Latest / Pop Culture Junkie® / PCJ Pop #19

Transcript

PCJ Pop #19 · Pop Culture Junkie®

• 0:00
  (upbeat music)
• 0:02
  Hello, and this is your PCJ Pop.
• 0:10
  I'm Shauna, and I'm Olivia.
• 0:13
  And this is what I am popping this week.
• 0:16
  This week I'm gonna talk about an anime
• 0:19
  that I just finished the first season of,
• 0:21
  and I am, I can't stop thinking about.
• 0:25
  It's called The Summer Hikaru Died.
• 0:29
  So it is a Japanese manga series
• 0:33
  that started in 2021, and it was adapted into an anime,
• 0:38
  which most anime series begin as manga.
• 0:44
  It is a popular queer horror manga
• 0:47
  about a boy named Yoshiki and his best friend Hikaru.
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  So within, this is not really a spoiler
• 0:54
  'cause it happens within the first like one minute
• 0:57
  before the credits roll in the first episode.
• 1:00
  They're outside of an ice cream shop,
• 1:03
  and they're hanging out, and Yoshiki looks at Hikaru,
• 1:06
  and it's like, you're not really Hikaru, are you?
• 1:09
  Hikaru had gone missing in the mountains over summer break
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  for a number of weeks and came back and was very different.
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  It is not him.
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  There is something else living inside of Hikaru's body
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  and kind of puppeting his likeness around
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  and pretending to be him.
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  This anime has a chokehold on me.
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  It is so beautifully animated.
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  Yeah, dude, I think that you would like this one too.
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  It's really good.
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  It's very beautifully animated.
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  A lot of it is about grief,
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  which actually I think both of us
• 1:43
  probably use right now.
• 1:45
  I know, I know.
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  So you know, Yoshiki becoming,
• 1:51
  like, is coming to terms with the fact
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  that his best friend has died,
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  but that he's right there in front of him.
• 1:57
  So is he going to accept this other Hikaru as his best friend
• 2:01
  or is he going to push him away?
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  But this is all he has now, right?
• 2:06
  And also, whatever is inside of his body now,
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  is that malevolent?
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  Is it evil? What is it?
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  Is it a demon?
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  So the mystery unfolds over the course of the series.
• 2:17
  It is definitely queer-coded.
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  It's not specifically boy love,
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  but they definitely hint that Yoshiki had feelings
• 2:26
  for Hikaru or they had a very close relationship
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  before he died, right?
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  And that kind of adds that next layer of like,
• 2:33
  oh, you died and I didn't get to tell you.
• 2:36
  I, you know, oh my God, it's just beautiful.
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  I'm absolutely--
• 2:40
  - You ruined the friendship by Taylor Swift.
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  - Oh my God, it is giving,
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  like, it's horror, it's gay, Taylor Swift,
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  it's giving heated rivalry, it's all of the things.
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  So I'm gonna--
• 2:58
  - Oh, yes, watch it, it's gorgeous.
• 3:00
  You'll cry, you'll laugh.
• 3:02
  The summer Hikaru died, you can watch on Crunchyroll.
• 3:06
  And that will do it for this week's PCJ Pop.
• 3:10
  (upbeat music)