Summer Ghost

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There is the ghost of a girl who killed herself on a railway track. Have you been able to see her?

Read this story to find out.

This manga was originally written as a novel by another of the Honkaku Mystery Writers of Japan, Otsuichi, well known for Goth (that also got a manga adaptation).

If you don’t know what the genre is let me explain it briefly. The honkaku genre is a subcategory of the mystery genre that was born in Japan, in a time when the mystery genre was no longer affluent and was dying out. It focuses on fair play and the journey ... that the characters and the reader go through to find out about the truth.

So premising this is important because, we are talking about a mystery, but not just any mystery.

There’s a note of melancholy to the story. Summer. Where you know that the season will come to an end and we all go back to autumn and the beginning of a new chapter: the more colder months, which arguably no one wants to go back to, because they signify the beginning of the school year, new work places, busy times and people. Summer is where you let yourself go.

And this is what Summer Ghost is about. It’s about a group of adolescents that decide to look for the girl that killed herself and happen upon something much more meaningful than a corpse.

A read for those who want something short but impactful.

Not for those looking for a happy ending.

I came to read this after I finished the adaptation. I felt like the anime was really good, but was lacking a bit of depth and relationship between the three characters, so I decided to read the manga, and boy do I not regret it.

The anime primarily focuses more on the relationship between Tomoya and the ghost. I guess you can say it was mostly from Tomoya's perspective.

In the manga, it focuses more on the other two best friends, Aoi and Ryou's perspectives and everyone's friendship. They emphasized a lot more why all 3 of them mean so much to one another as I ... felt the anime lacked that a bit. It was also more organized than the anime, as I found it a bit confusing in a few parts.

The manga only takes less than 30 minutes to complete. I highly recommend anyone who finished the anime movie, to read the manga as well to see the full story. It's a shame they couldn't make this anime 1hr 30, combining both manga and anime material. It would've definitely hit the charts!! 10/10 loved it.