SUMMER TIME RENDER

DESCRIPTION

CAST

MANGA ActionSummer Time Render

REVIEWS

• 

  Mcsuper

  81/100
  A Show That Had A Ton Of Suspense, But Lost Some Steam

  The art of mystery is always a tough thing to achieve perfectly. It’s one thing to be suspenseful, a bit scary, and leave viewers at the edge of their seat, but to have the story done without convolutions or questionable points is what’s difficult. This show looks great, and is pretty good in showing off its brutal moments, but has its share of questionable moments that took away a little from the immersion. For the most part, this show was pretty good, but as it went on, it kept losing steam towards the finish and sputtered to an ending that probably could have been better.

  My grading criteria: Story: /25 Art: /10 Music: /10 Characters: /20 Enjoyment /15 Thematic Execution /20

  STORY: 17.5/25

  The story at first, was very engaging, and Episode 1 was a great hook to the series. The mystery of how Ushio met her demise before Shinpei’s arrival to the island was a good setup for the story. The investigation of the Shadows was interesting and had its share of suspenseful and horror elements that had me on the edge of my seat, and those themes were executed to near perfection. However, as the show went forward, while it did maintain a good chunk of its quality, I don’t know whether I could call this show too long, or too rushed. There’s a lot of dialogue and meandering, while the advancement of the main plot points went by in a flash when it decided to advance. In my opinion, for the most part, I think that it probably should have been in the realm of 30+ episodes to really flesh everything out.

  To compare the first and second cour of this show, both cours had its share of elements that were intriguing, and backstories that were a little emotional/messed up. Towards the end of the second cour, I could see the rather obvious contrivances rearing their ugly head, but it’s not bad to the point of me hating what happened at the end. Throughout the story, I could draw elements of Re:Zero, or Higurashi, though the comedy was ridiculous sometimes, perhaps comparable to something like Jojo’s, because those tonal shifts between action and comedy were so abrupt sometimes that it felt like that.

  All in all, this had an intriguing story at first, that started to lose me more and more towards the end, which was to be expected, though perhaps doing this show in a split cour format would have kept my attention a bit more.

  ART: 9.2/10

  The animation was pretty good throughout, with its vibrant, yet dark undertones, and great sakuga in the fight scenes.

  MUSIC: 9.2/10

  The OP and ED in the first half of the show were very creative, and I enjoyed those two a lot, and the OP and ED in the latter half felt more “normal”, but had some emotional weight in the final episodes. The soundtrack throughout matched well with the show.

  CHARACTERS: 15.5/20

  Believe it or not, I was never wholly invested in the characters, because their overall development wasn’t that strong, but every character had their share of good moments. Shinpei is a decent protagonist, not the dumbest you can imagine in stories like this, as he tries to decipher mysteries and control his powers, but still makes questionable decisions, like telling the villains too much information, for example. He’s quite the dumb one at the beginning, but I’m glad he developed a sense of awareness and became a much more likeable protagonist near the end. Ushio was a strong character, but she was also the character who contributed to the most tonal shifts due to her bubbly personality, leave it to her to make a joke in a tense moment. Won’t spoil much more about the characters, but Mio, Haine, Shide, Hizuru, and others all had their moments of emotional weight and badassery to impress me.

  ENJOYMENT: 13.2/15

  I enjoyed this a lot, but my enjoyment did fall off a little throughout the series.

  THEMATIC EXECUTION: 16.3/20

  The horror and suspense elements were done rather well, as the eerieness and quietness of some scenes really had the edge of your seat, as the show waits for the perfect moment to cut that silence. The nightmare fuel wasn’t cut, and there was a lot of vivid imagery for sure, which is always welcome. There were some themes that were unnecessary, like some of the comedy, and the shots of fan service as well.

  OVERALL: 80.9/100

  A quality show that I believe most people would enjoy, which is why it really was a shame that this show was locked behind Disney jail, which limited a lot of the discussion that could have been intriguing. It has its share of convolutions and shock factor that didn’t feel very strong, but if you’re looking for an action and mystery series, this one would be a decent one to pick.

