Trans Megathread for the Week of December 30th, 2024 to January 5, 2025 - The Summer Hikaru Died
Trans Megathread for the Week of December 30th, 2024 to January 5, 2025 - The Summer Hikaru Died
Here's to a new year! Here's my first mega try (also first time posting in a while due to reasons) but heya! Admittedly struggled a fair bit with self doubt and anxiety on this one as put it off for a while/other things caught up with me but I figure I'll be glad I did it once I've done it. It's kinda being done last minute though, so admittedly there's that...
I'd been intending to make the mega about something else originally when I signed up, but that would require more time on my part (and I just binge read this recently, so it all works out). Anyways, my subject of the week is The Summer Hikaru Died; it's a queer (BL) horror manga which is currently also scheduled for anime release next year (2025).
Content warnings naturally follow and further details will be spoilered.
CONTENT WARNINGS
Grief, body horror and (very debatably IMO) mild gore, supernatural horror (ghosts/"impurities", otherworldly entities), death I suppose though that one's a given
Premise
The titular Hikaru went for a walk in the woods, died, and something came back wearing his body, something that doesn't quite know how to be human or mortal; "Hikaru" returned, to ensure that his best friend, Yoshiki, would not be lonely. Romantic tension (and tension of a less pleasant kind) ensues.
The plot/things I like about it thus far (light spoilers)
Yoshiki and "Hikaru" have an absolutely great dynamic- their relationship may not be fully healthy, but their intentions seem to both be in the right place, as are their deep feelings (Yoshiki's for Hikaru and increasingly for "Hikaru," and Hikaru and "Hikaru's" own true feelings) and honesty in this regard, despite the latter "Hikaru" being effectively an imposter of sorts. (it's complicated, but these are increasingly distinguished separately and I really like that process as well)
"Hikaru" is, while not quite a blank slate, extremely new to the concept of even just "being" in the sense that mortal creatures and individual organisms(?) do. They've had to learn (and Yoshiki has had to confront them about) the value and significance of life and death; they've increasingly established boundaries, and they approach the world with a liveliness and curiousity that is really cute (the original Hikaru was also lively FWIW, but "Hikaru" is experiencing everything anew even if they retain the memories).
Yoshiki, on the other hand, is both grappling with his grief and loss of Hikaru, while finding comfort (and discomfort alike) in his imposter, and in guiding them through a new world or state of being. He's finding his resolve and moral/ethical backbone interacting with "Hikaru" (very blue-and-orange morality dynamics, though they're learning), he's experiencing what could be described as a rocky but determined romance and queer experimentation at the same time "Hikaru" is being introduced to notions of attraction and desire (beyond instinctual desire to consume).
Their pairing in so many ways should not work (or rather would be usually destined for a tragic end). From the start, there have been several points where by all means it should have met such an end. But their determination and willingness to meet the other where they're at and gradually be understanding with the other is both fascinating and something I'd feel optimistic for (and interested in seeing play out further).
Anyways, I should cut myself short at this (and make sure to have something properly written beforehand for next time). But anyways, thus far it's a strong recommend (if you feel alright with the content warnings) from me.
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is thestorygraph good? i want a goodreads alternative not owned by amazon
the most popular books being those sarah j maas ones and the hunger games does something to explain why the "recommendations" i've been getting don't really look that good (or at least not to my taste). hopefully as i use it more that feature becomes less useless
the tracking of what i've read is nice though
sarah j maas ones and the hunger games
That's just popular books people read. Which....
Never heard of it, but if there's a good non-amazon alternative maybe I should actually keep track of the books I read this year
I haven’t tried it, but the fact that they brag about their machine learning ai in big bold letters on their front page already makes me not want to give it a chance lol. I use BookWyrm for tracking what I read and it gets the job done, but I don’t think it would be very useful for recommendations, and it doesn’t have a stats page unfortunately.
yeah that's pretty suspect. idk i quite like the ui outside of that though, might stick with it
Yeah I mean idk it might just be buzzword shit anyways, I don’t know if they are even talking about an llm or what. Just struck me as a red flag. In any case it’s no worse than anything amazon is doing
I was using hardcover for a bit and I thought it was mostly alright. Some of the discovery stuff was a little wonky at the time, but I think they’re still developing it pretty actively. I haven’t been tracking my reading for a while, though, so I haven’t logged in in months.