An engaging mystery thriller that's deeply shounen, for better or for worse

What happens when you take the premise of Us, the plot skeleton of Erased, mix it with the powers of Re:Zero and top it off with a good helping of shounen flair? Well you get Summer Time Rendering of course. Now, I’m genuinely stuck on how I feel about this series. On one hand, the initial pull of the mystery surrounding the main character and the bizarre happenings around his hometown island are captivating, but I just can’t bring myself to say that this is a great series. Let’s get more into the details.

Just in case the initial comparisons didn’t make sense, Summer Time Rendering is mystery series where our MC returns to his hometown to attend the funeral of his childhood crush and step sister (it’s not weird I swear), only to find that the town is in grave danger. Doppelganger shadows have appeared throughout town killing their originals and taking their place. At the same time, our MC suddenly gains the power to go back in time after he dies and, using this newfound power, tries to prevent the mass murder of all the townsfolk he grew up with. Like I said earlier, the initial few chapters when the audience and MC are just learning about the gravity of the situation going on is probably the best part of the manga. It plays hard off of shock value and drops clues to events that will later occur, leaving the readers confused yet interested in what is going to happen next. Following this initial phase of the manga, it subsequently goes into more trial-and-error planning and execution through the use of the time traveling power, and ultimately ends with the finale. It’s with these phases of the manga that I have a few issues with. The first problem that plagues this manga is the fact that it suffers, strangely enough, from a very typical shounen problem: power creep. As the MC learns more and more about the situation and devises strategies to deal with them, the enemy likewise becomes stronger and stronger. It gets to a point where I personally find it hard to believe that this all came about from such a brilliant beginning. Not only that, but for a mystery series, Summer Time Rendering left me with quite a few questions by the end that I still don’t quite understand. The best example of this is probably the ending, which I actually really enjoy, but still find questionable based on things set up earlier in the series.

Moving on from the plot however, the series actually holds its own fairly well. Many of the characters are likeable, albeit pretty flat, which do a well enough job to support the main plot. Still though, I have two issues in regards to the characters in this series. The first and most important one is the fact that the main villain of the manga is hella boring (or at least one of them is). They fall into the realm of “being evil for the sake of being evil”. There is no genuine rational for their actions beyond that, which I think really hurts the story. Aside from that, the other issue I had is the fact that Summer Time Rendering doesn’t try to go deeper into the one really interesting character conflict within the story, that of the two sisters. With the whole story being about shadows being monsters and taking over the place of their originals, the idea that one sister lives in the other’s shadow is a point that is brilliantly raised. I think if they explored it more and gave more tension then they could have really had something good on their hands, yet all they do is bring up the fact and drop it at that. It’s honestly pretty disappointing.

So at this point it sounds like I really dislike the series, but I somehow I don’t. And I think the reason for that is because of the pacing. There is generally little to no lag time between story beats which keeps the flow of the story strong. Every point leads to later points, and all ideas set up are delivered upon later. This makes for an enjoyable reading experience that is really satisfying for a binge reader such as myself. So while the story may have its flaws, it makes up for it by being straight up fun to read.

To bring a few more comparisons into this review, Summer Time Rendering feels like a more shounen version of Erased or Shiki, which I personally found to be a great benefit since those two (especially Shiki) felt overly heavy to read. Yes this series has its flaws, some of which can be pretty bad, but I found it enjoyable despite them. So if you’re in the mood for a lighter yet still interesting mystery manga, then I’d suggest you go check this one out.