“Replacement”
What They Say:
Two best friends living in a rural Japanese village: Yoshiki and Hikaru. Growing up together, they were inseparable… until the day Hikaru came back from the mountains, and was no longer himself. “Something” has taken over Hikaru’s body, memories, feelings… and everything they know begins to unravel.
Review: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Based on the manga Hikaru ga Shinda Natsu, which is released in English through Yen Press, it comes from creator Mokumokuren, which began in 2021 and has seven volumes out so far. The anime brought in Ryohei Takeshita to both write and direct it with CygamesPictures handling the animation production. Takeshita’s an interesting choice since they have a lot of varied credits, from two seasons of Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night to Eromanga-sensei, but also a slew of unit director work across a range of titles. CygamesPictures has been interesting to watch its evolution as its taken on a lot of projects and the quality for them as a main production studio has largely been strong, which helps set a tone for this.
Rural tales of horror work no matter what country they take place in, though I’ll give an edge to Japan for how they’re presented in manga and anime. With this series, we’re introduced to teenage friends Hikaru and Yoshiki, where it’s six months after Hikaru was lost in the mountains for a week in January. The summer is here now, and as time has gone on, Hikaru has seemed less and less himself to Yoshiki, especially in recent weeks. Even after all this time, Hikaru can’t remember anything from that week and it does frustrate Yoshiki on some level. Hikaru has tried to present everything as normal since then, but a best friend can see the small differences and we get Yoshiki very early on here asking him if he really is Hikaru. And Hikaru is just surprised that Yoshiki figured it out, admitting it easily, and that he really thought he copied Hikaru perfectly. Even more disturbing, Hikaru pleads with Yoshiki not to tell anyone in an embrace as it reveals more of its real sense, saying it doesn’t want to kill Yoshiki. That creates a thoroughly engaging situation for Yoshiki to exist in, and to have to move forward knowing this isn’t him.
With Hikaru keeping things normal the next day, it’s a tough thing for Yoshiki to try and deal with, since it unnerves him throughout the night before, but he tries to just go with it when Hikaru shows up the next day. He’s doing his best to convince himself that even if he’s not truly Hikaru, it’s close enough and it’s someone he needs in his life. Since it’s a hot summer month and school is still underway, we get to see a lot of different parts of their lives, and just existing under this kind of weather, with a relatively small school, and how everyone knows each other on some level. While most everything unfolds fairly well, there are always moments where Yoshiki catches himself slightly knowing that it’s not really Hikaru. Even worse is that there are others that sense Hikaru is something more and react in very different ways, even if some don’t understand why he unnerves them. It’s all very classic low-key summer heat horror in the best kind of way as the truth of the series slow reveals itself.
In Summary:
I had a general idea of what to expect with this since the manga has been around for a bit and talked about, but I think the opening episode delivered very well on what could be the perfect summer anime to watch. I have a lot of these kinds of quiet horror projects, going all the way back to Higurashi, where there’s just enough unease beneath the surface, and watching it slowly boil upward. The two leads definitely gave an interesting dynamic between them, and as we see more of their lives and how others factor into it as well. The color design is great, the pacing hits a sweet spot, and I definitely like the way it just feels like summer with all the cicadas. This is the kind of show you watch just as dusk settles in on a hot summer weekend night, and just engage in its atmosphere and uneasy feelings.
Grade: B+
Streamed By: Netflix
