It’s a short series so it’s excusable but it’s just something I felt the need to point out for me not being a fan of it. I do think this manga is great and think it’s one of the best manga of this decade.
Overall: (8.5/10)
Now I don’t have a problem with a story that wants to focus on select characters but I feel like the series wants to shift focus to multiple characters and no one not even characters who are given a decent bit of screen time match up to “Hikaru” and Yoshiki.
Yoshiki's development was handled pretty well. One of my problems with the characters is the side characters being kind of underwritten.
I think where TSHD really shines is in themes. Themes of death, themes of closeted queerness, and dissociation from where one grew up. I think these themes are explored beautifully through our two main characters “Hikaru” and Yoshiki.
It works really well, but the manga is more of a drama so I could understand why the anime would center its focus on that part of the story. With that being said the art in the manga is fantastic aside from this weird CG for one entity we see a couple of times.
I also think while the drama is handled better in the anime the horror is much better here in the manga. You can definitely see the influences from Tokyo Ghoul and Junji Ito all in the horror execution and paneling.
I didn’t know whether this was one of those situations where the adaptation ended up being better than the source material. In some ways yeah the anime is pretty much better but the art and paneling in this manga is really solid.
I caught up with it after finishing the anime, mostly cause a friend kept on bugging me about reading the manga but aside from that I was also pretty interested in seeing how much I did like the anime.
The Summer Hikaru Died (2021 - 2026) author. Mokumokuren ✅
This manga actually ended a while ago; my site just didn’t update it until recently. I thought The Summer Hikaru Died was quite a great read.
