'The Summer Hikaru Died' Is Easily the Best Horror Anime in Ages

One would assume that horror and anime, two media seemingly tailor-made for each other, would consistently produce masterpieces. After all, anime’s visual elasticity and horror’s emotional extremity should be a match made in heaven. Yet, more often than not, their union exposes mutual blind spots rather than shared strengths.

Anime adaptations of horror manga frequently fall into two traps: slavish recreations that beg the question of what was actually adapted, or hollow spectacles that rely on cheap jump scares, evoking the aesthetics of a 2011-era YouTube craze. But then there’s The Summer Hikaru Died— an outlier, a revelation, and arguably the pinnacle of modern horror anime.

Created by mangaka Mokumokuren and adapted by CygamesPictures , The Summer Hikaru Died slipped quietl