“ The Summer Hikaru has died ” is easily the best horror anime for ages

One could assume that horror and anime, two media apparently tailor-made for each other, would constantly produce masterpieces. After all, the visual elasticity of anime and the emotional end of horror should be a match made in paradise. However, more often than not, their union exposes mutual dead angles rather than shared forces.

The anime adaptations of horror manga frequently fall into two traps: servile leisure that raises the question of what has been really adapted, or hollow glasses that are based on cheap jumps, evoking the aesthetics of a Youtube craze of the 2011. But then there is Hikaru summer is dead –An aberrant value, a revelation and undoubtedly the ultimate in the anime of modern horror.

Created by Mangaka Mokumukuren and adapted by cygamespictures, Hikaru summer is dead Slipped quietly in the Netflix summer anime range, overshadowed by the usual shonen price. But from his first framework, he announced himself as something different, drawing from the same many cults as cult as Higurashi: When they cryThe horror author Junji Ito is unhappy Uzumaki Adaptation, thrill Best wishes to alland konami Silent Hill F.

It is imbued with the iconography of Japanese horror: a sleeping country city with ritual secrets that flow under the surface and adolescents with wide eyes in the abyss of its mystery.

As the title suggests, a boy named Hikaru Indo (Shūichirō Umeda) dies. But his death is only the beginning. The following is a slow and devastating detangling for his best friend, Yoshiki Tsujinaka (Chiaki Kobayashi), who finds himself living alongside a cursed entity carrying the face of Hikaru.

Yoshiki faces an ultimatum. He must either destroy it or acquiesce the wish of the demonic entity to continue living like his best friend – someone with whom he is very clearly in love. The selfish choice of Yoshiki to continue to live with his childhood friend of puppets sets the tone for the whole series: horror not as a spectacle, but as an emotional calculation.

The central tension of the show – Yoshiki’s refusal to reject the obsessive need “Hikaru” and “Hikaru” to protect Yoshiki – achieves a dynamic that is both tender and terrifying. Their relationship evokes the tragic absurdity of trying to domesticate a bear: you can love it, he can love you, but one day, it could curse you. Transform any affection perceived into a displaced anthropomorphization of a killer.

While the villagers are starting to die and the supernatural violence is attached to the pair like a magnet, Yoshiki is systematically tested to choose between protecting “Hikaru” or killing him with mercy for the greatest good. Basically, Hikaru summer is dead is a love story wrapped in a horror spiral, which questions sorrow, self-hate and the intimacy of queer desire under subtle but always monstrous patriarchal pressure. However, he does not boast as “a high horror”, but rather something more intimate, disorderly and deeply human.

Unlike a lot of anime focused on mystery, Hikaru summer is dead Does not insult his audience with revelations and an inept casting which leads through his scooby-doo mystery of “What is wrong with our village?” His characters are attentive, emotionally intelligent and often one step ahead of the spectator. When they notice that something is off, they say it or play their cards near their chest for the moment to express their disturbed concerns. When they suspect a curse, they act.

This narrative efficiency does not know the emotional weight of the series; He improves it, allowing horror to bloom in a organic way rather than by forced exhibition and cheap fear in the process of making keys to a child to keep their attention.

Visually, the series is simply amazing, with its horror never confined to the parts but a constant underlying optical current. Despite his weekly format, he has an animation at the level of the film, emphasizing fear on shock. Horror is not in the frightening jump – it is in calm moments: a panic attack in a grocery store, the crawling feeling that something malicious looks at you from the woods, the realization that your house is no longer sure, or your mind that plays you with something that is not at the corner of your eye.

Sonda, the anime is imbued with the low and ambient buzz of the criminal and a sweet and contemplative piano – evoking a mood of languid summer melancholy. But as the reflux and the flow of a shore current, this tranquility is periodically broken by gusts of noise and distorted intrusions that shake viewers in the awareness of the invisible impurities that haunt the hometown of Yoshiki.

These scenes are not formulated as configurations for a frightening long -term jump. Instead, they are part of the palpable and ambient dread of the show. He dwells in the corners of each frame, passing through the story as a change of season of the golden mist of summer, giving way to the fragile cold of the fall. During all this time, he creates a tonal duality which becomes a signature of the series, a constant heart rate which makes his horror intimate and unavoidable.

And yet, the show knows when to breathe. Like Jordan Peele and Zach Cregger, the director of the Ryohei Takeshita series balances the horror with humor, letting the characters crack dry jokes or acting humans correctly in the face of the terror of Eldritch. These moments of lightness do not deflate the tension; Instead, they deepen it, reminding viewers that horror is the most powerful when it is anchored in a real emotion. The show regularly presents its artistic merits by implementing live plans of marinated chicken or moving train cars, as well as picturesque views from their windows, to impregnate its artistic talent with both raw moments and zen moments at the same time.

In a sea of ​​horror anime which shoots for grandeur and landed on the cosplay at the level of the surface imitating the aesthetics of horror without grasping its emotional marrow, Hikaru summer is dead stands the head and shoulders above. He does not resign himself to the drawing inside the lines of his source material or does not pay tribute to a bygone era of horror anime, but leads it boldly to depths that the medium has not yet explored. Spinning sorrow, intimacy and monstrosity in something deeply disturbing and undoubtedly human.

With its first wrapped season and a second on the horizon, Hikaru summer is dead is the perfect series for horror fans to experience an obsessive and sincere reminder that the anime always has the power to surprise, disturb and move viewers. Not by shouting stronger, but by whispering the hard truths, we are afraid to face.

Hikaru summer is dead is streaming on Netflix.

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