Manga Review | The Summer Hikaru Died Volume 1

Hikaru and Yoshiki are two childhood best friends who’ve grown up together in an isolated, rural village. However, one winter, Yoshiki goes missing in the nearby mountains, and he comes back changed. He acts the same and has the same memories, but there’s something … off about him.

When Yoshiki decided to finally confront him about it, the thing that looks like Hikaru starts transforming into something monstrous and breaks down crying, begging Yoshiki not tell anyone. To even Yoshiki’s surprise, he continues being friends with him as if everything is fine and totally normal.

And that’s when strange things and bizarre deaths start cropping up around the village, leaving Yoshiki with the difficult choice between protecting the fake “Hikaru” or those around him.

Essentially, Poor Yoshiki is left with a Monkey’s Paw or Pet Sematary type of deal where he gets his friend back but not quite as he was hoping for … and with unintended consequences.

The Summer Hikaru Died, Vol. 1 by Mokumokuren is a gripping and atmospheric psychological horror BL that’s quickly earned a spot as one of my favorite new manga of the year.

It really is an emotionally and character-driven manga that does a fantastic job of placing readers inside the main character’s head—masterfully depicting all of Yoshiki’s anxiety, guilt, and doubt. Part of him desperately wants to hold onto whatever piece of best friend that’s left and another part of him feels guilty about it, questioning why he so easily accepted this monster as Hikaru’s replacement and let him into his life.

And to top it all off, as if Yoshiki isn’t already going through enough already, he’s struggling with being in the closet and identifying his feelings for the imposter Hikaru. Like does he have a crush on a monster that’s disguised as his best friend? And what does that say about him? Does that make him a monster too?

I think it’s this juxtaposition of having raw and believable characters dealing with bizarre, supernatural circumstances that really grounds the story for me and makes it so compelling.

Part of this story feels like a mundane slice of life with characters eating popsicles together, doing dares, and casually hanging out each other’s houses—you know, typical teenager-y stuff, but, underneath all, that there’s also this sinister, creepy folk horror (and possibley even cosmic horror) undercurrent as we start to learn more about the town’s superstitions and legend behind what lives in the mountains, and I can’t wait to see to how the rest of this mystery unfolds in the upcoming volumes.

Thank you, NetGalley and Yen Press, for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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