The Summer 2025 Anime Preview Guide - The Summer Hikaru Died

Yoshiki and Hikaru have been friends since they were small, as the only two children around their age in the village. One summer though, Hikaru goes into the forest and comes back… different. He looks like Hikaru and has Hikaru's memories, but he's not him. Yoshiki, unsure what to do, decides to embrace the creature wearing his friend's face because even a fake is better than Hikaru simply being gone. But when weird things keep happening around the village, it may not be so easy to pretend that nothing has happened.

The Summer Hikaru Died is based on the manga series by Mokumokuren. The anime series is streaming on Netflix on Saturdays.

This episode specifically does a lot to flesh out what's happening in this rural area. Simply put, “Hikaru” isn't the only monster lurking around. The long-necked monster (possibly a Rokurokubi) seems to be only the first of many similar creatures out there. For most people, there seems to be no danger. However, as this episode reveals, the more you notice the supernatural, the more it notices you back—and once it does, it wants to take you for its own.

Building on top of this, we also get an interesting contradiction brought to the forefront. According to Hikaru's father, their family is safe from the Unuki. Yet, Hikaru had an extra powerful talisman with him in the mountains as well. This raises a bunch of questions, like, “If he was already safe, why did he carry the talisman as well?” and, “How was the Unuki able to eat him despite his double protection?” It all makes for a wonderfully creepy mystery—and one that is only getting more complex as things come to a head.

Everything else about the episode was fantastic as well. The visual design had some great tricks (like the lingering emotion lines box or the inserted photo of raw chicken), and the horror elements of the episode were particularly well done. However, after this second episode, it's clear that this is an anime I have to be in a specific mood to watch—or rather, I don't want to watch weekly. It's pacing always leaves me wanting more, and not being able to get it—knowing I'll be in the same spot after watching the next episode—makes me want to wait until I can marathon it.

What if the person you cared about most in the world died? But then you got 95% of them back. They look the same, talk the same, and have the same memories. The only difference is that all the old experiences are new again to them, and they react accordingly. Sure, they're not the same person as before, but would you shun them and turn them away—could you? Or would you cling to them even if they were an eldritch abomination wearing your loved one's skin?

That's the question at the heart of this anime. Yoshiki has lost his best friend—his other half. He's faced with either accepting that Hikaru is dead or living the lie that he is still alive. It's hard to fault him for his choice to do the latter. But, of course, things aren't that simple. It's far from a one-and-done decision. One moment, Yoshiki cries at the loss of his friend, seemingly accepting Hikaru's death, only to then go right back to playing pretend. Then he has moments of realization where the fantasy is broken and the weight of what's happening threatens to drown him.

This is made all the more complex by the fact that “Hikaru” is rather affable for a Lovecraftian being. He's kind, playful, and enjoys this whole “living as a human” thing. And more than that, he genuinely cares for Yoshiki, to the point he's willing to risk his own life and let him in on the secret. Of course, just like any living creature, “Hikaru” has a survival instinct, and that instinct overrides any empathy or morals gained from the original Hikaru. If anyone knows what he is other than Yoshiki, he's out to kill them.

We are left with a supernatural serial killer who is friends with a normal guy. To add another layer, “Hikaru” is being hunted in return, not only by the people in the village who can somehow see through his human disguise but by actual eldritch exterminators as well.

All in all, this is a fantastic setup for a low-key horror thriller. Not only is there tension around every corner, but the characters are sympathetic and understandable. Add to that great animation with a surreal twist, and you have one of the highlights of the summer anime season.

I have a wild theory to speculate on. I know this might be a huge stretch, but just bear with me, here. There was that scene in this second episode of The Summer Hikaru Died where Yoshiki shoved his hand into “Hikaru's” writhing flesh-maw, right? Well, what if that scene was, like, a metaphor for something else? What if Yoshiki wanted to penetrate Hikaru with…well, you know.

I'm being snarky, but I cannot seriously overstate how important it is that this anime captures the very powerful queer subtext of Yoshiki and Hikaru's relationship. “Subtext” is honestly putting too fine a point on it, because body-horror generally considers subtlety to be the crutch of cowards and weaklings. Can you imagine if The Substance was made in a way that made it easy to miss the themes it was interrogating about femininity and the exploitation of sexuality in Hollywood? The same thing goes for The Summer Hikaru Died. The powerful and clearly “more than just regular friends” attraction that Yoshiki had for Hikaru isn't just something that the show tosses in so that all of the fans will make lusty character art on social media. It is fundamental to understanding the horror that holds this entire show together.

