This Week in Anime

What the Hell is Going On In Summer Time Rendering?

Nicky
Talk about a curse! This show was missing for SO LONG that most of us thought it was dead. Then, out of the blue, the entire 24-episode run turns up labeled as a Hulu exclusive. Since two whole cours is a bit much to cover for the format, we're only running down the first twelve. There's been a lot of hype for this show, so getting a release with nary a word feels strange. But in a way, I feel blessed to binge this show blind, and I recommend everyone who was waiting for it go and do the same right now! We have a lot to dissect.

While decisions made by the House of Mouse and time travel might be out of our realm as humble anime reviewers, we're not entirely powerless here. Right now, we can tell you whether or not this show that spent a year lost at sea is worth a swim.

The first episode blew away most of my skepticism about it being worth the hype. People who know me might know I'm a mark for mystery stories, and it's a niche that certainly has its place in the hearts of anime fans. Some people still push through visual novels hundreds of hours long for a good mystery. Other series with similar gimmicks, like time travel or a small town with strange occurrences, do well. Though, mysteries are not dissimilar to magic tricks. To captivate an audience requires clever sleight-of-hand. A bad mystery feels clumsy and aimless, but Summer Time Rendering has a sense of finesse thanks to the talented production staff. I mean, look at the detail of this food! Now that's just showing off.

It might seem overwhelming or dull to throw a bunch of information at the audience. It doesn't let up as discoveries are constantly revealed, but the previous "magic" I described works to ensure the audience keeps engaged with these details. We don't get to talk about sound much in our column, but you can always stop and tell when something is important by how the characters speak. The audience can enjoy the tricks, and someone like me, who's more knowledgeable about certain mechanisms, can still get drawn in and appreciate the craft surrounding it.

The setup is more than just sifting through a bunch of cold-hard facts. Our guy, Shinpei, takes one step off that boat, and already the vibes are atrocious, both tonally AND emotionally. What's supposed to be his cozy tight-knit island hometown is thrown off by Ushio's untimely and tragic death.


There's an equal amount of time spent soaking in the character's feelings, their sorrow or surprise, as there is about moving the plot along. This helped it feel more like the story was portraying people, not just pieces on a chess board.

Look, Shinpei just played a lot of Persona 3; he knows what he's doing.

Also, while the OP's visuals are mostly neat abstract filtering of clues across the screen, the song riff leading up to that (gun)shot is amazing.

I feel insulted whenever streaming services tell me to skip openings and endings without an option to stop prompting me, but the first half's ED is a great song like "No, I would never want to miss these 2 minutes panning over ocean waves." They're critical forms of relief.

How else do we cope with watching everyone we love in the aforementioned small town get brutally murdered and replaced by an unknown supernatural force trying to use us as food? How do you feel when you can't tell the enemy apart from innocent people? Give me the waves.

Oh yeah, Shinpei has few distinct characteristics as a protagonist. He's intentionally quite average, but not in a way that's aggravatingly hand-holding the audience or making him seem too competent in a situation he knows he's at odds with. He's a good balance. Natsuki Hanae's performance makes him super emotive so that those bad ends can stick in you like a knife.

It's easy to sympathize with him just as much as it is entertaining to see him struggle against a mind-boggling situation. He gets put through a lot.

You could say this episode decided to end on a real banger, huh?

Since this is anime, there is still a lot of teen shenanigans between the cast. It helps lighten the mood and shows how close some of them are. Other times, we get a touching moment between people grieving. It seemed like Shinpei himself was avoiding entirely processing everything that happened by focusing on taking care of Ushio's younger sister, Mio. Still, it's not easy to let go of the dead when THE DEAD IS STANDING RIGHT HERE IN FRONT OF YOU!

Oh, I love her. She's a riot. Re-introducing her to the story as a benign help/hindrance assuages some tropes about innocent dead girls and women. Too often, a loss becomes more about the loss itself rather than measuring what value that person had to you. While we get a brief framing of what Ushio was like before her death, the structure didn't give us a solid image of what kind of person she was other than she was "too pure and good for this world" and not the adorably loud and brazen idiot that she turns out to be.

