Summer Time Rendering (Volume 1) – Drifting Ashore / Vortex

Shinpei returns home to attend the funeral of his childhood friend. She died saving a child from drowning, however, there was something suspicious about it. Will Shinpei get to the bottom of this mystery or die trying?

Summer Time Rendering (Volume 1) – Drifting Ashore / Vortex

What happened?

On the ferry to his home island, Shinpei had a bizarre dream in which he saw Ushio. She told him to look after Mio, her sister. Well, they were practically his sisters too since they took him in when his parents died. That just made things harder. Shinpei woke from his dream startled and fell face-first into a woman’s chest. Later, Mio welcomed Shinpei at the docks, well more like in the docks when her brakes failed on her bicycle and she rode into the sea.

They went back to her parent’s house and then on to the funeral. There, Shinpei met his old friend Sou who was there when Ushio died. He believed that something strange happened since Ushio had strange bruises on her neck. Then, the next morning, they discovered that the family of the girl that Ushio saved mysteriously vanished overnight. That was when Mio told Shinpei about the Shadows. He didn’t believe in boogiemen, but he could tell that Mio was spooked. They went to see the priest at the temple but ran into Shiori. They tried to follow but found the woman from the ferry sitting in the forest, blood oozing from a wound.

There was another shot and she died. Then, a second Mio appeared and took the first Mio hostage. She killed the original Mio and then shot Shinpei. He woke from another dream back on the ferry. It was as if the day hadn’t happened. Mio greeted him at the dock and promptly fell into the sea. What was going on?

Summer Time Rendering Volume 1 Shinpei Ajiro arrives home again

What did you think?

This feels like a mash-up of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Re:Zero − Starting Life in Another World, and YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love at the Bound of This World which already has me very excited. Throw in the sheer terror of what happened in this book and I am sold. So, this volume is really two volumes as it was released in a six-volume hardback set and I was able to get all of them from my library. This is going to be a tough series to review because I don’t really want to give too much away, but at the same time, I know I’m going to need to talk about it. Whatever, let’s do it.

So, this volume ended with a monster of a scene where the shadows were killing just about everyone in an attempt to revive someone they called Mother. Then, Shinpei told Hizuru to kill him so that he could start the day again. That was pretty crazy, however, we then saw a number of the older residents of the island and they all seemed to have some connection to the shadows. A rival group maybe? However, the one thing that really stands out to me is Ushio and Mio. They are sisters and yet they couldn’t look more different from one another.

Now, that can happen in the real world, but in a story, it seems like a detail that needs to be noticed. Then, we have Shinpei’s parents dying. The three of them are clearly connected to the Shadows somehow. I am so excited about the potential of this story. So excited that I will watch the anime alongside it and thoroughly absorb everything I can. This is going to be an amazing story, I can already feel it.