Hikaru wasn't just Yoshiki's best friend. All of those comments about Yoshiki not being “interested” in dating girls; the oppressive, claustrophobic atmosphere of this backwoods town with all of its terminally nosy old busybodies; the way that Yoshiki throws himself into a dangerous and foolhardy friendship with this terrifying creature that is wearing his dead friend's skin like a suit and playacting at being human. These critical points of tension in the story's presentation form the cracks in Yoshiki's life that are spiderwebbing their way across every element of his reality, and they all point in the same direction.

Why would Yoshiki need Hikaru to still be around, even when the truth of this new Hikaru's existence should be enough to drive anyone completely insane? It's because Yoshiki was already pushed to the brink of madness after losing the one person he allowed himself to be truly close to after growing up in this suffocating town that has probably never felt truly safe. Now this thing that is wearing Hikaru's face is letting him get even closer. Closer than he might have ever been able to get with the Hikaru from before.

What this anime uses is its pristine artwork and razor-sharp direction to communicate the real horror at the heart of The Summer Hikaru Died. It isn't the fact that there is a monster walking among the people, and that it is wearing the face of the boy that Yoshiki loved. It's the fact that Yoshiki knows what it means to have this monster around, but he cannot help growing closer to it still, because losing Hikaru altogether might just be worse than whatever this thing might end up doing to him.

Horror is such an incredibly difficult genre to get right in animation. Still, The Summer Hikaru Died succeeds where so many other anime have failed because it understands how important it is to go above and beyond for the details that are not overtly horrific. Sure, getting to see the grotesque monster bits of “Hikaru” slip out of his skin in gloriously animated, full-color motion is a blast, but that isn't what makes this series scary. For your brain to be tricked enough to start flooding your system with norepinephrine and triggering those subconscious fear responses, it needs to be presented with horror that feels real. It's that sense of reality that is essential, much more so than blood, gore, or cheap musical stings. This is where most anime either stumble completely or throw up their hands and fall back onto easier crutches, like action spectacle or funny comedy bits. It is hard enough to fool our five senses when you're trapping them in a dark room and showing them images of flesh-and-blood humans, much less doodled gestalt things that're made to resemble humans but only exist as ink lines on paper.

Manga tends to fare a lot better than anime when it comes to horror because of all the blanks your brain is forced to fill in on its own. Comics, after all, only offer suggestions of sound, movement, weight, and so on. That's why people the world over have been chilled to the bone by Junji Ito's comics and why anime adaptations of his world have universally failed to capture any of their source material's shocking power.

The Summer Hikaru Died avoids the classic horror-anime curses by investing extraordinary effort in ensuring that every one of the viewer's senses is engaged in the experience. From the opening scene alone, we see the powerful effects of the masterful work being done by director Ryohei Takeshita and the crew at Cygames Pictures. The sound of the summer cicadas is constant and overwhelming. The sweltering heat of the summer is captured in the lush colors and dense backgrounds that make up their worn-down rural village. The frost-coated ice cream tubes that Yoshiki and Hikaru split on the bench outside of the convenience store look so cold and so sweet that you can practically taste them. As the treat melts away and drips into the ground, a horde of ants comes to slurp up the sugar from the cracked pavement greedily.

Many of us know this place. We've been there before. Hell, if you're like me, you grew up in a tiny boondocks town shaded by an endless sea of trees and rolling hills, and you know exactly what it feels like to be wandering the empty streets and stuck with your thoughts. Or your fears. All of this is to say that when Yoshiki broaches the subject that his buddy Hikaru might be some impossible shapeshifting creature that has stolen his face, the scene isn't scary just because Hikaru's flesh immediately collapses into a sickly pool of entrancing not-flesh. It's scary because when Hikaru's trembling not-flesh pulls Yoshiki in close, we hear the labored sound of this terrified kid's breathing. We feel the sticky summer heat that was already threatening to suffocate him before this monster revealed itself. We can sense the helpless loneliness of this dying town that compels Yoshiki to swallow every instinct that is probably telling him to run for his life because an existence in this place without any version of Hikaru would be simply impossible. Better this Hikaru-thing and all of the terrible unknowns it represents than no Hikaru at all.

So far as premieres go, The Summer Hikaru Died is off to an essentially flawless start. I do question the show's decision to cut away from Yoshiki and Hikaru's time together to include characters and story beats that were not introduced until much later in the manga, but these could very well be choices that suit the pacing of this anime adaptation. Or, they might end up diluting the tension and the terror of this misbegotten love story in favor of explaining too much, too soon. It is too early to tell. For now, though, I am going to revel in the suffocating decay of this anime's atmosphere for a little while longer. It's not often we're treated so something so perfectly horrific.

