Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: The Summer Hikaru Died
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EmeraldSaucer
 Posts: 986 |
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The awkward shuffling of plot points from way later in the manga in episode 2 has me worried about how they're going to try to crunch this into 12 episodes
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explodingpompoms
 Posts: 22 |
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manga stuff spoiler[based on the ED, I guess they'll go to around the end of volume 5 which is pretty reasonable for 12 eps. It's also all I've read personally. I didn't think hamster man was way later in the manga - iirc he shows up first in volume 2, it seems like they just moved things to be more chronological - and was his intro stuff in ep 1 original maybe?) I don't really feel one way or the other about it ultimately.] Regardless, I'm enjoying this adaptation a lot so far. It definitely feels a bit limited animation-wise, but the directing and storyboarding and especially the sound design is going overtime to mask that. I really liked the use of the sunflowers in episode 3 especially as a sort of representation of Yoshiki's desperate attempts to keep pretending everything's the same and then finally letting that illusion die. |
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Gina Szanboti
 Posts: 12784 |
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It always amuses me how media tends to use rural and small town settings as being inherently fertile ground for horror and other unsettling vibes. Are city people really that terrified of the spaces outside their neon-lit, shoulder-to-shoulder urban environments? Why is the countryside deemed so suspect?
Of course there are urban horror stories and bucolic rural stories, but the ratios of city:good :: country:evil vs city:evil :: country:good are very lopsided. Anyway, I'm loving Hikaru. I read a few chapters of the manga but timed out and then didn't go back once I heard an anime was coming. The story is working much better for me in motion and color and sound, especially Hikaru's psychedelic paisley innards, which looked kind of silly to me in static b/w, but are suitably ghastly in the anime. |
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Vanadise
 Posts: 602 |
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I think there's actually a lot of reasons for this, and it's a lot more complex than "rural = evil"; in fact, I'm not sure that really factors into it at all. A big part of horror is isolation. Being cut off from anybody who could help you is scary. In a city, you're constantly surrounded by other people; even at night, businesses are open, traffic is going down the streets, and people are hanging out anywhere that's open late. If you don't want to be alone, it's easy to stay within shouting distance of other people 24 hours a day. That's not the case in a rural town, where often everything shuts down at dusk and everybody goes home. There might be a couple bars or convenience stores that are open late, but it's not hard to go out and simply not have anybody else within earshot. Even if there are other people around, it only takes a bit of walking to go outside into the wilderness where there is literally nobody; it takes much longer to get out of a city and away from people. A lot of stories like this also are inspired by traditional folk tales that involve supernatural things in the wilderness, and they don't really fit into urban environments where there isn't any wilderness. That's compounded by the fact that in a rural town, it often seems like everybody knows everybody else. Everybody attends the same school, goes to the same grocery store, and eats at the same restaurant; even if you don't know people by name, you recognize their faces. Seeing somebody you don't recognize, or somebody who is acting different from usual, is unsettling and can be a cause for concern. In a city, that's normal; you can go out shopping or go out to eat every day and there are so many people that you'll never see the same person twice. There's no sense of familiarity, and without that, less of a sense of unease when something is unfamiliar. Rural areas also often lack a lot of the infrastructure that makes modern cities safer. Get in an accident in a city? There's an open ER a few minutes away. In a town? Better hope you can find the town doctor (and that he's willing to help). Your car broke down? In a city, that's fine, call a taxi; in a town, sorry, the only mechanic is an hour walk away. Anyway, I'm not saying that you can't have horror stories set in the big city, but small towns are inherently a more appealing setting for horror because they take away the safety nets that everybody takes for granted, not because they're "evil". |
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meiam
Posts: 3692 |
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If you adjust for population, rural area tend to be more dangerous and violent than urban one*, **. They tend to be poorer and its easier to get away with crime since there's very few people around to see crime as it happen, and any service are going to take a long time getting there, when they even exist. That's not to mention wildlife encounter, that can be dangerous. *https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2023001/article/00002-eng.htm ** It's actually pretty complicated because there's not just one "rural" area, there's some relatively wealthy rural area (mostly place that are close to urban one and have a lot of urban worker live there), these tend to have lower crime. But the rural area very far from urban area tend to be very poor and therefore have very high crime. |
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MFrontier
Posts: 20109 |
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So far this has been a terrific adaption of the manga. The direction, the atmosphere, the voice acting, everything has been top-notch and really enhances an already stellar manga's material.
