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A review by philibrarian
Summertime Rendering Volume 1 by Yasuki Tanaka
5.0
This must be the summer of weird books, because this one just goes right off the deep end from the first chapter. The basic plot is that a college student, Shinpei Ajiro, returns to his rural island hometown during the summer after a close friend of his passes away. There are doppelgangers of people in town appearing and killing off their originals in order to take their place, and Shinpei is able to restart his time on the island whenever he is killed. This lead to him trying to make it through the same timeframe on the island in order to keep people from passing away. Throughout this volume he fails multiple times in his battle against the shadows. In order to keep my ideas straight for this, I'm going to review what is known so far.
Shinpei is able to relive the same day over and over again. After the first one his eye ends up changing color. This is the eye of Mother, the seeming leader of the shadows. Shinpei's favorite author is also on the island and seems to be aware of the mystery going on. She had written a book that seems to follow the same plot as the story we are following, could this be coincidence?
The major goal of the shadows is to bring about the return of mother by killing off everyone on the island and covering it in darkness. When they make a copy of someone they flash as though taking a picture. They also leave behind a shadow residue. Ushioh, the possible shadow of Ushio, doesn't remember anything besides her feelings for Shinpei and is unconvinced that she is a shadow. Shadows only get the memory information up to the point in time when the person they copy is. So if they don't kill their copied person, then it's possible they can be discerned by testing knowledge of things past the point of copy. Pass phrases might not work though because if they copy someone after the phrase is made, they will know it.
Mio's shadow already exists at the starting point of the story, along with Shiori Kobayakawa's. The sheriff is the seeming next target for the starting point as well. I do wonder about what the Kobayakawa doppelganger family gets up to after they go disappearing the day after the wedding. At the moment things are still pretty unclear but I look forward to seeing where the story goes and trying to get to the bottom of the mystery.
Shinpei is able to relive the same day over and over again. After the first one his eye ends up changing color. This is the eye of Mother, the seeming leader of the shadows. Shinpei's favorite author is also on the island and seems to be aware of the mystery going on. She had written a book that seems to follow the same plot as the story we are following, could this be coincidence?
The major goal of the shadows is to bring about the return of mother by killing off everyone on the island and covering it in darkness. When they make a copy of someone they flash as though taking a picture. They also leave behind a shadow residue. Ushioh, the possible shadow of Ushio, doesn't remember anything besides her feelings for Shinpei and is unconvinced that she is a shadow. Shadows only get the memory information up to the point in time when the person they copy is. So if they don't kill their copied person, then it's possible they can be discerned by testing knowledge of things past the point of copy. Pass phrases might not work though because if they copy someone after the phrase is made, they will know it.
Mio's shadow already exists at the starting point of the story, along with Shiori Kobayakawa's. The sheriff is the seeming next target for the starting point as well. I do wonder about what the Kobayakawa doppelganger family gets up to after they go disappearing the day after the wedding. At the moment things are still pretty unclear but I look forward to seeing where the story goes and trying to get to the bottom of the mystery.