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BL: The Summer Hikaru Died is a Fascinating Fusion of Horror and Romance that Explores Isolation [1]

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Date: 2025-07-15

Hi everyone, I hope you’re ready for a little Summerween, because I have decided to continue the spooky theme and give my impressions on the first two episodes of The Summer Hikaru Died. Putting this next to Krotor’s piece on vampires was done sheerly by coincidence but I had to talk about it because this show is such a fabulous animation achievement in terms of the skill it uses to render horror and gay love. I’ve been so exciting waiting for the next episode that will further reveal the mystery that I felt like everyone should know how good it is and that just happened to line up with vampires.

The Summer Hikaru Died is about a teenager’s encounter with an evil spirit. It starts with Yoshiki Tsujinaka thinking over what happened with his friend Hikaru. He got lost in the mountains for a week before eventually returning, but Yoshiki knows something no one else does. The Hikaru that returned isn’t really Hikaru, it’s some sort of doppelganger spirit that has possessed his body. We’ll be going over the events of the first two episodes, talk about how this unknown entity compares to other horror and romance plots, and talk a little bit about the connections between horror and queer people.

Our mission statement This regime wants to erase LGBQT people from public life and eliminate access to information, resources, and cultural heritage for our youth. Most LGBQT adolescents never see stories about people like themselves enjoying love and romance. In our current reality, watching a Boys’ Love or Girls’ Love series or movie might be the only means for young people to see models of how their own relationships could start, develop, and successfully grow. It’s also an act of subversion … so watch an episode, share it with others, and resist!

Most people can’t tell because this creature does have all the memories of Hikaru from taking over his body, but Yoshiki can tell something is off. He intuitively knows and still avoids the truth that his friend has died and this thing is not quite his friend, but the creature also looks and acts just like Hikaru. Eventually he even asks the Doppelganger directly and he admits what he is but begs Yoshiki to keep his secret and stay his friend.

For his part the Doppelganger says that he didn’t harm Hikaru, he says that when he was already on death’s door Hikaru let him in since he was going to die anyway. He claims he just wants to live a normal life and have fun with school friends, something that is impossible for a spirit if he can’t possess someone. Yoshiki is alone in his knowledge of Hikaru’s death, he cries at home at night because he misses his real friend, but he still cannot bring himself to condemn or hate the creature. A lot of this likely comes from the fact that he probably thinks no one else would believe him considering that they can see “Hikaru” standing right there. Either way he cannot stand to be angry at the spirit because that would mean losing even the pretend Hikaru completely and that is unacceptable so he continues to be friends with the Doppelganger.

The first episode ends showing the ways that the Doppelganger is very different from Hikaru, an old woman freaks out at the presence of the creature and screams him to stay away. Yoshiki seems more confused than suspicious but the Doppelganger doesn’t like the attention so he returns in the night to murder her. The second starts with the seen set and the secret already out to Yoshiki. This episode focuses more on the things that make Hikaru different from a human and how it could affect Yoshiki.

Yoshiki reaches inside

Early in the second episode, Doppelganger Hikaru asks Yoshiki to meet him at a store room. He asked him here so that he can show Yoshiki his hole. No, not that one, the almost zipper like hole in his stomach that is how he put in and keeps the spirit parts in Hikaru’s body. He asks Yoshiki to put his hand in it and really get in there. The scene is clearly intimate with the Doppelganger telling Yoshiki how much he enjoys feeling him inside of him. There is plenty of subtext to be had and this much in the second episode really makes me wonder how far they will push these sorts of horror/sexual scenes. Around now they also show the police finding the old woman that was agitated at the Doppelganger’s presence. Yoshiki doesn’t react much and we aren’t sure yet if he even thinks to ask whether the Doppelganger did it.

Later on, the Doppelganger invites himself and Yoshiki to go on a trip with some friends through the haunted local forest. Hikaru’s friends note how weird this is because apparently the last time he watched a horror movie he passed out cold from the fear, but when the Doppelganger explains he just got over it every moves on. That’s very normal to be fair, I was deathly afraid of the walking dead for a long time whether zombie or skeleton, so I don’t blame his friends for not being too suspicious but I do think they might be slowly piling on comments like that because other people will grow more suspicious eventually.

They go on their test of courage through the haunted forest and of course Yoshiki looks directly at a vengeful spirit. The spirit starts making long jagged strides to get to Yoshiki, but before it arrives the Doppelganger appears out of nowhere and crushes it before pulling it into him. The Doppelganger tells Yoshiki it wanted to kill him because he looked at it and the he wants Yoshiki to only have eyes for him. This is another potent fusion of violence and subtext. It might almost seem like the Doppelganger is telling him he wants to prey on him later himself, either way he is definitely protective of Yoshiki.

