I, for one, welcome our Glitch Counterparts from a Parallel Universe: Summer Time Render Manga Impressions
Summer Time Render is a manga mixing mystery, suspense, cosmic horror, and supernatural elements. It takes place on the fictional island of Hitogashima, possibly based on one of the Tomogashima cluster islands in the Seto Inland Sea, situated near the coast of Wakayama city, capital of the prefecture that shares its name. Summer Time Render is conceptually similar to Steins Gate, Erased, Re: Zero, and Higurashi — When The Cicadas Cry.
WARNING: SIGNIFICANT SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST FEW EPISODES OF THE SPRING 2022 ANIME FOLLOW
The story follows Shinpei Ajiro, a young man whose parents died when he was little. He moved in with his childhood best friends, the Kufone sisters, and later decided to live alone in Tokyo. The story begins when Shinpei returns to his hometown on Hitogashima Island to attend the elder sister Ushio Kufone’s funeral.
Our first impression is of a glitch-filled dream where Shinpei reunites with Ushio in a boat. She asks him to save her younger sister Mio. This moment occurs while he is traveling to the island, establishing an interactive dynamic with the reader by asking the question: how can Shinpei communicate with Ushio if she’s dead? So is established the first mystery, amongst other dead ends and red herrings, engaging the reader’s curiosity in unravelling the story’s multiple secrets.
Dream-Ushio is our first contact with the element of cosmic dread, the primal human fear of the unknown and unknowable. This happens for a second time after Shinpei dies when a malevolent being disguised as Mio shoots him down. He experiences a vision of Ushio scolding him for not being careful, before returning to the boat he used to arrive on the island. This can be interpreted as a “game over screen” inside a videogame after the main character loses a life, though it’s closer in mechanics to the guidance provided by Hanyu to Rika in When the Cicadas Cry. Rika and Shinpei are both protagonists faced with with inexplicable phenomena beyond their comprehension, events whose scope extend beyond the narrow field of human affairs and into cosmic significance.
These events initiate a cycle that imprisons Shinpei within a Sisyphean struggle where he repeatedly dies and resurrects in a variety of situations, desperate to honor Ushio’s last request — although saving Mio might require him to suffer endlessly before advancing, let alone succeeding, in his task. It’s a metaphor representing the power of the human will . Shinpei must prove he has the endurance to complete his objective, because it is meaningful to him. It’s similar to the experience of Bill Murray’s character in the movie Groundhog Day, where he relives the same day many times over until he finds redemption by distancing himself from his selfishness to break his cycle.
The plot thickens and the focus shifts from Shinpei’s grieving process to a murder mystery when Shinpei’s friend Sou Hishigata informs him that during the autopsy, forensic experts found bruises around Ushio’s neck, implying someone strangled her and she did not drown after saving local little girl Shiori Kobayakawa. The tone darkens further when Mio reveals she saw a girl that looked exactly like Ushio — a doppelganger — three days before she passed away, adding a supernatural twist.
This foreshadows another element of cosmic horror, the presence of a non-human influence on humanity, perceived as an urban legend about a fictional disease that gives hallucinations to the carriers where they see copies of themselves, created through camera flashes, called “shadows”. Particularly, the usage of the concept of the shadow as a metaphor is fascinating because it works in other ways to expose various cosmic horror elements.
The paranormal origin of said shadows seems to be a bewildering mix of religion, superstition, fate, and the flawed, poorly-evolved logical cognition of the island’s inhabitants. The shadows are portrayed as far beyond normal human conception. This only increases the reader’s sense of unease — even an exorcism at Hiruko Sama Shrine is no flawless guarantee to cure the sickness, or the shadow, that is actively trying to kill its carrier.
Summer Time Render works as a reference to the classic horror film “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” because each shadow pursues a target, copies its appearance, kills and disposes of the body, replacing that person by creating a new shadow, and repeats the cycle until every island inhabitant is a shadow. However, while Bodysnatchers uses this element to reflect the fear of losing individuality during the Cold War, Summer Time Rendering uses it to uncover an appalling truth about humanity’s place in the vast, comfortless universe: as sacrificial offerings to fulfill the shadows’ main objective: preparation for the arrival of their mother.
The reader can distinguish shadows from humans because the author uses different techniques such as making shadows seem pixelated, or light reflections manifesting glitches and static in their bodies. This is another videogame reference, or perhaps a suggestion that this is an invasion of creatures from an alternate timeline.
The shadows are proven to be worthy foes that challenge Shinpei by exercising strategic thinking, using their victims’ memories to blend in, and analyzing Shinpei’s actions to generate specific countermeasures against his every action. This leaves Shinpei no plot armor and conjures a real sense of threat or endangerment, which is the goal of every good horror.
Shadows obtain knowledge from Shinpei by absorbing his memories, and are capable of updating it in other encounters where he dies and is resurrected. This correlates to Shinpei’s ability to remember the information he obtains about his enemies every time he resurrects. Shinpei must be careful, because every piece of forbidden and dangerous knowledge he learns, every piece of new scientific knowledge, comes with a risk to him and the people around him — at some point it backfires, and his enemies know everything he does.
The author limits the scope of Shinpei’s ability to change the sequence of events. He can never prevent events set in stone in every loop — like Ushio’s death, or the disappearance of the Kobayakawa family. These limits force Shinpei to acknowledge the bleakness of his world and to make painful choices, setting him apart from the ideal yet unrealistic goal of saving everyone like as Rika Furude in When The Cicadas Cry or Subaru Natsuki in Re:Zero.
The number of times Shinpei can revive is limited, as his save point moves forward in time with each loop. This allows the conflict to develop in a way where it’s not clear which side will win. It maintains the reader’s interest in watching the anthropocentric view of existence collide against the indifference to hopes, desires, and struggles of human individuals and groups only a silent, pessimistic, and nihilistic universe provides. It obliges Shinpei to accept the lack of meaning of life itself, or to destroy the values that established and maintain the status quo, to create something new and therefore provide significance to human existence as a whole.
Therefore, my suggestion is to grab some snacks and read all the chapters until the end. It is a work for fans of mysteries, suspense, cosmic horror, and supernatural elements. I even highly suggest you continue the journey by checking out the anime produced by OML, the same studio responsible for Odd Taxi, as soon as it escapes from Disney+ prison.
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