The Summer Hikaru Died

"Do you like me?"
— I like you, I really like you.
* He never said that, not once.*
"Then don't disappear again.

The visual is awesome, and the sound engineer Kasamatsu Koji is just a God (I really love his sound in Kaijuu no Kodomo). I've been waiting for CygamesPictures' adaptation of my favorite psi-horror queer manga for a reason. The chirping of cicadas, the melting sweet ice, the hissing sun — everything sounds like a typical summer, only each sound is a little excessive, too depressing. It's overwhelming and sounds claustrophobic, especially in the scenes where Yoshiki goes crazy, and the frosty murder of the grandmother — "I'm already inside" after loud silence, brr. It's perfect. The studio managed to highlight the differences between Hikaru and "Hikaru", even though one of them was present in only a few scenes. The way they speak, their movements and gestures are all slightly different, just enough to be confusing. Not without interesting changes, probably in order to better attract more viewers. But it stung a little that the atmosphere had changed slightly from intimate, intimate, intimate for Yoshiki to a more detailed and open-minded one. Nevertheless, I'm very happy, I can't wait for the next episode.

I got an aesthetic pleasure from all the incoherent shots of nature and especially from the kitty licking her balls

It's a ** delight**. The creative solutions of the creators are something, I have reviewed the series several times. The approach to sound design and visual effects is incredibly inventive — the first-person and surveillance camera scenes took your breath away, and the whole mix of VHS footage and animation in ED just killed you. Cygames Pictures actually knows how to create an atmosphere, camera positioning and framing are damn GREAT, because it creates the feeling that It's like we're watching something that we shouldn't, and we're also watching from the perspective of a creature that's about to pop out.

The scene with Hikaru's gut is just wow, it made me imagine what it would be like to stick my hand in there, a crazy mix of eroticism, discomfort, guilt, shame and grief at its peak. The shot of the real marinated chicken was even a little scary. Because he shouldn't be here, it's just so *wrong*.

The scene in the store is a great example of sensory overload, which is exactly how it sounds and feels — a lot of quiet and deafening sounds randomly resounding and interrupting each other, which makes you feel trapped, surrounded and disoriented. Repeated shots produce a strange hypnotic effect. All this very effectively demonstrates the strangeness/unnaturalness of what is happening.

The last few minutes are really creepy. Hikaru is gone, what's left is just a shell in which "Hikaru" has settled. Now the shell doesn't look empty. So, ~~Hikaru~~ cicada is still alive... But Yoshiki knows Hikaru better than anyone else, and he knows that what's inside isn't him, that the shell doesn't move exactly the same way, and it doesn't make exactly the same chirp. The shell is alive, but that doesn't make what's inside the same Hikaru as before.

Well, summer finally came, when the lights went out and Hikaru died!