I am really starting my manga journey off with some excellent titles! Special thank you to @ratpop and @minsuni for recommending this to me as I sought guidance getting into manga, and @nezuu for putting it on the Those Who Lurk Among Us Quest! I’m going to have quite the high bar set for manga thanks in part to The Summer Hikaru Died.

Going into it, I expected to spend at least a couple chapters with Yoshiki as he began to notice and investigate clues that something is off with Hikaru, but the manga jumps right into the action! And I think that’s part of its magic: this manga subverts expectations and insists the reader join the journey immediately.

The artwork here is incredible, and it’s more than just aesthetically pleasing; like any skilled artist who is also weaving a narrative, Mokumokuren has crafted a palpable atmosphere within these pages. You can almost feel the summer on your skin. There are some truly stunning artistic choices, and at times you would swear you could hear the panels.

The story is compelling, a balance of adventurous and ominous with a simmering tension. The wry humor pairs well with the seriousness of these characters’ situations. This is a world that I’m truly interested in exploring further! Something spooky is going on in this village and I want to get to the bottom of it.

I absolutely recommend this manga.

. . . .

Yoshiki:

This book told me to sit the fuck down and trust the process, cause while I kinda hated the beginning and really thought I would rate this a lot lower, I actually ended up enjoying the it more the more I read.

Their attraction at the beginning was too sudden for my liking, the insta-lust of insta-lusts, and I did not like at all how sudden this was. Ruben was attracted to Cherry as soon as he saw her (literally) and the way they interacted felt like they had known each other for years, like they had waited their whole lives for this moment. They had just met 10 minutes before.

I have to give Cherry her credits because she was the best part of this book. A confident woman sure of herself and her wants, not afraid to take up space and to be herself, to voice her concerns and opinions, she was just wonderful, no notes honestly.

A problem I had with this book was that almost all sweet and emotional moments came with sexual thoughts. They’re having a sweet moment of sharing childhood memories and we later find out from one of them that they were thinking about fucking. They’re appreciating each other’s beauty or something soft about them physically, followed by what they’d like to do to the other when they’re alone. I just wanted them to be sweet and soft just because and it felt like there was always second intentions with it.

I wish Ruben’s sexuality was approached better and talked about more. I’m actually a little conflicted about this, because on one side I do like that’s it’s just a detail of his life, someone’s sexuality doesn’t have the define the person and be everything they are, someone’s sexuality is but a small part of themselves and I do think that was the intention here.

However, it’s also an important part of him, something meaningful to him and his past, that I would’ve liked for there to be a bigger conversation around this. The only time he mentions his bisexuality he calls it a “perversion”, and while this is done out of trauma and not something he truly believes, I wish the character he was talking to had corrected him and he himself to be more sure of his sexuality. It felt like a very passing moment and after finishing the book, I’m still not sure if he’s actual ok with being bisexual.