It's impressive how much of a shitshow things quickly become after only a few "loops" to emphasize the stakes. It's not an "Endless Eight" where it's determined to show you everything that repeats, either, only highlighting the key variations. Shinpei using his lives to make actual progress is dramatically different than watching Subaru getting stabbed in an alleyway over and over. They're just different approaches.

Right in the first episode, two of what end up being key events are: Shinpei wakes up from a bad dream and accidentally falls face-first into the huge anime boobs of the woman who happened to be sitting across from him and the other being that Mio trips over her bike coming to meet him, falling into the ocean. Of course, that random woman turns out to be crucially tied up in the plot.

I also still stand by what I mean when I say the first episode won me over. I saw some people groan about this bit of juvenile anime clichés, but I wouldn't call this a fanservice show, or it put me off. I didn't feel it lingered when Hizuru's humongous chest jugs were on screen. If anything, the juvenile bits, like walking in on Mio in the bath (confirming she isn't dead), remind me of the kind of thing I'd see in an Uchikoshi game.

The weird two people/personalities in one body are peculiar, but it's a neat concept. But going back to their role, after the bad end at the summer festival, the story becomes more than what's going on in Shinpei's head or him doing it by himself with the Minakatas acting as an adult counterpart and mentor. They're framed equally as protagonists. Hizuru serves as the thinker and the writer of Shinpei's favorite mystery novels, and Ryunosuke (her pen name) works as the muscle who can throw a mean sledgehammer!

What I like about it most is that with the two of them working together, it shows that Shinpei isn't the only one "going through it." Like, he allies himself with his friends, but here's an adult who has experience with what he's going through that he can learn from, and, most importantly, Shinpei doesn't have to hide his feelings from them. You feel a sense of relief knowing that there's another person with the same trauma.

It also allows us to get different events in the story, so we're not stuck with the limited perspective of one dude, allowing the overall narrative to be much more complex and compelling.

So, the shadows in Summer Time Rendering feed by taking information about a person. They then use this information to Xerox them, copying their appearance and information about their personality, thoughts, etc. This allows them to blend in almost seamlessly to lure more prey. But then, how different is the copy from the original if you make a Xerox of a whole person? Some people would turn their brain into pretzels over that kind of dilemma, but fortunately for Ushio and her own Shadow, thinking doesn't concern them.

What I like best about the element of Ushio's Shadow Clone Jutsu is that it allows Ushio to have a proxy for her perspective in a story that's ABOUT her demise. The backstory episode, in particular, adds weight by showing that Ushio was always her agent. When she died, she wasn't an unknowing victim but someone who was, like Shinpei, just doing what was within her power. It's still just a memory using whatever shadow powers to show what happened, but it's a better picture and even shows Ushio as someone who valued the life of her shadow equal to that of herself.

Even with all the ground covered in this first half, it's still hard to see how any investigation is supposed to be effective when their enemy is, like, a god.

Well, small children ARE terrifying. Especially one that's a little mad about Shinpei taking her (eye)ball.

It turns out Shinpei's heterochromia wasn't just his character design but the source of his power. Not that he has any idea how he got that. There's a lot about Shinpei we're not exactly privy to.

Look, it's totally normal to have internal arguments with yourself at random instances. Totally normal guy here.

I'm in the same boat! It was dangerous how much Summer Time Rendering's plot managed to reel me in. However, the real siren song is how well the execution makes scenes move like running water. As you said earlier, it might not be deep, but the central mystery's underlying current of suspense creates a momentum strong enough to carry any viewer wishing to be whisked away at a fast pace. Furthermore, for all the sharp twists and turns created by the narrative, the focus of the atmosphere and the characters act as a guide to keep a smooth course. It's a great measure of skill for a production to make you feel like you're gliding. Complex stories with many moving pieces are perilous and require a seasoned captain. In fact, watching Summer Time Rendering felt refreshing. I drank up this first half like nothing, and I could see myself chugging the rest. Don't worry if it looks like I'm drowning; I'm just enjoying myself.