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• 

  Granzchesta

  30/100
  An AI-generated Battle Shounen With Time Loop Gimmick

  After getting heavily disappointed with the latest Higurashi titles—Gou and Sotsu—I was very excited about Summer Time Render. It ticked all the boxes I sought—a murder mystery in a rural town with time travel, scary monsters, two-cour without any prequel and sequel, and good production values. With the first minutes of Shinpei's journey, I quickly sold out for the series. The summer atmosphere was on point. The art style was great for the most part. The main plot was like a knock-off mix of Higurashi and Steins;Gate but still gripping, and most importantly, you could feel the thriller. So, what happened? How this propitious thriller show turned into a mindless action where you can't get the intensity.

  __The first major problem: Breaking the "Don't Show the Monster" rule__

  In horror/thriller works, if a horrifying monster is way more powerful than the main characters is present, there's a crucial rule about not showing the monster. Why? It's simple, due to the nature of the mind, we fear the unknown. If we can't see the scary monster that tries to catch the main characters, we start to feel uneasy and almost feel like we are in the same story as those characters. Summer Time Render breaks this rule very early by showing its two main antagonists and revealing some of the most important secrets of shadows. Although nothing says this rule is absolute, if you throw it into the dumpster after the first couple of episodes, you need to use another method to make for its absence. And, once again, Summer Time Render has a perfect contender for this. One of its antagonists is a very tall shadow with four arms. His strength is ridiculous, and he has so many tricks under his sleeves. This guy was a perfect contender for being an "Implacable Man" where he will chase the main characters while they are hopelessly trying to find a solution to this calamity. However, this four-armed idiot doesn't chase the main characters. Instead, he backs down, relaxes, and gives enough time to the main characters to come up with multiple plans. If there was a threat who constantly chased the main characters and they tried to come up with a strategy during this cat-and-mouse game, it would be way more exciting. Also, it would be a match made in heaven with the shadow concept. Instead, the author used him as a simple action boss. And this is not something unique to this four-armed beast. The whole show starts to become an action story after the episode the main antagonists are introduced, and it almost totally transforms into a generic battle shounen with the start of the second half.

  __The second major problem: ACTION!... Action?__

  I was strongly sorrowful after realizing I got deceived into watching a battle shounen instead of a mystery-thriller. Still, I didn't fall into despair quickly. There were some battle shounens I liked a lot, and Summer Time Render could turn into one of them at the end of this journey. However, despite having some great sakuga sequences, most action scenes felt underwhelming due to the dialogues. If we trained an AI to read every battle shounen created in human history and requested it to write a new one, the story it would come up with would have the Summer Time Render's dialogues. These dialogues are the corniest, the most cheesy, and the banalest dialogues you can ever write. The plot already has enough problems—like how the time loop concept becomes a useless gimmick in the second half—and because of these AI-generated dialogues, even the good parts of the plot are left in the shadows. So, we only have a battle shounen with horrendous dialogues at the end of the day. But we still have a broad character cast. They can save this abomination, right?

  __The third major problem: Characters, all of them__

  I'll get straight to the point, all of the supporting characters in Summer Time Render are either generic stereotypes or failed attempts at writing characters with multiple layers. There isn't even a single exception for this. Mio is there only to create an unnecessary love triangle, Hizuru and Ushio are just fanservice materials, and Ryuunosuke is just a plot device. All three members of the Hishigata family could've been compelling characters, but they didn't get explored enough. Nezu was so close to being a well-written character, but his character arc got only 5 minutes of screen time which is very disappointing. Shide is just a cliché villain who wants to destroy the world. Haine is a complicated villain, but her character gets tossed out from the main focus for no reason, and Shinpei is

  __The fourth major problem: A failed time traveler protagonist__

  The last and most crucial major problem I will touch on in this review is how worthless Shinpei is as a mystery story protagonist and time traveler. Although the show heavily shifted into action in the second half, it still holds onto mystery and thriller elements, so what I will complain about in the next segment will include the whole show.

