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 had 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 had 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. She 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 has been 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 has been 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.
