Synopsis
Jinta Yadomi, nicknamed Jintan, is the story's protagonist and the former leader of a childhood group of friends who called themselves the Super Peace Busters. As a boy he was energetic and outgoing, the one who could always catch the biggest stag beetle in the group. Everything changed after the accidental death of Meiko Honma, known to her friends as Menma: Jinta withdrew from the world, stopped attending school, and became a hikikomori who rarely leaves his house.
Five years later, Menma's ghost appears before him out of nowhere, visible and audible to no one else. At first he assumes she's a hallucination born of guilt, privately thinking of her as the beast of summer. Little by little, though, he finds the courage to bring the old group back together — Naruko Anjou, Atsumu Matsuyuki, Chiriko Tsurumi, and Tetsudou Hisakawa — in order to grant Menma's last wish.
As a child, Jinta had feelings for Menma but never told her, and that unfinished confession becomes the root of his guilt. Over the course of the story he slowly learns to accept her loss, and by the end a new, quieter affection begins to grow between him and Naruko.
