Official anime streaming websites have historically been sparse in my country. Even with the rise of Crunchyroll there were always large amounts of episodes missing. To give an example, I got an account there once to watch One Piece again, only to realize the middle 70% or so of episodes were unavailable. Because of this, I’ve had a long history of watching my anime basically wherever I can find them. I will be quick to defend this, as I would gladly pay for my anime if they were reasonably available. This is what I do with manga for example, which is why my room is slowly looking like that of a hoarder. Debating morality aside, this explains why I watched Summertime Rendering on a weekly basis while a lot of people might not have. It’s been stuck in Disney jail for a while and although it could be out by now, it wasn’t airing weekly in the west. This is a real shame because it’s a very good show. So without going into any major spoilers, in case readers of this post haven’t had the chance to watch it yet, let’s talk about Summertime Rendering today. There will be spoilers for the first two or three episodes, but nothing past that.
Name: Summertime Rendering
Manga by: Yasuki Tanaka
Studio: OLM
Runtime: April 2022 – September 2022 (25 Episodes)
Genre: Mystery, Time Travel, Thriller, Action
Our protagonist, Shinpei, returns to his home on Hitogashima Island. He is there for the funeral of his childhood friend, Ushio. He left the island to move to the big city and she unfortunately drowned trying to save a young girl from drowning. The girl survived but seems emotionally unwell. Even before he gets to the island, things are strange. He has a weird dream where he hears his childhood friend plead for him to find her. When he wakes up he jumps forward landing face first in the bosom of Hizuru, another passenger on this boat and an important character in this story. He gets promptly slapped in the face for his unintended assault and arrives on the island proper.
While Shinpei is on the island, things slowly start getting more and more strange. Ushio’s neck shows strangle marks and it’s not long before he figures out that she was murdered. Not only was Ushio murdered, something supernatural might be going on. Soon after, Shinpei finds out, through going through the motions of it, that he has some sort of time travel ability. Think Re:zero but slightly different. With this power and limited knowledge, Shinpei and his friends slowly try to uncover what is actually happening on this island and how to save as many people as possible before it’s too late.
Summertime Rendering is a neat package that fulfills on all the basic promises of a good anime. The artstyle is solid, nothing mind blowing but definitely above average. Same can be said for the animation. The action scenes are amazing when they want to be and the animation throughout is always solid enough that I never noticed any problems with it. The characters in this show are very fun and well written, to the point that we find more depth in them as the show goes on. As someone who doesn’t like time travel in general, I found myself not bothered by it at all in this show. Hizuru is one of my favorite characters and I also appreciate that the cast is more diverse than just a bunch of teenagers. If you like a good mystery show that has the full package, then I highly, highly recommend this show. It’s great right from the start and as the season continues it just gets better and better. The ending is satisfying and although it’s not particularly important to the review, the first opening absolutely slaps. You won’t want to miss this show, so if you can find it anywhere, definitely give it a watch. I’ll be trying to find a good place to buy the manga, because I can definitely see myself wanting to experience this story again. Thanks for reading.
Opal Kaharis 