That was one of those eps that demand I start out simply by praising it. Perfection, pretty much. This adaptation has been really strong generally but this week was definitely one of the best. Hikaru ga Shinda Natsu is an immersive experience, in anime form differently but no less so than manga form. Once again we’re reminded that anime is not manga, and that the best adaptions are the ones that recognize that. You have to do things differently, mine impact from different sources. I’m not surprised it’s been very well-received by new viewers and manga veterans alike.

Let’s talk about the Swampman Paradox which, to be clear, is not a convenient device created by Mokumokuren. It’s a well-known thought experiment proposed by philosopher Donald Davidson in 1987. The episode summed as well as you could in 30 seconds, but this is a pretty complex problem. The question here is identity – what makes us human and even more pointedly, what makes us the sentient being we are? Summertime Rendering touches on this too of course, but answers are not so easy to land on. Yuuta’s point – how can both be the same person when they briefly existed at the same time – seems a valid one to me. But philosophers are still arguing Davidson almost 40 years later.

Whatever Hikar2 is, what makes this situation especially interesting is that he doesn’t really know himself. Both he and Yoshiki are wrestling with this problem in their own way, and there are two worlds existing side by side here in many senses. Asako is a key figure in this episode, and her grandmother once told her that the worlds of the living and the dead overlap each other. Her family is sensitive to it – Grandma can see but not hear things, Asako seems mainly able to hear. Grandma also tells the child Asako that not all beings from the other world are bad (as one proves in very practical terms by saving Yuki’s life). But as a rule, they’re dangerous and should be avoided whenever possible.

Well, that’s not much help in sorting things out. Also co-existing are the creepy world of mountain kami and the mundane world of teenage boredom and camaraderie in a lonely small town. With the chorus contest imminent (and no yakuza to provide a distraction), Asako proposes a group sleepover (deeming Yuuta’s Disneyland suggestion impractical), and Hikaru volunteers to host it. On arrival the others are somewhat struck by how spacious his house is, as if his family were important in the village. Hikar2 dispatches Yoshiki to fetch a game from his room, in which Yoshiki finds a baseball cap that puts him in mind of Hikaru’s late father and another summer. He also finds a handwritten note with the word “hichi” written on it, which he slips into his pocket for later consideration.

As the kids plow through their post-dinner fireworks, eventually the lighter goes out and Hikaru heads off to the local conbini for another. Asako volunteers to join him, and one’s thoughts naturally turn here to romance. There may or not be something there too, but she has another reason this time around. “Who are you?” is an inflammatory question for Hikar2, though Asako doesn’t realize just how much so. He assumes, not unreasonably, that she “knows”. She doesn’t – she has something else entirely in-mind – but the panic reflex in him is still very real.

It seems fortunate that Yoshiki has followed, to tell the pair to buy ice cream (though if one squints hard, they might suspect another motive). When he arrives on the scene Asako has fainted, and Yoshiki immediately demands to know what Hikar2 has been up to. When he puts two and two together, he throws up – but his overall reaction is very complicated. What does he feel at the idea Hikaru was doing to Asako what he did to him? Horror certainly, and concern for her. But other feelings, too – I think that’s undeniable. The kicker is that Hikar2 – the Swampman – has trouble working through his complicated feelings too.

It can’t be overlooked that Hikaru never explicitly denied it when Yoshiki asked if he was planning to kill Asako (and in his heart he knows what happened to old Matsaura-san). Rather, Hikaru complains that life and death aren’t so different, only a change of shape and suchlike. Hikar2 has no real concept of life and death, and this more than anything makes him seem alien to Yoshiki – makes it impossible to maintain the illusion. For Hikaru the dilemma is even more practical. Yoshiki has a “real pretty” soul, one he clearly desires to… what, exactly? But if he doesn’t understand life, how can he make the decision to take it from someone he cares about? He can’t even be sure if those feelings are his, or artifacts from the boy whose body he now inhabits.

Maybe Asako wasn’t so far off with her supposition that Hikaru was possessed – that’s an interesting take on the situation. Yoshiki sends her back to the others and then takes off himself, leaving he and Hikaru once more to ponder on the very strange turn their life has taken and where to go from here. The only thing that seems certain is that the two of them are drawn to each other, if anything even more powerfully than before.