光が死んだ夏 1

The story is set in a rural village, and is about Yoshiki, a high schooler, whose childhood best friend got lost in the mountains and returned, but somehow changed.

I loved the story a lot, it's very emotional and makes you think a lot about humanity. I think the characters had very interesting relationships, and also the side characters were more than just background noise (e.g. Kurebayashi-san, Asako). Of course the relationship of Yoshiki and Hikaru plays a major role, and here also I liked how Yoshiki was portrayed with his conflicting emotions regarding what he feels for Hikaru and where his place in this world is.

The horror elements are relatively tame, more towards suspense and a bit of ickyness. There's many elements of religious belief and folklore.

Given that there's furigana, I found the Kansai dialect (seems to be Mie or Gifu dialect most likely according to some blogs) surprisingly easy to understand, it's relatively sufficient to look up the most common word change rules and memorize those. I even grew a bit attached to it, I think it has such an interesting sound to it compared to standard Japanese.

Cosmic horror BL?

This was billed to me initially as "cosmic horror BL", and while I agree that some elements of that are true, I would like to note in particular to anyone interested in that "cosmic horror" part that, to me at least, this series has so far been less Lovecraft and more Fatal Frame-ish. There's nothing wrong with that, and I'm sure there are plenty who would disagree with me, but I definitely would have preferred having my expectations re-aligned when I first started reading.

Anyway, the premise of the story is this: one day main character Yoshiki finds out that his best friend Hikaru has been replaced by “something” that looks and acts just like his friend. The story that follows examines the mystery of the “something” and Yoshiki’s thoughts and feelings regarding his original friend vs. this new one.

This series is pretty much entirely written in 関西弁, so for those reading it who aren't up to snuff on their dialects, this can get confusing real fast. The good news is, besides the 関西弁, this isn't a difficult manga to read at all. If it were written entirely in 標準語, the level for this series would drop by four or five levels, easy.

Language-wise, I would say this isn't great for learning unless your focus is Kansai-ben. It took a while to get used to, but Kansai-ben does follow the same logical patterns as standard Japanese. The language is quite casual.

Story-wise, this was a really interesting start. I like that you know from the very beginning that something is strange and off. I can definitely feel Yoshiki's anxieties and fears as I read. I anticipated that there would be a cliffhanger at the end but I didn't know just how compelling it would be!

For those who have read it: that chest scene was wild, right?!

Good story and great drawings, all in Kansai-ben.

I really enjoyed this manga and will definitely read next volumes. The atmosphere is very light horror and though I am usually not a big fan of the genre I enjoyed the balance in this work.

Language-wise, I found the all Kansai-ben dialogs quite challenging to follow at first, then it gets better as I got more used to it and made the relevant connections with standard japanese. I also think it is good to get more exposure to this dialect as it is rather prevalent in Japanese media anyway.