This is has to be at the top of the list for the greatest anime that I could never recommend to someone
3 years ago, I was at restaurant celebrating my wife's (gf at the time) birthday and our waiter was super nice and had a few anime tattoos. I eventually asked him if he'd seen anything lately, and he recommended Summertime Rendering. Outside of that conversation, I never bothered to look into the anime. A few days later, my wife and I decided to watch the anime, but the streaming platform it was on at the time had ads, and the other version I could watch was sub only which my wife hates, so I pretty much dropped it into MAL and only picked it back up a few months later alone.
Now some of my greatest pet peeves in anime are tropes where MC accidentally ends face/hand first into a woman's chest, and panty shots/upskirts and both occur in the very first episode. Then there's the possible love triangle between MC and his adoptive family members. Needless to say, I was quite disappointed, and stopped watching after the first episode.
A few days ago, I took an edible and finished The Summer Hikaru Died. I had nothing to do after and was still high asf and decided to give the show another chance reluctantly. I watched 2-3 more episodes and somewhat suppressed my issues with it. And am I glad I made that choice. I have been struggling to find anime that I actually want to watch without constantly checking how many minutes are left in the episode, and Summertime Rendering has solved that problem for me. I am now on episode 10, and will likely finish it by the end of this week. I watched episode 4-10 totally sober, so it's not externally influenced by any substances.
I want to recommend it so badly to other friends who are casual watchers, and I just can't bring myself to do it lol. I just wished some of the fanservice was completely removed, because it is such a serious and captivating story outside of that. If you are reading this waiter from Thai restaurant from 3 years ago. thank you for being ballsy and vulnerable enough to recommend this gem. I could never.