The Summer Hikaru Died Episode 5 Review: A Monster Of The Week Creates A Hairy Situation

By Elijah Gonzalez | August 5, 2025 | 9:30am

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The Summer Hikaru Died Episode 5 Review: A Monster Of The Week Creates A Hairy Situation

After about a month of harrowing body horror interwoven with ruminations on sexuality, Ship of Theseus problems, and other deep dilemmas, the latest episode of The Summer Hikaru Died establishes an important inquiry: what if this were actually a monster of the week show? That isn’t to say that Episode 5, aptly titled “Wig Ghost,” doesn’t have those crunchier thematic elements which have made this series so compelling; it’s just that said themes are delivered through a scary hair creature.

Events begin in what feels like slasher mode as Yoshiki’s sister, Kaoru, notices something inexplicable in the shower: a clump of extremely long hair. Considering everyone in the family has relatively close-cropped ‘cuts, this tips her off that something is strange even before a creepy glob unspools into a grotesque web of black tendrils. Kaoru gets out safely, but not before everyone involved, including us, gets quite a scare.

While it sounds campy, sharp direction sells the scene: there’s a slow build as this entity slithers into the bathtub and Kaoru scrambles to escape these close confines, while claustrophobic shots and realistic animation make it feel like a real, terrified human being is in peril.

The Summer Hikaru Died episode 5

As mentioned in last week’s review, after Hikaru’s declaration to protect Yoshiki, the only way to maintain a sense of uncertainty is to put other characters that we care about in a precarious situation. Here, Yoshiki’s small bean little sister does just that, especially after some brief but effective screentime in Episode 3 that communicated her struggles with social anxiety and nosy neighbors. These circumstances with Kaoru also create friction between Yoshiki and Hikaru, as Yoshiki has been specifically told that fraternizing with entities like the one possessing Hikaru can attract other malevolent spirits, endangering not only himself but those he cares about.

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But perhaps what really sells this week’s format is the scene where Hikaru attempts to exorcise this spirit. Trying to repeat his quick and easy handling of the long-necked yokai that came after Yoshiki recently, Hikaru finds himself quite literally in over his head, as he drowns in bath water. When Yoshiki goes to save him, he gets sucked in as well, resulting in a hilarious and horrifying shot where our protagonist’s legs cartoonishly kick up vertically as he falls into something impossibly deeper than his tub.

This sequence results in the best imagery of the episode, as our boy is surrounded by rising columns of brains that pulsate with his anxieties: “Decided on a college yet?” “Still won’t cut those bangs?” “That kid can’t even carry on a conversation,” the voices of the villagers echo as Yoshiki is consumed by his own gray matter. It’s quite fitting imagery considering that for many who are struggling with depression and anxiety, like our protagonist, these pink lumps of his own neurons can prove his greatest enemy (besides the creature currently trying to kill him).

Then, as the hair monster slips into his skull, his fear of enabling spirits to hurt his loved ones becomes literalized as his body attempts to strangle Hikaru. Again, the visuals come through in communicating the nightmarishness of this situation, as a possessed Yoshiki’s dead black eyes and mask-like grimace stare down uncaringly at his dying friend. The whole sequence is intercut against a childhood scrap between him and Hikaru 1.0 from way back in the day, which also ties into Yoshiki and Hikaru 2.0’s squabble from earlier this episode in the gym storage closet.

In this previous scene that established some tension between this pair, Yoshiki once again reached his hand into Hikaru’s chest cavity, before almost seemingly being taken over by Hikaru’s goo. It’s another physical moment between the two that mixes awkward teen queerness and body horror—in terms of metaphor, it seems to be about coming to understand the importance of consent and outlining boundaries, while also establishing that there’s still some reason for Yoshiki to be wary of Hikaru despite the latter’s declaration to protect him.

But leave it to some ghostly locks to mostly bring the two together: after Yoshiki bites and slashes, Hikaru blasts that hair spirit out of his friend’s head at the speed of Yusuke Urameshi’s spirit gun. Instead of worrying about being possessed again, the situation makes Yoshiki more concerned about the harm he can bring to Hikaru, likely referring to the fact that any romantic relationship comes with the possibility of causing emotional pain. And more literally, this alludes to what would happen if he told the town’s ghost hunters the truth.

Speaking of those spirit hunters, whom I’ve largely complained about so far because they’ve mostly been vehicles for exposition, Tanaka received a bit of noteworthy characterization this week: he seems more dangerous to Hikaru and potentially everyone else in the village than ever. Tanaka stomps on a shrine to the escaped mountain god with detached violence before performing another weird blood ritual to track Hikaru down.

Unfortunately, then one of the exposition villagers delivers a bit of a clunker line about how Tanaka might destroy the village and how he feels conflicted that he secretly want this to happen—again, while it’s interesting that this deeper guilt that implies that the village is ultimately reponsible for this situation, the spirit hunters besides Tanaka continue to be poorly defined, making this internal quip fall flat.

Still, this episode accomplished what many great monster of the week style stories do by using its creepy creature as a means to explore underlying ideas—specifically Yoshiki’s fear that he may have to choose between hurting Hikaru or others close to him. It also gave the production team an excuse to animate a gross clump of sentient hair, so I’m sure everyone involved is quite happy.

The Summer Hikaru Died streams every Saturday on Netflix.

Elijah Gonzalez is an associate editor for Endless Mode. In addition to playing the latest, he also loves anime, movies, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Bluesky @elijahgonzalez.bsky.social.