Alright look I know I don’t have much time to do this because we’re going to get another reset so let’s just be as quick as possible here with this. Imagine me hastily bursting into the shot as I sweep everything I had planned to put on the blog today off the desk with an almighty HUNGH! and slapping my palms hard onto the table while I shout HOLY HELL EVERYONE I JUST FINISHED SUMMER TIME RENDERING AND NOW THAT’S YOUR PROBLEM.
Don’t worry I’m not about to just repeat an article on you to represent a time loop, ha ha.
It’s an amazing show. I love it. I love the story setting, I love the choices in making it this kind of time loop horror. I love these characters. I care about them, I want them to do well, I want them to be happy, when they suffer I want to see their lives improve and when they reach out for one another I want, want, want them to be able to catch each other. I love Ushio, both Ushio, and their aggressive, proud, but clever approach to therapeutic, cathartic violence and when it’s the right thing to do. I love Shinpei trying to work out the best way to fix things and trying to be clever and sensible and then the moment we see him break and he realises there’s an actual failure, a thing he can’t undo, a broken mirror he can’t unbreak. I love the gory, visceral unreality of the animation that it can use to represent the way shadows die. I love Haine, I love her chance to get a life she wants rather than the horror she was subjected to.
I just love this show so much and right now, twenty four hours after finishing it, I am bubbling with a need to find the right way to tell you about it. I can’t. Obviously, I can’t, that’s silly. But I can try, I can try to grab your hands and hold them and vibrate as I think of a thousand moments from the twenty-five episodes of story and open my mouth and nothing but dull buzzing comes out because it’s all so connected.
Summer Time Rendering is a time-loop horror anime that so elevated the form that after I was done watching it, I had a genuine and wholehearted moment of wiping my eyes and deciding I needed to leave anime in its genre alone for a while because they would all look so bad by comparison.