WHEN HIKARU WAS ON EARTH’S UNFORTUNATE STAGNATION

FELIX L. - Writer, 3rd Year, Environmental Engineering

Hikaru ga Chikyuu ni Ita Koro…… (When Hikaru Was on Earth) is a light novel published between 2011 and 2014, with 10 total volumes upon its completion. Its story sprouted from the dynamic formed between its protagonist, Akagi Koremitsu, a high schooler whose difficult circumstances have forced him into garnering a terrible reputation, and the remaining spirit of Hikaru Mikado, a notorious Casablanca in and outside of his school whose death at the beginning of the novel has caused a great turmoil among those close to him. This leads to Koremitsu taking it upon himself to tie the loose ends in the many past relationships with Hikaru, which have left many people, who relied on Hikaru’s presence to sustain their existence, broken due to his death. And this quest to fix these shattered ties and bring closure to everyone involved with Hikaru is paralleled by Koremitsu’s acceptance of himself and those around him, as he tries to embrace his life and the people he ends up getting close to on this journey have to offer to him reciprocally.

This entire story is greatly inspired by the Tale of Genji, the Japanese literary work written around the 11th century by Murasaki Shikibu, a Japanese noblewoman, that describes the social and romantic lives of Genji, a member of the Emperor’s family line, as he involves himself with the rest of the aristocratic society. Each volume of When Hikaru Was on Earth focuses on one heroine and her past relationship with Hikaru, and each of these is inspired by a specific character from the Tale of Genji, with their life being adapted to a contemporary Japanese adolescent setting.

Therefore, this novel has a practically episodic nature in the stories that it has to tell, as each heroine had their own mostly independent dynamics with Hikaru, and therefore the void tied to their past relationship that Koremitsu has to fill and bring closure to will make their character unique in what their story entails, and the newly formed dynamics that are formed through Koremitsu’s quest. And these dynamics do end up building off of each other and piling up to create a larger overarching evolution within the cast that acts as an interesting and emotionally compelling guiding thread centered around the protagonist’s appreciation of these ties that he is building himself accompanied by those he helped.

The flip side of this coin, unfortunately, is lacking consistency in quality for those volumes, despite a strong sense of progression, which makes the finality of the protagonist’s journey lacking in impact. The first volume truly shines as a great representation of the show’s premise, with Hikaru’s past fiancee, Saotome Aoi, going through a compelling arc as she is forced to contemplate her current life after Hikaru’s passing and finding the will to move on while embracing her past feelings for Hikaru, in a way that also leaves a deep impact on Koremitsu despite him having to act as another, the vessel of Hikaru to recreate what was lost, even for just a moment. The second volume, focusing on Yuu Kanai, a shut-in girl who was entirely dependent on Hikaru’s affection to survive, succeeds as well to a commendable extent, putting Koremitsu and his personal feelings for this girl in the spotlight, while still developing her past dynamic with Hikaru and setting her up for her future life on an engaging level for the reader.

But I find there to be a significant drop off after this point, that never really manages to pick up again. Volume 3 and subsequent ones shy away from being stories delving into human emotion, instead showcasing dynamics within the other heroine’s families from a more political standpoint, as in families who use their members as pawns to further their interests. Some focus on different things, but always keep this trend of creating pragmatic stories, rather than human ones. Volume 3’s heroine for instance is a young girl attempting to get revenge on a businessman who ruined her father. While this is not inherently weak as a form of writing, it does struggle to make for engaging stories when taking the LN’s premise into account, and its nature as a story of broken people dealing with loss and the need to go on despite their circumstances. If the reason for these people being broken is defined pragmatically, and outlined clearly as something born of malice, or the system that surrounds them, rather than the product of their own feelings and struggle to cope with their situation, its strength as a vector for development within this story fails to live up to the standard set by the first two volumes, particularly the first one, that shines in its exploration of human feelings.

There are strong moments in the latter half of the novel, namely tied to the evolving dynamics of the cast that keep many previous heroines relevant in somewhat compelling ways, or Koremitsu’s own journey on understanding his own feelings and accepting those of others, which happens in some ways in parallel of the novel’s main storylines. There are also reveals tied to Hikaru’s past life and the mysteries surrounding some of its more tragic aspects that receive a great amount of stylistically strong exploration, particularly in the last volume, but overall, this is a story that I would describe as one that greatly understands what makes romantic and emotional dynamics compelling, but has struggled to execute it as it went on.