  For time travel shows, where the protagonist needs to repeat certain events over and over to find a solution to the dire situation they are in, the main traits of the protagonist should be set very early by the author. Otherwise, the audience can see most of the protagonist's actions in the later parts of the story as unnatural or plot convenience. Two of the most popular time travel anime are good examples of this—Re:Zero and Steins;Gate. In both shows, the protagonists face much stronger enemies than themselves. And the most important thing these two shows manage to do is make the viewer as desperate as the protagonist. You know the protagonist has the wits to defeat this enemy, and you try to think about what will be the protagonist's next move and how they can beat the enemy, and this thought process makes you as nervous as the protagonist. In Re:Zero, this is done by setting Subaru's character as a masterful tactician right in the first arc, so you know he will come up with an astonishing plan no matter how things become worse and worse. In Steins;Gate, this is done by making Okabe a clever problem solver in the trigger messages stories—so he can be seen as a reliable protagonist when the real action starts despite him being a kind of goofball from time to time. However, in Summertime Render, just like Shinpei, you also have no idea how he will defeat the enemy because you have no idea what Shinpei can do in this situation since you don't know Shinpei enough. And the reason for this is the show didn't care about his characterization—he is just a cardboard protagonist filled with generic tropes without any riveting character traits. So, unlike in Re:Zero and Steins;Gate, the feeling conveyed to the audience is cluelessness, not despair or anything else powerful.

  ---

  The writing in Summer Time Render sucks, but the production values are still solid. Character animations aren't the best, and there are so many still shots in some episodes. However, it can get overlooked since the show keeps its impressive photography and composition throughout the whole series for 25 episodes. Voice actings have their ups and downs—Anna Nagase's Ushio performance was one of the downs, for example. And I'm still salty about how Natsuki Hanae's voice doesn't fit Shinpei even a bit, and they probably cast him just because of his immense popularity in recent years. But Katsuyuki Konishi and Youko Hikasa's performances were enough to say the overall voice acting quality was good.

  There are still some topics I didn't touch on in this review. Such as how the show comes with a complicated question about clones, but instead of focusing on this question, it throws it out of the window after "solving" it with a couple of subpar dialogues and keeps its focus on action with AI-generated dialogues. So, unless you watched all 2-cour action anime with good production values that don't have any prequel or sequel and strive for more without caring about the writing quality, nothing but disappointment awaits you in Summer Time Render.

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• 

  LordSozin

  40/100
  The detriment to Summertime Render is how absurdly contrived it is to sit through.

  I had high hopes for Summertime Render at the beginning. A show that was seemingly different than the rest of the seasonals with its focus on suspense, murder mystery, and thriller as the foundation of the story. The first episode was so good I didn’t know I was hungry for some good old murder mystery thriller until Summertime Render hit the Spring Seasonal charts for 2022. The show in the beginning had everything set up to be at least an enticing suspense show for me to indulge in for the rest of its runtime. What could go wrong? The show demonstrated with absolute certainty that there won’t be any contrivances or complete divergence from the original gripping story beats. I was convinced that if any changes were to occur, it would only strengthen itself with good and competent writing. Truly, I was so convinced nothing could go wrong for Summertime Render that I once gave in to the idea that this show would become the dark horse of the Spring Season as some eagerly touted it was.

  Summertime Render firstly hooks its viewers and glues them to the show's mystery, setting, and tone in an enthralling fashion. The first three episodes or so do this extremely well in showing this through Shinpei Ajiro, a former resident of Hitogashima Island returning for the funeral of his deceased childhood friend: Ushio Kofune. During the funeral, however, Shinpei quickly discovered strangle marks around Ushio’s neck before the closing of the coffin of her laying body. As expected, he became suspicious and doubted that the cause of Ushio’s death was drowning as the rumor goes. This reveal was the first instance of murder mystery that Summertime Render was destined to be but never was. Substantially, the episodes that followed deliberately heightened the suspense when we see others around Shinpei began to act suspicious. They were questioning and watchful of Shinpei’s doings, giving the implication of distrust and secrets which they wish to withhold; as if they were trying to prevent Shinpei from discovering the cause of Ushio’s death.

  At this point in the show, I was on board. It was delivering everything I want in what I thought was a murder mystery thriller. But the exact breaking point was in the same episode when Mio Kofune confided to Shinpei about similar deaths and disappearances that had been occurring due to a phenomenon called “Shadow Sickness”. A phenomenon derived from the island’s folklore where these entities called Shadows kills their targets before they copy the said target and act as them. It’s then implied by Mio that Ushio’s death is somehow linked to the Shadows.

  Naturally, the plot then revolved around the Shadows and became everything to Summertime Render. The Shadows are the catalyst for its narrative and uncovering Shadow’s relation to Ushio’s death was the driving force of the plot. The introduction of the Shadows also served a second purpose: a way for the show to continue the suspense but in physical threat to Shinpei and the rest of the cast alike.

