Summer Time Rendering (Volume 2) – Orbital Resonance / Bitter Enemies

After the tragedy at the Summer Festival, Shinpei finds himself back on July 22nd, although something has changed. Regardless, he needs to find Ryunosuke Nagumo. She may hold the key to stopping the Shadows.

Summer Time Rendering (Volume 2) – Orbital Resonance / Bitter Enemies

What happened?

When Shinpei returned, it was later than the time before which was also later than the first time. It would appear that he can only rewind time a set amount. That means he’ll need to stop the Shadows before his restart time moves beyond the beginning of the Summer Festival. This time, however, he knows that he needs to find the woman he met on the boat who he also saw killed at the hands of the Shadow Mio. But what is her story?

Hizuru Minakata is a famous author, who publishes under the pen name Ryunosuke Nagumo. However, she is also from the island and is only returning because of a strange and garbled message that appeared on her phone. She left the island after he family died. They said it was an accident, but she knows better. After visiting Ushio’s funeral by chance, she saves Ushio’s father from his Shadow by smashing its head in with a sledgehammer.

Shinpei manages to find Hizuru and amazingly convinces her that he can help. She manages to put together the idea that he must be a time traveller as she would never have given him her real name. That must have been her brother. Shinpei helps Hizuru kill a group of Shadows that took the place of the family of the girl Ushio saved… the one that killed her. However, Ushio also came back with Shinpei this time and that makes it impossible for Shinpei and Hizuru to continue to work together.

Summer Time Rendering Volume 2 Shadow Ushio Kofune fighting Shadow Mio Kofune

What did you think?

Oh my god! This series is incredible. I love a good time travel mystery and this one has everything. Every character in this story is a mystery and no doubt has something to hide. It’s all completely bonkers too. We saw a glimpse of how everyone was somehow connected to the Shadows at the end of the first book and this one gave us more. I love the idea that Nezu is holding a Shadow at his place and is unable to deal with it.

Then, we have Hizuru/Ryunosuke which is utterly bonkers in its own right, but also fascinating. I can’t wait to get to the bottom of her story too. The revelation that Tokiko is involved further adds to the drama. Then we have the Shadow of Ushio who is clearly up to something too, especially as the book ended with Ushio and Shadow Ushio making a video together on her phone that she gave to the cop to give to Shinpei should something happen to her.

Of course, by my understanding of time travel and what we’ve seen so far, could there be two Shadow Ushios in this loop? If one from the future came back with Shinpei, will he not find another one at the point he found the first one too? Wait, what if the Shadow Ushio is actually a copy of the original Shadow Ushio and the real one is still alive somewhere? This could get wonderfully complicated. I should also mention that I am reading the hardback editions which bundle the regular-length books into six volumes. The first two each included two regular-length volumes, so I’ve technically read four so far.