A review by chimericals
The Summer Hikaru Died, Vol. 1 by Mokumokuren

5.0

This was one of my most anticipated mangas of the year, beating out several volumes of JJK and MHA, and boy, did it deliver! An amazing story of friendship, love, loss, and slow creeping-horror, this manga has it all!! The horror elements slowly seep into the narrative adding to the overall eeriness of the story as no one but the main character seems to have realized that something is wrong. It also is one of my favorite horror sub-genres of rural horror with a lot of the horror aspects based around rural folklore in Japan. My other favorite aspect of this novel is the central relationship, which some sites say does develop into a BL narrative, which would be amazing in my opinion. While we get flashbacks of the relationship with between our main character and the real Hikaru, the focus is on the relationship between Yoshiki and "Hikaru", which really delves into the question of "what if your best friend came back wrong? what would you? would you accept them? would you reject them?". Overall, I would highly recommend this book and I can't wait to read the next volumes!

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC!