#anybody caught up to the latest volume im like DAMNNNNN OKAY!

[cowboy-robooty]

good evening. instead of writing 1000 words of futanari on male smut tonight to settle in, i shall add "homophobic gay man" to my laundry list of allegations (gaslighter, manipulator, thumb rhythm game player, the stealing candy from babies incident, etc).

guys imma be so ngl rn i #won because they took the bl tag off the summer hikaru died 😄

MY LEGAL NAME IS FUDANSHI SUPREME BUT THE SUMMER HIKARU DIED IS MILES BETTER WITHOUT THE BL TAG BECAUSE WELL..... ITS NOT REALLY ABOUT BOYS LOVE LIKE OBVIOUSLY ITS SO INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT HOW YOSHIKI WAS IN LOVE WITH HIKARU BUT LIKE JUST BECAUSE ANNA BEING MADLY IN LOVE WITH TANUKICHI IN SHIMONETA IS A MAJOR PLOT POINT THAT DONT MEAN SHIMONETA IS A ROMANCE ANIME.

look the summer hikaru died is absolutely fucking fantastic it is incredible the story is gripping the characters are wunderbar the art is gorgeous i think that the yokai elements are wonderfully mixed in and you feel a genuine sense of fear and unease at times imagining yourself living in this town thats slowly unravelling at the seams. theres no debate about how fucking amazing the summer hikaru died is okay genuinely it rises above the rest but also i think that taking off the BL tag was such a win because yoshikis ongoing mourning of hikaru is literally the main plot focus and its so much more interesting when you can see it as more than just "doomed yaoi". yoshiki obviously regrets never being able to tell hikaru his romantic feelings and definately mourns the boy he loved but its so much more than that because more than missing his crush he misses his best friend. hikaru was yoshikis best buddy they were for real best friends and people tend to always act as though romantic feelings are superior in depth to platonic ones when thats not true at all. if anything i think yoshiki misses "hikaru my best friend" more than "hikaru my crush" because he had two sided best friendship and they were eachothers player one and two. Sometimes your crush will move away and its heart breaking but when its one sided you can endure, but a best friend? Your best friend is the shoulder you cry on. the guy you give the other half of your popsicle to. the guy who remembers you prefer extra ice in your drinks and dislike cola for the weird feeling it leaves on your teeth. Hikaru was yoshikis right hand man and now hes been replaced by someone who looks and walk and talks and has all the same facets of hikaru except his soul. In fact I think the only reason Yoshiki can't accept Hikaru *IS* because he was his best friend. Because despite the fact that this "Hikaru" is exactly the sams to Hikaru in practically every single way; yoshiki still can't accept him because his best friend can't be replaced. This manga has put Yoshiki is such an interesting and complex deliemma. Because yoshiki is stuck in this strange mix of convoluted feelings where he begins to love "Hikaru" as a seperate entity from Hikaru, but it feels as though this love is being pried out from a sticky sludge that is his original love for the real Hikaru. Yoshiki initially could only go through all of this out of his internal desire to cling to Hikaru, despite the fact he bears the knowledge everyday that he's just spending time with something that just reminds him of his best friend. And his care + empathy for the "Hikaru" next to him is something that originally was only a by product from his love for the original goods, but by now in the story he literally has admitted that he has grown to love "hikaru" seperately. When I started writing this post it was April lol and then this sat in my drafts forever, so now this got said out loud, but before it got said out loud you really could feel the jumbled and confused emotions Yoshiki was enduring regarding "Hikaru". It's something I don't even think I can put into words, but it was communicated so well through the author's story telling abilities. All these feelings can't be summed up in just Yoshiki having a crush on Hikaru. He feels so much more than that. To me at least, I think that this story is elevated by Yoshiki having a crush on Hikaru, but could still have happened if he didn't. While the vice versa could not be true. It makes me upset when this story gets boiled down to toxic yaoi and everyone ignores the fact that their best friendship is so deepy important (if not MORE important than the romantic intentions) when it comes to Yoshiki's emotional strife regarding the original Hikaru.