The episode closes with a housewife approaching Yoshiki. This woman has a spiritual sensitivity and can tell that something is off about Hikaru. She tells him that if he keeps “mixing with him” than it could be too late to be a normal human before he knows it. She leaves a card with him and says she can always help him if he needs it. We then get another brief cutaway to some people that seems to be aware of the monster, they say they don’t want to bring in the top dog spirit hunter but they may have to, we get to see a little of this hunter and then we leave it there for episode two.

Continuing Scares in the Forecast (for today)

If you’re a regular reader, you might notice that this Doppelganger has some commonalities with the topic of last week, vampires! Doppelganger Hikaru has very different powers from vampires but there are some parallels that are hard to miss.

For starters, he maintains a human form in order to infiltrate human society. Classic vampires are known to be shapeshifters and take many forms from human to bat to dog to even mist so that they can effectively sneak up on and drain their victims of blood. The Doppelganger’s stated motivation is just to live a normal life, but we certainly see him camouflage himself and kill other people the way a vampire might.

They also live parasitically exploiting human society. The Doppelganger is not sustaining itself by leeching off of humans the way a vampire does, but it’s ultimate goal is to integrate into human society to fulfill it’s own ends while definitely causing harm. In this case the harm is murdering people to maintain a human identity so he isn’t hunted, but it still comes down to being uncaring with the lives of humans to benefit himself.

Another similarity is that there are high level hunters trained to deal with this type of creature. Any classic vampire story has to have a scary and unknowable creature the characters have never encountered that can be combated only with the help of a seasoned Van Helsing type expert.

Those are the biggest commonalities for what I call “infiltrator horror.” Werewolves and vampires are both the most well known monsters in modern fiction that fit into this category, but tales about supernatural creatures that replaces humans exist across many cultures. Worrying about the monsters (and even androids/cyborgs when you look at sci-fi writing) hiding among us seems to be a consistent concern among humankind.

To bring it back to the romance aspect, why are people so intrigued by romances with horrifying creatures like the Doppelganger. Twilight, using two classic horror monsters for a love triangle, is the probably the most well known iteration of this but people love using supernatural creatures that are dangerous to fill the bad boy role a lot. It makes sense too, every time someone’s a jerk in a romance solely for immaturity’s sake I want them to get dumped even if it unfair (they hurt my baby), but when they’re a supernatural creature fighting their instincts because they love being around you so much that they can’t quit you even though it’s dangerous, it’s almost like all of the fun of a bad boy with an excuse for why they are acting so recklessly.

On top of that, part of the appeal is that such monsters could be anywhere. It doesn’t matter if your small town feels like it’s full of normal people, any one of them could secretly be a sexy monster man who loves you but also wants to eat you a little, and that is exciting to a romance lover who wants a world that seems like it could be within reach to them but is also dangerous and exciting. The Summer Hikaru Died checks all those boxes again and again, the story takes place in a small rural town, the supernatural is existing right under people’s nose, and the main character seems to be scared of what Hikaru’s Doppelganger is but also fascinated by and attracted to him.

I do want to take a moment to mention that despite the comparison this is no Twilight however. Twilight takes horror tropes and puts them into the context of a dramatic romance that is rarely scary the way a horror movie should be (it’s not so that’s fine), The Summer Hikaru Died is a legitimately scary work of horror that also manages to fit romance and gay longing into it’s story. They haven’t got into the details yet, but they have definitely implied that Yoshiki and Hikaru’s friendship was very close and that he may have even noticed the Doppelganger because he was in love with Yoshiki.

Now that we’ve covered how romance and horror relate, I want to talk about how queerness and horror relate as well. Queer people are often attracted to monsters for the same reasons that they like certain villains in stories, they are often othered and considered outsiders for nothing other than existing.

Consider Frankenstein, Frankenstein is a horror novel that focuses on the unfathomable despair that comes with being brought into a cruel world by an uncaring creator. Hollywood Frankenstein’s Monster focused on “Oh no! The horror, the dead are brought back to life!” but novel focused on the Monster’s struggles to be accepted. People judge him based on his horrific piecemeal body, but this he was no lumbering corpse like zombie as some depictions have shown, he is a fully formed and intelligent human being that can never participate in human society because his creator cared more about crossing the boundary between life and death than thinking about what his life would be like once he was resurrected.

There are plenty of other monsters queer people relate to, but that dynamic encapsulates why LGBTQ audiences connect with these characters. Horror is not only slashers and monster killing, especially since the time of Frankenstein there is also an element of longing and loneliness due to exclusion that many people relate to but gay viewers often find comfort in.

That’s all I have for this week, y’all stay safe and watch some scary gay media!

Coming up …

Krotor’s story next Tuesday will cover The Boy Next Door, a hilarious parody of the rom-com (romantic comedy) genre, whether BL or GL or conventional boy-girl shows. Watch it on Youtube this week via the link in our viewing calendar below.

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