  To do this, the Shadows were presented to have assimilated into the larger human population of the island. Additionally, their known ruthless killing and copying of people naturally provided a constant sense of danger to Shinpei and the rest of the cast. Cause from then on, they have to be wary of who were and who were not Shadows. However, I think Summertime Render made the first grave error when it actively chose to reveal Ushio, the plot’s driving force at this point, to be alive in Shadow form.

  Not only was Ushio revealed to be alive and well in her shadow form, the Shadow retained Ushio’s memories and personality; meaning that she was not a threat to Shinpei. This also sets the precedent that Shadows like her, who retains the memories of the people they killed or copied, would not be a threat to the cast either. The existence of Mio’s Shadow later in the show is the proof. But what I want to get at is that the existence of Ushio’s shadow completely threw away the essence of Ushio’s character in the show. Her death was the sole driving force for the plot of Summertime Render and its characters. Bringing her back with no reasons other than to be the reminder that she’s the main love interest to Shinpei and that she can fight with her new hair powers just completely crumples the show.

  This is where Summertime Render begins its comical contrivances to justify the existence of a plot.

  With the abandonment of its original objective and frankly, the narrative and the elements that defined Summertime Render in the first place, the show has to resort to the less exciting, more predictable methods that further require contrivances as it goes. To justify the Shadows’ existence, the series first made the impression that these Shadows are invaders. Their sole purpose was to serve as a superficial threat in the series for Shinpei and others to have conflicts with. Then, through the reveal of Haine, the Shadows' reason for all the havoc, killing, and copying are so they can go to the land of “eternity”. This, however, was never expanded on because the show proceeds to abandon it as soon it was introduced and favored a more tragic manipulation route: Contriving sympathy for Haine. Haine, over the course of an episode, went from a literal feared being among the Shadows to a sweet little innocent girl who was the victim of the curse that she unwillingly obtained from a Shadow Whale that happens to lie on a coastal beach hundreds of years ago. Summertime Render then uses this to pinpoint the real evil on Haine's righthand man who turns out to be manipulating her for three hundred years for his selfish gains.

  The plot progression that Summertime Render undertook is exacerbated when all the meaningless fights, conflicts, and drama are sandwiched in between. The conflict and drama served no purpose whatsoever.

  So what’s left of Summertime Render? Nothing. For one, its sole original captivating element was the murder mystery, which the show forsook. Two, the shift in focus on the shadows and their reveal felt flat and shallow; it lacked the anticipation and tension that the series entailed in the beginning. I would say that Summertime Render could’ve easily just stuck to the path of a murder mystery without justifying the shadows' existence. It had everything and every reason to do so.

  This series isn’t even worth a second of your time given that the characters are just as flat, boring, and skimpy as the narrative in itself. Summertime Render has a large assembly of casts and each of them gets the bare minimum character archetypes and relations in the grander landscape of anime tropes. In a series like this, tying the characters to specific anime tropes is not the problem, the problem lies in how the series utilizes the trope and further develops the characters associated with it. But of course, Summertime Render chooses not to invest much into its characters but more so into an already heavily contrived narrative.

  The product of that choice is the main character whose original goal is shifted from finding out the causes of Ushio’s death to saving the Island to learning about the shadows and whatever the heck the plot needs him to be. That’s not interesting. That’s not something for me to get behind. For the entirety of its runtime, there’s not a single ounce of depth that’s naturally developed in Shinpei and the rest of the cast alike. We learn little to nothing about his relations to the Island and Ushio besides the surface-level “family” and “love” that the creator wrote it into—it goes to show how little the creator thought about this. And any “depth” that the series loves to remind people of is the poorly contrived ones like the relationship between Hizuru and her long gone but still exists in shadow form brother.

  I simply can’t understand the praises for Summertime Render no matter how I look at it. The series is full of dull moments, weak characters, lackluster directing in action sequences, and artificially created drama. The captivating element from the beginning of Summertime Render was the mystery surrounding Ushio’s death. And Shinpei, the series protagonist’s relationship with her. It’s safe to say I was utterly disappointed with how it was all played out. The shift in direction prompted the series to take on a path that’s less about its original element that hooked the viewers in the first place, but more on the side of mindnumbing exposition dumps and boring action drama.

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