Takuo Kobayashi

A Japanese middle class family is about to make a journey on a hot summer’s afternoon. But their annual holiday is haunted by mishaps.

In the relentless heat of the gruelling summer, temperatures soar to blistering levels as cicadas emerge to sing their ear-shattering song. Months of continued exposure is enough to make anyone start to feel a little off. Anyone, that is, except that oddity the locals call ‘the Cicada Man’. Who is that strange man and why is he always walking around with boxes full of live cicadas? More important, what does he do with them? As the heat starts to get to our heroine, and her sanity depletes, real life and delusion begin to mix. Her darkest nightmares seep into our world and she fears the Cicada Man has planted his swarm of insects inside her. She must get them out – at all costs. Thus begins her downward spiral into extreme paranoia and self-mutilation. She just needs to make it through the summer.

Adaptation of a few short stories by Shungicu Uchida