Should the creature wearing Hikaru's skin ever have left the mountain? Did Hikaru know who he was inviting in when he called for someone, anyone, to ensure that Yoshiki wouldn't be alone? How does “Hikaru” understand his role? None of those questions have easy answers, or even answers this second episode is getting remotely close to, but that's the beauty of this horror story. The things we're most afraid of rarely have answers. That's why they're so frightening.

It's also looking like “Hikaru” isn't the only creature in the mountains. If conversations had between adults this week are to be believed, Nonuki, or Unuki, might be the worst of the mountain dwellers, but maybe his presence acted as a deterrent to other yokai. When a classmate says he's afraid to take the forest path home, it does seem like something is lurking in the trees – but “Hikaru” takes care of it. Granted, he does so only because he's trying to take Yoshiki, but maybe that was always his job. Old lady Matsuura's daughter was spirited away by something on the mountain, but that doesn't mean it was “Hikaru,” even if that seems to be what the popular theory is. “Hikaru” could simply be a guardian deity who was corrupted by disbelief or misunderstandings, kept in check by the Indo family (as the found bag seems to indicate). And maybe that's why “Hikaru” is so keen on protecting – or keeping – Yoshiki. He was asked to, after all.

Like last week, this week's episode of The Summer Hikaru Died is a masterclass in effective sound design. Music is fleeting and often comes from an in-world source like a car radio, while the sounds of the natural world form the true soundtrack. The screams of insects achieve a level of horror that Higurashi: When They Cry wishes it had managed with its title bug, and creaks that could be tree branches or could be strange, white figures in the forest create an unsettling backbone. If you've ever been alone in the woods, far enough away from human civilization that you can almost hear the ghosts walking beside you and see the fey creatures among the trunks, you'll recognize the uncanny nature of the mountain villages. It's just close enough to reality to be truly scary.

It's also weirdly erotic in some places. Although Hikaru and Yoshiki have been billed as best friends, there's something else between them, something that “Hikaru” seems fascinated by. The scene in the gym storage space, itself shorthand for messing around, explores the connection between them, looking at the possibility that they were on the verge of being more than friends, or that even if Yoshiki and Hikaru weren't, Yoshiki and “Hikaru” could be.

The way Yoshiki constantly looks up through his bangs at “Hikaru” suggests that he doesn't want to see him too clearly. If he does, he might lose his friend all over again. That would be bad, right?

If you're going to adapt a manga series that's already exquisitely done, you had better do it right. That doesn't necessarily mean being slavishly faithful, but rather that the anime version needs to bring something new to the table, a dimension or interpretation that isn't present in the original. In this version of Mokumokuren's The Summer Hikaru Died, that dimension is sound. While sound effects play a major role in the manga's art, actually hearing the background noise, the voices, and the strange dissonances makes this a more complete experience. It's also very likely a driving factor in why I think I'll stick with the manga because if you're sound-sensitive, this can be a lot to take in. That's not because it's screechy or loud or otherwise offensive, but because the sounds can creep in under your skin through your ears, wriggling into your consciousness in a way that mirrors the strange shapes and colors that flow out of “Hikaru.” It's excellently done horror in a particular way.

Although The Summer Hikaru Died isn't technically a ghost story, it shares a lot of similarities with one. The central aspect is the underlying tragedy of the piece. Hikaru, sometime before the plot truly begins, dies on the mountain outside of his village. As he passes, he calls out for someone, anyone, to help him. We don't know what he asks of the being that responds, but now it's living inside Hikaru's body, and Hikaru himself is gone. As far as most people know, Hikaru spent a week lost on the mountain, but his best friend, Yoshiki, knows the truth: Hikaru's body is inhabited by another soul. That means that most of Yoshiki's trajectory in this episode is trying to reconcile with the death of his friend and the appearance of that friend's continued presence. He can't mourn publicly because, as far as everyone else is concerned, Hikaru's alive. He can't mourn with “Hikaru,” either, because the being is trying so hard to fulfill Hikaru's role in Yoshiki's life – and he's also enjoying being a human by Yoshiki's side. “Hikaru” is almost childlike, and Yoshiki isn't sure how to cope with that. He thinks he's just happy to have any Hikaru/”Hikaru” with him, but in the privacy of his room, that doesn't always look like the truth.

At several points in the episode, people mention “Nonuki-sama,” specifically elderly people. When a monster comes to an old woman's door and kills her, an old man thinks that he's next, and someone else remarks that someone must have failed their ritual. “Hikaru” also mentions being trapped on the mountain for a long time, and in combination, these all seem to indicate that “Hikaru” is Nonuki-sama and that he's someone the village has feared for a long time.

Is he dangerous? Will his psychedelic true form bring horrors to Yoshiki? Or is something more sinister than a mere monster going on in the village? If you're a fan of creeping terror as a genre, you won't want to miss this.