Beginning is quite simple Ushio, childhood friend of our protagonist Shinpei dies, leading him to return home for her funeral. It turns out that Ushio's death wasn't as simple as he thought and we have on our hands a compelling supernatural mystery. Anime quickly establishes that our protagonist can loop in time when he dies, which is a hook of the story. The concept of this power combined with the mystery and supernatural enemies of Shinpei is the strongest point of Summer Time. What's more it expands and twists every one of those aspects. Shinpei's power gets fleshed out, expanded and given rules that make it interesting. Plot is full of surprising reveals and fun twists. Enemies aren't only scary looking and strong, but they are also smart. Show quickly turns into information warfare with both sides fighting for information about the other and utilizing it to their advantage. Everyone is rational, but not omnipotent. They make believable mistakes from time to time. Most importantly of all decisions have consequences.
This clever approach from characters extends to action. Powers are used creatively and everyone uses what they can to win. Anime establishes rules and ideas for the powers and sticks to them in a fight making them more interesting. With smart, powerful opponents victories for the good guys are satisfying, which may be surprising. How are the writers keeping fights engaging with Shinpei's ability to time loop? By creating good limitations and rules for it, thanks to that failure in combat results with negative consequences that matter.
Animation for this show is chaotic. Sometimes you really get that low budget feel, but from time to time Summertime will surprise you with an amazing sequence that will leave you on the edge of your seat. A lot of effort went into character expressions. Intense faces in tense moments and a display of anger or anguish in dramatic moments. This additional touch is adding a lot to the characters when it matters.
Now to the characters. While this story may seem small in scale at the beginning the cast of characters is surprisingly big and diverse. Many colourful personalities, engaging figures and badasses make it a joy to follow their journey. In terms of character growth most of it we see in the rise of combat abilities or relationship progress. You won't see someone changing in a major way or overcome their character flaws in a big way which is a shame. Voice acting is really good and while we talk about audio ost was also pretty good. As I mentioned before villains are smart, they are also cool, strong and so on, but unfortunately they lack in complexity. One antagonist is a child and the other might as well be one with the childish motivations he has.
Now to the bigger problems. Time loops mean that this anime meddles with time travel and makes time paradoxes along the way. Even worse, at the end it undermines some of the decisions and consequences of the story. If you hate time travel like I do it will be a big problem.
Other then plot conveniences which show up from time to time, the other major issue lies in the last episodes. To avoid spoilers let's say that I don't like the weird location of the finale and I don't think concept behind it is a good idea. Final fight is super slow and has to constantly explain why/what is happening (plus animation is mid).
To sum it up, watch Summertime Render for the journey, it is worth it and may be good enough for you to not mind its conclusion which doesn't live up to the hype.
