YMMV / The Summer You Were There

• Accidental Aesop:
  • The series can be seen as an endorsement of Tough Love. While Shizuku's apology to Ruri causes Ruri pain in the short term, it also gives Ruri the motivation to try to move on from her past trauma. In the final chapter, Seri's drastic decision to carry Shizuku downstairs and demand that she go to Kaori's house to get Kaori's final message to her, turns out to be the right thing to do. While Shizuku went too far with Ruri, especially when her behavior escalated to verbal abuse, she was able to help Kaori with a similar modus operandi, albeit without displaying some of her worse behavior.
  • Somewhat similarly, while forcing people to confront delicate issues can cause pain in the short term, doing so can lead to positive results in the long term. Shizuku's depression worsened because she didn't open up to her family and they didn't ask her about it. While Shizuku flees after learning that Kaori had always known about Shizuku being a bully, realizing that she can trust Kaori helps them truly become close. As mentioned above, while Ruri is initially unwilling to meet with her former bully, doing so helps her find the courage to start to move forward.
• Adorkable: Shizuku is this in lighthearted moments, such as blushing when calling Kaori by her first name for the first time, or getting comically exhausted when climbing a mountain with her much more physically fit sister Shizuka.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • In Shizuku's flashback, some of her classmates protest how she is treating Ruri, but unlike Seri, don't go so far as to say that she's bullying her. However, once Seri publicly calls Shizuku out on their actions, Shizuku's classmates chime in and claim that they did warn her. Was their halfhearted criticism because they were mostly fine with Shizuku's actions until she started going too far(whether because that was too much for them or they were afraid of getting in trouble), or because they disapproved but were too scared to stand up to the most popular girl in the class? Neither possibility reflects very well on them.
  • In Chapter 18, after Shizuku, upon learning about Ruri's illness, apologizes for bullying Ruri, Seri somberly says, "Apologizing to me won't change a thing." Is it a straight-up Rejected Apology? Acknowledging that Shizuku is indeed sorry but saying that won't heal Ruri's emotional scars? Or perhaps saying that Shizuku should apologize to Ruri, rather than Seri? The fact that Seri openly says that she dislikes Shizuku but privately tells Ruri that Shizuku has changed only complicates matters.
  • In Chapter 19, Kaori declares that she's "so in love," before clarifying that it's with Shizuku's novel. While Kaori does clearly love Shizuku, was Shizuku reading too much into it because of Seri's remarks that she and Kaori looked like a couple? Or was Kaori making a Sarcastic Confession of love?
  • In Chapter 22, Kaori tells Shizuku that Shiori told her that Shizuku was a nice person. Was that a lie because Shiori didn't want to upset Kaori by not getting along with her "friend"/girlfriend(perhaps supported by how Shizuku doesn't mention Shiori's hostility)? Or was Shiori actually won over by Shizuku's kindness, and simply didn't want to admit that to her?
  • In the final scene, one background character makes note of how long Shizuku has been away while mourning Kaori's death. Is she gossiping about Shizuku or perhaps concerned for her? It's impossible to know for certain, since the story ends there.
• Fridge Brilliance: There's a good reason why Kaori was able to read Shizuku's entire manuscript in an evening, and not because she skimmed over it or skipped to the end. She'd already read it when it was published as a web novel, so she only needed to read the unpublished final chapter.
• Fridge Horror:
  • In Chapter 6, Shizuku panics and runs off after learning that Kaori always knew about her being a bully, and Kaori is last seen on her knees. Considering that even ordinary outings are taxing for Kaori, one could only imagine how Shizuku would have reacted if Kaori had collapsed after Shizuku had left.
  • In Chapter 30, the only reason Shizuku learns about Kaori going into critical condition and being operated on is because Seri created a group for the photos Ruri took during the trip to Enoshima. If she hadn't done that, Shizuku would have been in the dark.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight:
  • Kaori's decision to take Shizuku's manuscript and ask her to write another in the first chapter initially seems like it was done on a whim, but later, it turns out that she knew Shizuku was suicidal and wanted to convince her to stay alive long enough to complete her next project.
  • Chapter 29 shows that Shizuku believed that her novel, "Girls Lovers Suicide" did nothing but cause pain to others, but Kaori tells her that her words can save people. It turns out that Kaori had read Shizuku's web novel and found it gave her hope when she was starting to give in to despair.
