Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we are returning to the secluded foothills of Japan, to a town where shared history is etched on every tree and stone, and where a veneer of peaceful coexistence hides a rot so deep the stench is unbearable. Yes, we are returning to The Summer Hikaru Died, Ryohei Takeshita’s skillful adaptation of Mokumokuren’s intriguing manga, wherein our protagonist Yoshiki is grappling not just with the death of his best friend, but also with the continued presence of a creature directing his friend’s corpse, offering a pantomime of Hikaru’s old personality that every so often reveals the ravenous, bestial presence beneath.
So yeah, that’s quite a heavy load for a teenager, and so far this production is skillfully juggling a variety of threads – Yoshiki’s complex feelings towards both his absent friend and that friend’s replacement, the languorous atmosphere of rural Japan in the summer, the sense of perpetual surveillance intrinsic to small towns, and the occult/animalistic nature of Hikaru’s new pilot, a creature that seems to emphasize how we are all ultimately beasts, meant to consume and be consumed in turn. That the production is managing to successfully evoke all of these themes and feelings is a credit to Takeshita’s economic direction; Hikaru’s animation resources are clearly limited, but so much is being evoked through sound design, staging, and lighting choices that the lack of fluidity feels natural, one more echo of this town’s sleepy, stagnant atmosphere. Good horror is a precious rarity in anime, and Hikaru is so far proving an exemplary new addition to the canon. Let us return to the mountains!