The Tatami Galaxy is a story about a college freshman who wishes to lead a wonderful, rose-colored college life. Unfortunately, one thing led to another and now, years later, he finds himself single without any chance to get a girlfriend, he has nobody that he can call a friend. He basically has no social life whatsoever.

As if listening to his desperate plea for a precious second chance, the universe reverses the time back to when he was just a freshman, and now, his new life begins. What he doesn’t realize, however, is the fact that simply doing things differently doesn’t mean he can finally attain the glamorous life of his dream.

Both Summer Time Rendering and Tatami Galaxy play around with the concept of rolling back the time in order to make different decisions that can alter the future. However, unlike Summer Time Rendering, there’s no murder mystery here. The Tatami Galaxy is a purely exciting, heartwarming, and inspiring coming-of-age story.

Higurashi is actually a massive franchise that includes novels, anime, manga, and even games with the same name. The latest anime within this franchise was aired back in 2021. So this franchise is still very much alive and well. The one that we will talk about, however, is the original, and arguably the best in the series, the 2006 Higurashi no Naku Koro ni.

Higurashi revolves around a group of friends in a remote town who are looking for the truth regarding the mysterious death of numerous people over the past few years. Unfortunately, as they get closer to the truth, it is their lives that finally become the target of the killings. When it’s all over and everybody dies, time will reset and we get to see them making different decisions and taking different approaches. Each with an equally grim conclusion.

Higurashi tells an even more vivid and gruesome murder story than Summer Time Rendering, but the two of them still revolve around the characters trying their best to find the truth behind the mysteries. That being said, the way Higurashi utilizes the time traveling aspect of the story is actually more similar to Tatami Galaxy, rather than the eternal time loop of Summer Time Rendering.

Steins;Gate is a story about a self-proclaimed mad scientist, Rintaro Okabe, who accidentally creates a portable time machine. However, unlike fancy time machines from other sci-fi stories, what Rintaro has created has a relatively modest capability. The machine simply allowed him to send a text message or email to the past.

Just like any other man of science, Rintaro is excited to find out about the full extent of his creation, so he conducted numerous experiments. Sending a winning lottery number to the past, changing the gender of one of his friends, preventing the death of a loved one, he tries everything. Each time changing the fabric of reality. After a while, he finally learns about the terrifying cost of altering the course of time.

Similar to Summer Time Rendering, there are also attempts to solve a murder case and experimentation on time traveling ability in Steins;Gate. What makes it different from Summer Time Rendering, however, is its focus on the bigger question. Is mankind allowed to wield the ability to play around with time even though they don’t even understand the scope of their actions and what is actually at stake?

The main character of Tokyo Revengers, Takemichi Hanagaki, accidentally travels back in time to when he was still a middle schooler. Takemichi utilizes this chance to save the people that he cares about that he knows would be gone in the future due to the infamous Tokyo Manji Gang. However, he soon learns that any kind of alteration that he made in the past will affect the life of lots of people in ways that he never thought about before.

Similar to Summer Time Rendering, there’s also a murder mystery and investigative aspect to the story of Tokyo Revengers. However, unlike Summer Time Rendering which put a heavy emphasis on its time loop, the meat of the story in Tokyo Revengers is not the time travel, but rather the dangerous, enticing, and violent life of the youth gangs.

Similar to Summer Time Rendering, Erased also became a massive hit for mystery fans back when it was aired in 2016. The story of a man who has the ability to go back 18 years into the past in order to prevent the death of his mother and find out the real culprit behind the devastating death of his classmate was an instant cult classic.

Both Summer Time Rendering and Erased evoked the same sense of dread and uneasiness the deeper you get into the story. The eerie atmosphere and the melancholic vibe will instantly surround you and occupy your mind until you find out every secret behind the terrible death that happened in the story.

It may not have the fantasy elements that blended seamlessly into the story like the concept of murderous doppelgänger in Summer Time Rendering. However, Erased more than makes up for it with its staggering story progression and unpredictable series of plot twists.

Most of you anime watchers out there must’ve watched Re: Zero before. After all, this anime took the world by storm when it came out back in 2016. What many people might not realize, however, is the fact that it has so many similarities with Summer Time Rendering.

First of all, is of course the time looping ability. The main characters from both Summer Time Rendering and Erased have the ability to loop back into a certain time whenever they lose their life. Both series also have unexplainable powers that cause every unexplainable event that happens in the story. For Summer Time Rendering, it is a supernatural power, while for Re:Zero, it is magic power. Needless to say, both series rely heavily on their fantasy and horror elements, to some extent.

That being said, both series do have different things that make them unique and therefore can offer different watching experiences to the viewers. Summer Time Rendering is a thriller that is based on a murder mystery. Re:Zero, on the other hand, is an isekai fantasy with an emphasis on action adventure.