Uh, okay, yes, I kinda overdid it there with the backgrounder.
Look, Summer Time Rendering is a 2022 anime by industry juggernauts and it whips ass. It’s so good, it’s so shockingly good, it’s so good that I find myself wondering about how to even approach the ways it’s good, that I am momentarily paralysed. But it’s also an anime, and that means that you have to do some kind of useful info for your audience about the propensity and commonality of what we, these days, summarise as anime bullshit.
And like it’s not immune.
What I think is remarkable about Summer Time Rendering as a show as a whole is that there’s tension and mystery and conflict and deeply thoughtful characterisation down to the individual pronouns people use to address one another, which interrupts this with moments of horniness that surprise me. Like, oh, Summer Time Rendering, you had me so enraptured with this plot point I forgot that you occasionally show me a character’s underwear, feet, or take a pointed stare shot at an immense pair of breasts. I forgot that, despite you doing that four minutes ago.
Which means that if I’m going to explain this series to you, I first need to offer you a set of warnings. First up, there’s Spoiler Warning, because I’m going to talk about things in Summer Time Rendering like the plot and the characters. I don’t intend to tell you much about the ending, but the process might feel less fun if you don’t explore it at the same rate the show offers. Then there’s the Trigger Warning, because holy nelly this series has a lot of stuff about suicidal behaviour. A character heroically kills themselves! Multiple times! There’s also some squicky stuff around child abuse, parental neglect, and supernaturally themed creepy pregnancy stuff. Then, on top of all that, content warning, this series is full of blood and gore and horror and identity theft and family dissolution and uh, guns, there’s a lot of gun, and eye damage, drowning, yeah there’s some of that too, and… environmental horror? I guess? As well?
Okay, you’re braced for impact?