Reviews

Summertime Render hooked me in because of the mystery angle, and kept me there as that premise developed further in the first third of the anime. And the mechanic that Shinpei is able to leverage, while certainly not unique, is always a fun one to imagine and play with.

However, as the anime progresses, the level of convolution to the lore which explains this mechanic and related phenomena ends up being off the charts. I felt extremely bogged down by this in the latter third of the anime and couldn't enjoy the story. Maybe that's because the story in the latter third ends up being fantastical to the point of stupidity. Complexity in order to cover for a lackluster story always leaves me feeling angry and confused, and that was definitely the case here with Summertime Render.

Unfortunate given that the other things that make for a good anime - character development, setting, animation, voice acting - were pretty much all there.

Equally perplexing is how this anime has such a high rating on MyAnimeList right now.