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A Discussion with Mokumokuren—Creator of The Summer Hikaru Died

There's much anticipation for the airing of the anime adaptation of Mokumokuren's The Summer Hikaru Died. At Anime Expo 2025, Mokumokuren made their first appearance at an American anime convention. They showed up wearing a black block over their head in order to conceal their identity. However, they did not conceal a lot of influences and that went into the creation of this exciting horror, thriller manga.

Mokumokuren explained that they grew up reading classic manga like Naruto and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, but one of the biggest sources of inspiration for them was probably the manga Tokyo Ghoul. They like how that series was able to portray a character's psychological struggle, and they particularly liked the scene early on in the series where the main character was tortured physically, while internally he was fighting a lot of manifestations of his enemies. Mokumokuren also took note of how characters were physically and psychologically tortured in BERSERK as another source of inspiration.

Mokumokuren explained that they always wanted to read a good horror story that had a proper blend of mystery. However, they didn't end up coming across a lot of stories like that, so they decided to write their own. Basically they wanted to write the story that they themselves wanted to read. They grew up loving a lot of horror media and specifically noted that they were inspired by things like Silent Hill. They even admitted that they were inspired by games with quirky psychological elements like Undertale. However, they also took inspiration from a lot of modern day lore, like online creepy pastas and the Japanese version of Slender Man.

One of the hardest struggles that came with working on the story, they said, was balancing that mystery with the psychological progression of the characters. They wanted to create a story where the characters could grow and develop rather than one where a lot of people randomly die. When one mystery resolves, they want another one to pick up right after. One aspect about the artwork in particular that they wanted fans to pay attention to was how the artwork was portraying sounds. There are some scenes in the manga where the sound will get so overwhelming and physically manifest itself on a page, but you could also tell when scenes go deadly quiet.

Yoshiki is a character who reflects how dark the series can be, but the manga creator wanted to make sure that it didn't come off as too dark, so they made a lot of the other characters in the series more cheerful as a contrast. Then we have the titular character Hikaru and their childlike sense of curiosity. They didn't want Hikaru to distinctly feel child-coded, but rather he would enjoy looking at humans the way that your average person would look at another culture with a childlike sense of curiosity. They are a character that enjoys human culture, but they simply don't want to be human. We are riding that line between them killing people and still being likable to the audience, which was very important.

Mokumokuren was originally unsure of how well their manga series would do, particularly overseas. However, they've been very thankful at the reception that their series has garnered and are looking forward to how everybody will react to the upcoming anime adaptation. They had an idea that they wanted to see and did their best to put it out there. Their advice to other creators out there is to do the same; be aware of what you want to draw, protect and express what you want to express in spite of the challenges.