Our protagonist, a young queer boy dealing with his feelings of isolation and loss from his best friend/unrequited love, ends up paired with an eldritch horror in said best friends' form who can imitate him so well without actually being him as he tries to understand humanity while also very much being as dangerous as you would expect. It has all the makings of an amazingly engrossing and toxic Yaoi relationship. We even got a "kiss" in episode 3! |
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Silver Kirin
Posts: 1788 |
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I cannot give any opinion, because I'm waiting for Netflix to release the dub of this series, it looks promising and interesting, but in these last few days there has been some controversy among Spanish-speaking fans, because the person in charge of the subtitles translation made a very odd translation choice in the third episode. when spoiler[when Hikaru confesses his love to Yoshiki], in the official Netflix subs Hikaru said "Me caes bien" which literally means "I like you", but in a platonic frienship kind of way, despite the fact that in the official Spanish translation of the manga what Hikaru said was translated as, "Me gustas mucho", which means "I like you a lot", but it's more of a true romantic expression. The thing is that the person in charge of the Spanish translation defended her work saying that what Hikaru said was open to interpretation and she thought it was more of a platonic declaration of love. Needless to say, there's has been some backlash and people making memes and everything. The whole situation reminded me of what happened with Netflix's Evangelion English redub from a few years ago.
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EmeraldSaucer
Posts: 986 |
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He wasn't introduced that much later, but a bunch of the information presented in episode 2 is from significantly further along than his introduction. And I thought it was too much concrete info to dump on the audience, before anime watchers have even really had a chance to be mystified by the show's mysteries |
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Joe Mello
 Posts: 2571 Location: Online Terminal |
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I'm not sure why here specifically, but it was at this sentence that I started thinking about reading (and hating) A Separate Peace in 10th grade and thinking that there may be common themes between the two stories even if the American story had no influence on the Japanese one. The fact that Hikaru is portrayed as dying a mundane death only reinforces that thought. |
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tintor2
 Posts: 2730 |
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Never gave it such a thought but the main difference between the two Hikarus is that one real one didn't love Yoshiki and the fake loves him according to the review?
Still, poor Hikaru died in one of the weirdest ways ever. Reminds me of that comic Injustice involving Nightwing falling to the floor and his skull hitting a big rock. |
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MFrontier
Posts: 20109 |
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They are doing such a great job mixing the mystery, the horror, the queer intimacy and coming of age aspects, all together with the choking and intimate country atmosphere.
It's kind of ambiguous how the real Hikaru felt about Yoshiki. Obviously he cared about him a lot, his last few thoughts were about not being there for him, but whether he returned Yoshiki's romantic feelings...but I feel like the more important thing is that Yoshiki loved him and was never able to confess that love and how that effects his relationship with "Hikaru." |
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tintor2
Posts: 2730 |
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The recent episode reminded me of the new Silent Hill with the hair monster chasing the little girl
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tintor2
Posts: 2730 |
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This episode was strange. It felt like we were progress about "Hikaru"'s true intentions but both he and Yoshiki back out in favor of their relationship and we end the episode like nothing happened.
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Gem-Bug
 Posts: 1529 Location: Nova Scotia, Canada |
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I'm really enjoying the laid-back, ambling pace of this series so far. Despite the horror subject matter, each episode has mainly been almost slice-of-life in the way that the characters are all just carrying on.
It feels like the story is something we're reading a little bit of each day as we're slowing walking home in a rural town. |
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MFrontier
Posts: 20109 |
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I've become so invested in this recital.
Asako is a good girl with a surprisingly reasonable stance on spirits...though she almost got on the wrong end of "Hikaru" for it. I hope Yuki and Maki just get to have their little side-ship thing going on completely away from all the crazy supernatural horror and drama. Yoshiki had been trying to recognize and treat "Hikaru" as human and teach him the right way to live, but "Hikaru" is still a supernatural entity, not a human being, and his perspective on life and death isn't the same as an ordinary human. And he's killed before. Yoshiki just lucked out in terms of being "special," but you can feel that the damage is done in terms of Yoshiki only showing up out of obligation at the end and how he refers to "Hikaru." As for "Hikaru," where does the OG Hikaru end and he begins? Even he isn't sure any more. Especially when we see that fireworks scene where OG Hikaru looks at Yoshiki. |
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