  • Similarly, Kaori told Shizuku that she admired her back in elementary school, only for Shizuku to reply that there was nothing to admire, since she deeply regrets hurting Ruri in her efforts to help her. It turns out that Shizuku helped Kaori with a book, and had told her she was cuter without glasses, so Shizuku's confidence in her ability to help others wasn't entirely baseless.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • The series has often been compared to Your Lie in April, in large part because both have terminally ill high school girls named Kaori who use their final days to help their artistically inclined love interests, each of whom had chosen to give up on their craft(Kousei is a musician while Shizuku is a writer). Each series has the terminally ill girl leave a letter posthumously confessing her love to her love interest.
  • The series also has some noticeable similarities with A Silent Voice, since each stars a suicidal former bully who falls in love and tries to make amends with their victim, although in the case of this series, the bullying victim and love interest- Ruri and Kaori, respectively- are separate characters.
• Spoiled by the Format: An unusual example in that it happens near the end of the series. In Chapter 30, Kaori's condition worsens, and the following chapter implies that she might pull through and live a little longer. However, since readers knew that the story would only last another chapter and that Kaori's death was a Foregone Conclusion, hardly anyone was surprised when Kaori died at the end of the chapter.
• Values Dissonance: Western viewers may wonder why Shizuku's family responded to her increasingly withdrawn and depressed nature by getting a dog (which helped but didn't completely solve the problem), and Ruri's family isn't mentioned as doing anything at all about the trauma caused by Shizuku's bullying, but this is due to Japan's aversion to therapy.
• The Woobie: Most of the cast qualifies in some way or another.
  • Shizuku is a mixture of this and Jerkass Woobie. She was guilty of bullying Ruri in elementary school, albeit in a misguided attempt at helping her, but ended up being ostracized and driven into suicidal depression. Writing became an outlet for her emotions, but after a suicide in her web novel turned out to resemble one that had happened in real life, she was subjected to a torrent of vile abuse, with the worst comments telling her to kill herself. Because of that, she is plagued with self-loathing, believing she does nothing but hurt others. She finds that Kaori is able to love her unconditionally, even knowing of her past, but then learns that Kaori suffers from a debilitating illness, and loses Kaori just after confessing her love, becoming so devastated by her death that she doesn't leave her room or eat for days.
  • Kaori is a terminally ill girl with a respiratory disease who wants to live a normal life as much as she can, but her condition sometimes thwarts even her more modest expectations. She tries to put on a brave face, but her suffering is often too much for even her to bear. She even considers herself a burden on Shizuku because of her condition even though she helped Shizuku turn her life around. She passes away from her illness at the young age of 15. She overlaps with Wheelchair Woobie, as during the trip to Enoshima, the last time she leaves the hospital before her death, her condition has deteriorated to the point at which she needs to be pushed around in a wheelchair.
  • Shiori, a young girl at a tender age, has to deal with the realization that her beloved older sister Kaori is going to die soon, and is understandably rather scared and sad.
  • Ruri, not unlike Kaori, was sickly when she was younger and often missed class because of it. As the victim of Shizuku's bullying, she still suffers from the trauma, and Shizuku curbs her self-pity after realizing that Ruri suffered more than she did.
  • Mr. Asaka not only has a terminally ill daughter, but it is all but outright stated that his wife, Kaori and Shiori's mother, passed away some time ago. He then loses his eldest daughter.
• Woobie Family: The Asakas. Kaori and Shiori's mother dies when her daughters are young- Shiori is young enough that she doesn't remember her- and Kaori suffers from a respiratory disease. By the end of the series, Kaori is dead.
• Woolseyism:
  • In Chapter 18, Kaori, enthusiastic about seeing Shizuku's story, calls her "sensei" as a bit of affectionate teasing. The term is most commonly associated with teachers, but can be a respectful term for various other professions- in this case, authors. The localization instead has Kaori call Shizuku "hotshot," keeping the playful tone of it.
  • When Shizuku visits Kaori's house, she's a bit worried that Shiori, an elementary schooler, can't read the complicated title of the book Kaori wants. While the fan translation literally translates the title as "Mirage," which isn't too unreasonable for an elementary schooler to understand, the English localization has the book titled "Fata Morgana," an equivalent term that is less likely to be in Shiori's vocabulary.