The first half of Summer Time Renders ends in a brutal fashion after the group make their way to meet with Haine and learn the truth that Tokiko and the Hishigata family kept from everyone. With the episode’s title, I knew it would end horribly but it may not totally have been a loss for the group. Yes, all of their friends and family were killed right in front of them but they managed to learn important pieces of information for the next time loop. Also, Shinpei won’t be alone in this anymore.
Here I thought they would have to worry about preserving Ushio’s corpse but it was never cremated in the first place. Along with now knowing that Sou’s father used a double for the cremation, we find out that Haine (Hiruko) has been using Shiori’s body as a substitute as her own body is weak. Now we understand how she was able to show up in Ushio’s flashback…more or less. Seeing as how significant Shiori has been in the show so far, I guess it shouldn’t come as a big surprise that she’s been Haine this whole time. I still don’t understand how she was able to escape after being pinned down though. But once the large Shadow with four arms comes in carrying Mio, Tokiko and the others learn the truth of what will happen at the festival and just like how we saw Tokiko at that time, she was shocked.
Tokiko has been played the whole time and it just comes as a big “duh”. But learning her family situation was pretty surprising. I may not like Tokiko at the moment, but she’s certainly have had to be part of something terrible while pretending to be a normal person to everyone else. She doesn’t seem to have any remorse for helping Haine and the Shadows, showing no emotion for Ushio’s death which is pretty cold. The Hishigata family has been serving the Shadows for a very long time it seems, and Tokiko had been chosen to take on this role as the “caregiver” I guess you could call it for Haine and the rest of the Shadows. And the care she provides is just food, and their food being dead bodies. Tokiko made it sound like they kill people for them but she said that she specifically gives them the corpses of the people that die from sickness, etc. Still, it’s awful what they’re doing. Tokiko drops a huge bomb on everyone and Sou, that their mother isn’t alive because she was cured of her disease. But that she was copied and that their mother is in fact a Shadow, and if Haine is killed then they would lose their mother. For their mother to be a Shadow this entire time is shocking, and Tokiko’s motive to continue assisting Haine is crystal clear. Until the plan for everyone to die at the festival is revealed and her world comes crashing down. Considering how much she seems to love Mio, making a condition to leave Mio alone in all this, at least she died before she could see Mio get brutally killed. But ugh what an awful situation. Tokiko comes off as very unlikeable here but I also can’t help but feel terrible for her, considering she has to shoulder all of this and she has her mother’s life on the line. And of course I feel awful for Sou as he didn’t know about any of this. And no matter what, with Haine and the Shadows’ plan, none of it will matter.
I was getting really worried when Shinpei’s eye had been gouged out. We were able to learn the true ability of Shinpei’s time travel/time reset, being that any world he observes into reality and is able to observe other timelines in a different plane, but he hasn’t mastered this power yet. He’s only able to use it when he dies so he can reset. So instead of resetting, it’s more like Shinpei is just going into a different timeline and the other timelines he leaves behind are still intact. And I’m guessing because he can’t control the power he also can’t control at what moment in the timeline he wants to respawn so to speak. And what’s more, even though it does seem to be Haine’s power she can’t get it back. After the eye was gouged out, it simply returned back to Shinpei. Now what the heck could that mean.
Lots more surprises like that as Ushio’s ability may be abnormal as well in that she’s a lot stronger than other Shadows, and she was able to fend off against Haine and use her power against her. Haine called her the “egg” and again I’m not sure what all of this means, but the fact that Shinpei and Ushio can do all these amazing things is pretty important. And now she’s able to time travel with Shinpei as well, as he had taken her with him. Now this makes me wonder, will we have double the Shadow Ushio in this timeline? And I’m a little concerned as now Shinpei jumped quite a bit forward in the timeline. His last spawn was walking up the hill with Mio before the funeral, but now he spawned in front of Hizuru way after the funeral. At least it makes the explanation a lot easier now, but this was a really big jump. Sure Shinpei knows a lot more now, but each time reset is a big risk because of this.
We don’t know the complete truth just yet, but we know what’s happening underground and in the background and who is responsible. Shinpei has Ushio with him now and they both have A LOT of information on their side, but the question is, how will they take advantage of it? They know a lot but the scale of them against the Shadows is so large that the task to stop everything is daunting and sort of seems impossible. Still, it’ll be interesting to see how the story will go now that we have so much info.
