ReLIFE - Reviews

This anime makes me to know the importance of youth and how to enjoy it really loved it

I was happily surprised by how this show turned out! I'm so glad they made sure to not make it about underaged relationships but about turning your life around and having a second chance. It really was uplifting and a fun watch. I thoroughly enjoyed the characters, especially the adult-turned-teenage ones. Hishiro was hilarious, and Arata was the type of gentlemen I wish I could encounter more often.

If you were worried that this would be an old guy after teenage girls like I was, then don't worry. Luckily, it is mainly pedophile-free . . .

Oh, and make sure to watch the four OVA episodes to feel the show has a good, solid conclusion.

It's quite good and has a nice little unexpected twist in the end, the story is also very unique and it's definitely a. Anime worth watching.

Story:

The protagonist suffers from a trauma and lost all his self confidence because of something that happened in his past. He goes back to high school under the premise of "taking a drug that makes you look younger" in the ReLIFE experiment, and there he interacts with some people while the surveillance keeps an eye on him. The execution was well done for the most part, however it feels like they gave too much attention to the "trauma" in a few of the later episodes, going as far as dedicating an entire episode to it after already vaguely explaining the situation multiple times before.

Animation: The animation was pretty good. All characters looked nice and detailed. Occasional slapstick animation was used, but it was used fittingly. The failing fake smile from Hishiro and general facial animations were good and detailled.

Sound: The OP was very unfitting. It sounded more like a happy go lucky anime than an anime which would actually be themed on depression. There should have been some darker sounding parts in it, like with Boku Dake.

The background music of the anime didn't leave an impression on me at all. Having recently watched the likes of Flying Witch my expectations might be a bit higher, though this anime didn't have any noticable themes that stick with you.

A different ending every time sounds like fun, but a lot of them sounded very similar and tbh I can't remember a single one of them. 

The sound had a huge quantity, however the quality was pretty bad.

Characters:

Aside from the support staff, the cast reminded me very much of Clannad which I explain later on in the spoilers part. The only real characters that were interesting to me where the white knights, but they didn't get much attention at all.

Kariu was probably the most interesting and realistic character of all of them. She really captures the essention of a lot of tsundere teen girls: they want you to understand and feel for them, but not say it out loud because it emberasses them, and they want you to ignore their verbal cues but analyse the entire situation to see whether you really understand them or just pretend to.

Conclusion:

Ironically I won't go too much into the conclusion in this part, because most of it is actually spoilers. The premise of the anime seemt original, but if you take away the part that he's an adult in a teen body before it's actually just very simillar to a lot of other anime's out there

One thing I really liked is that they aired the entire anime in one go. In hindsight it probably mean anything to most people who didn't watch it within the season, but for me binge watching it was a lot more pleasant than waiting for it every week, and I would have probably dropped it around episode 8 if I didn't binge watch it. In the end it was decent entertainment and though it doesn't really contain any amazing life lessons it was still a good ride.

Spoilers/reflection

The premise for the story is in hindsight actually very unoriginal, but it looks like a combination between multiple animes, but it especially reminded me of Clannad part 1, where Tomoya is a "dumb deliquent" on low self confidence, who regains his motivation in life by helping others, along with another very big similarity between the two. Tomoya also gains motivation to study, but is more emotional smart than book smart, and "changes others around him" also Clannad spoiler both protagonists end up with a socially awkward girl who couldn't get any friends.

One of the problems I've had with the anime is that the "support" staff is really that in definition too. They have a bit of a personality but they don't really do anything aside from a little intervention in the later episodes. In the end all they did for me was give the anime an introduction and confirm that Hishiro, which I initially suspected to be another experiment runner, was indeed one. I totally forgot about her having a support, so I didn't really make the connection between her and Onoya , especially since Onoya pretty much directly ruined Kaizaki's motivation to make moves on Hishiro by saying he shouldn't get with "high school girls" before which Yoake really had to make a push for in the end.

The anime had no solid ending of Kaizaki and Hishiro getting together, which is mostly so that people will root for a season 2, or maybe an OVA or a movie or something I think. I found it a bit strange that they refused to give it a solid ending, even in just a picture with them together as older versions, because the MC wasn't suffering from the usual "harem syndrome" in which he had to choose for multiple girls. In the end had just one choice with which he would obviously get shipped.

Also the white knight squad Inukai and Asaji seemt like the guys with the biggest problems in the entire anime, I really wonder why those two weren't addressed at all. That story would have interested me a lot more than the excessive flashbacks and background story of his boss and his shit workplace.

Summed up in one word: AGGGGGGH!!!!