Episode 24 Summer Time Render ends with Hizuru alive confirming another timeline. But why is Shinpei still on the train back to Hitogashima.
Episode 24 Summer Time Render ends with Hizuru alive confirming another timeline. But why is Shinpei still on the train back to Hitogashima.
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I really feel Summer Time Render would have been a huge hit in the West if Disney hadn’t ruined it. The series is also being a huge hit in Japan and it’s the perfect material to continue. It has everything you need to click to see, a really smart and engaging story at the hands of one of the famous directors in the anime world.
There is an irresistible audacity in the way Watanabe Ayumu approaches the original material, which helps keep the dark and heavy theme from becoming too bleak or desperate without feeling diminished.
The conversation between Shinpei and Ryuunosuke is a perfect example, a hilarious yet poignant illustration of how the three years between 14 and 17 years old feel for boys and of their distinct personalities. Theoretically, it doesn’t have to be right in the middle of the heaviest plot, but it does add a lot of emotional context. The balance between what is “necessary” and what connects with an audience is the difference between a good story and a great story.
We’ve heard Ushio referred to as “The Egg” before. The eye still in her possession in this timeline seems to be the key to Shide’s plan to destroy the world. We finally pass through the “other side”, where Haine has reached and that is Tokoyo. In the kanji, it translates as “eternal night” and in the context of episode 23 Summer Time Render, it’s the land of the dead. There are implications there for what the darkness could actually be, but in practical terms what matters now is where the final battle between Shide and the Shinpei team will take place.
Ah! It finally comes when Shinpei officially tells Ushio that he loves her, which pretty much eliminates the possibility of him pursuing any purpose that makes her disappear along with a threat to humanity. Even following her and Shide to Tokoyo was a confession, for in doing so, Shinpei believed he would never be able to return. Shide chased away the enemies that followed him, knowing they had no choice but to do so. It turns out that there is a way to go back, as Shide intends to only do it once he gains the eyes back into his possession and is able to carry out the grand scheme.
Tokoyo is beautifully realized by Watanabe and his team, the aesthetic resembling a surrealist painting with Van Gogh’s brushstrokes. It was a strange and foreboding scene. Its existence seemed to be directly connected to Hiruko’s memories. She has reverted to her infant form and is essentially an extra for Shide at this point, but her Haine half has split off, with her original human personality. Haine allied herself with Team Shinpei.
There were good reasons why Shide wanted to fight this battle here, at least in Tokoyo, Shinpei could no longer loop jump. That’s because the land of dead time is still standing there, which has an important impact on Ryuu’s two-second preview being disabled as well. Shide accesses Hiruko’s memories and re-enacts an air raid from World War II, with a squadron of carpet-bombing B-29s incinerating enemies and robbing their eyes back. This is a scary and raw memory for the Japanese, but I think that’s exactly the plus point of episode 23 Summer Time Render.
This is definitely the beginning of the final battle, spanning the dimensions and going back to the past. Ushio apparently ate a part of her real body, giving it a healing ability that surprised Shide.
Quite confused by what happened at the end of episode 24 Summer Timer Render. But we’ll have the tar answer soon. For me, the big positive here is that the big climax happens in the penultimate episode, not the last. All of that requires us to pay attention to Shide. I’ve seen some interesting things about Shide’s dynamics in certain loops. He is completely dominated by ego. He has survived for 326 years by switching bodies, hoping to live forever and see the end of all things. When he realized that it wouldn’t be possible thanks to Hiruko, he decided to move to the end of this life so he could see it with his own eyes. The reality is that if you can’t live by yourself, no one else can. That’s how a villain is built.
Shide looks completely overpowered in this final matchup against Shinpei, but basically there are still two wild cards left for the good guys. First, Shinpei’s idea for Ryuunosuke to take over Shide’s dark armor and stop him from moving. A very good idea, no wonder Hizuru used it once. Ushio’s other idea was to transform himself into a shotgun so he could shoot Shide’s body and hack it away. The point is that it took her two minutes to do it, and two minutes with this battle going on could last a century.
Shinpei willingly let Ryuunosuke work his butt off with his body, reasoning that there was no reason to be shy about anything at this point. The plan for the armor worked, but only for a moment because Shide pushed Ryuunosuke away and nailed him to the ground. It looks like the game will be over since there’s no way Shinpei can reach the gun before Shide even though two minutes have passed, but (I’m not sure exactly how it works) Haine seems to be able to” jump” the gun into Shinpei’s hand.
What happens next seems pretty straightforward, Ushio’s plan works, and once inside the Shide, she hacks him, killing his original body. But after that, everything became blurry, confusing for me… It seems, Hiruko sent Shinpei, Haine, Ryuunosuke and Ushio back to 1732. Hiruko’s plan was to destroy her original body. (in whales) and thus erasing history leads to the timeline we’ve known and watched for so long.
Hiruko’s original act of removing the body caused Haine, Ushio, and Ryuunosuke’s shadows to disappear. But before she disappears, Ushio goes back to 2018 and records his memories with Shinpei on the ferry. Shinpei wakes up in the middle of Hizuru’s twin mountains, as he did in the first several episodes.
Even if we prescribe all that, there still needs to be some explanation, at least how Ushio was able to do it in the first place. Hizuru is alive confirming this is another timeline. But if Hizuru is still alive, it’s probably because the whole dark thing never happened. In theory, that means Ushio and Ryuunosuke, the others, even Nezu’s wife and Shinpei’s parents. And if Ushio is still alive for that reason, why would Shinpei make the trip back to Hitogashima? And why does he still have a strange eye?
I really don’t know how much of that will actually be resolved next week and how we’ll accept it. I think this makes sense because in general, Summer Time Render after 24 episodes did a great job of putting the logic together. But even if we don’t get the full reveal, I’m glad that the ending seems to be mostly about the characters getting on with their lives, because that should happen in a series like like this. So far, Summer Time Render hasn’t made many mistakes, so I fully expect the final episode to be a hit.
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