritualistic secrets and techniques simmering beneath the floor and wide-eyed teenagers thrust into the abyss of its thriller.

Because the title suggests, a boy named Hikaru Indo (Shūichirō Umeda) dies. However his loss of life is simply the start. What follows is a gradual, devastating unraveling for his finest buddy, Yoshiki Tsujinaka (Chiaki Kobayashi), who finds himself residing alongside a cursed entity sporting Hikaru’s face.

Yoshiki is confronted with an ultimatum. He should both destroy it or acquiesce to the demonic entity’s want to proceed residing as his finest buddy—somebody he’s very clearly in love with. Yoshiki’s egocentric option to proceed residing along with his puppeteered childhood buddy units the tone for all the sequence: horror not as a spectacle, however as an emotional reckoning.

The present’s central stress—Yoshiki’s refusal to reject “Hikaru” and “Hikaru’s” obsessive want to guard Yoshiki—creates a dynamic that’s each tender and terrifying. Their relationship evokes the tragic absurdity of making an attempt to cultivate a bear: you could find it irresistible, it could love you, however in the future it would maul you. Turning any perceived affection right into a misplaced anthropomorphization of a killer.

As villagers start to die and supernatural violence attaches itself to the pair like a magnet, Yoshiki is routinely examined to decide on between shielding “Hikaru” or mercy-killing him for the higher good. In essence, The Summer season Hikaru Died is a love story wrapped in a horror spiral, one which interrogates grief, self-hatred, and the intimacy of queer want underneath delicate but ever-presently monstrous patriarchal strain. But, it doesn’t boast itself as “elevated horror,” however fairly one thing extra intimate, messy, and deeply human.

Not like many mystery-driven anime, The Summer season Hikaru Died doesn’t insult its viewers with drawn-out reveals and a clumsy forged bumbling by way of its Scooby-Doo thriller of “what’s unsuitable with our village?” Its characters are observant, emotionally clever, and infrequently one step forward of the viewer. After they discover one thing’s off, they are saying so or play their playing cards near their chest for the opportune second to voice their perturbed issues. After they suspect a curse, they act.

This narrative effectivity doesn’t undercut the present’s emotional weight; it enhances it, permitting the horror to bloom organically fairly than by way of compelled exposition and low cost scares tantamount to jingling keys in entrance of a kid to maintain their consideration.

Visually, the sequence is nothing in need of beautiful, with its horror by no means confined to set items however a relentless optical undercurrent. Regardless of its weekly format, it boasts function film-level animation, with a concentrate on dread over shock. The horror isn’t within the soar scares—it’s within the quiet moments: a panic assault in a grocery retailer, the creeping sense that one thing malevolent is watching you from the woods, the conclusion that your house is not protected, or your thoughts taking part in tips on you with one thing being amiss from the nook of your eye.

Sonically, the anime is steeped within the low, ambient hum of cicadas and a tender, contemplative piano—evoking a temper of languid summer season melancholy. However just like the ebb and stream of a shoreline present, this tranquility is periodically ruptured by bursts of distorted noises and intrusions that jolt viewers into consciousness of the unseen impurities haunting Yoshiki’s hometown.

These scenes aren’t framed as setups for a long-walked soar scare. As an alternative, they’re a part of the present’s palpable, ambient dread. It lingers within the corners of each body, threading by way of the narrative like a seasonal shift from summer season’s golden haze, giving option to the brittle chill of fall. All of the whereas, it creates a tonal duality that turns into a signature of the sequence, a gentle heartbeat that makes its horror really feel intimate and inescapable.

And but, the present is aware of when to breathe. Like Jordan Peele and Zach Cregger, sequence director Ryohei Takeshita balances horror with humor, letting characters crack dry jokes or act appropriately human within the face of eldritch terror. These moments of levity don’t deflate the stress; as a substitute, they deepen it, reminding viewers that horror is most potent when it’s grounded in actual emotion. The present routinely showcases its inventive deserves by implementing close-up live-action photographs of marinated hen or shifting prepare vehicles, in addition to scenic views from their home windows, to imbue its artistry with each gross-out and moments of zen abruptly.

In a sea of horror anime that shoot for greatness and land on surface-level cosplay mimicking the aesthetics of horror with out greedy its emotional marrow, The Summer season Hikaru Died stands head and shoulders above. It doesn’t resign itself to drawing contained in the traces of its supply materials or paying homage to a bygone period of horror anime, however boldly takes it to depths the medium has but to discover. threading grief, intimacy, and monstrosity into one thing profoundly unsettling and unquestionably human.

With its first season wrapped and a second on the horizon, The Summer season Hikaru Died is the right sequence for horror followers to expertise a haunting, heartfelt reminder that anime nonetheless has the ability to shock, disturb, and transfer viewers. Not by screaming louder, however by whispering onerous truths we’re afraid to face.

The Summer season Hikaru Died is streaming on Netflix.

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