Ayumu Watanabe’s “SUMMER TIME RENDERING”
Review by Dennis D. McDonald
This unique 25 episode Japanese anime series, which I watched in spoken Japanese with English subtitles, successfully combines time travel, a haunted island with a complex supernatural backstory, superb animation, great music, and distinct and dramatically engaging characters. Frequent action sequences are well choreographed and exciting.
The story is difficult to summarize. A young man returns home to his offshore-island small-town birthplace after spending two years in Tokyo. He returns to attend the funeral of a childhood friend and sweetheart. He gradually learns that the island is home to an ancient race of beings that can create duplicates of living humans and their memories. Through successive “shadowings” these duplicates can exist beyond the lifespan of the original.
Our young hero learns all this as he himself experiences time looping and “shadowing.” He returns to his arrival on the island whenever he dies, each time with memories of previous visits intact. With this growing knowledge he works with friends to discover the source of the “shadows“ that are gradually taking over the island and threatenimg to destroy life – – and time itself – – as we know it.
The anime skillfully combines a range of concepts including time looping, telekinesis, mind reading, multiple personalities, ancient secrets gradually revealed, a supreme bad guy bent on destruction and death, and frequent references to common elements in Japanese anime. These include the summer sound of buzzing cicadas, frequent food and cooking images, and repeated attendance in traditional clothing by the island’s people at an annual summer outdoor festival that ends with spectacular fireworks.
Somehow the anime producers keep all these themes organized and under control. With each group episode we learn more about the nature of the evil that threatens the island’s people and how the main characters repeated looping in time are trying to combat it.
I can imagine a giant whiteboard the producers might have maintained with episodes listed along the top from 1 through 25 and story elements (characters, powers, state of the duplication, key events, etc.) down the side divided into categories such as “fixed“ and “evolving.“ Then lines and arrows are drawn around and between events as they progress from left to right with scrupulous attention given to consistency and logic of how story elements interact. It’s simultaneously clever and entertaining.
There’s very little fan service in the series though the occasional “boob” reference, common in Japanese anime, might puzzle sone viewers as being weirdly juvenile. Also, the main female character spends her entire time in the series in a one-piece bathing suit which makes sense from a logical story perspective but will seem odd to some.
All told, this is one impressive anime series!
Review copyright 2023 by Dennis D. McDonald
