ReLIFE
a review by NextUniverse
a review by NextUniverse
(TLDR Review at the bottom, as always, thanks for reading)
We are humans. We make mistakes. In making those mistakes, we wish such never occurred in the first place. We want to redo the past and shape it into a desirable one. We want to take on what we once missed out on.
I am no old person, at the time of writing this, I happen to be a little further down the line of life as opposed to ReLife's setting, however, when watching the anime, it becomes apparent that the message isn't just for older working people, it is also a message to the youth to basically live to the fullest of what you have right now. But ReLife is a strange case, with such a simple premise, yet an opportunity for countless routes that lead to glory, and further gratify this image of the human concept of change surpassing time, you would imagine that something, at the very minimum, worth your time would come around from the anime as such. Yet such an act was not present for this anime. It is a shame really, though this is all too common in anime, as this review is published, 56 months after this anime has finished airing, I am here to tell anyone who may stumble across this review that this anime is not worth anything to call even good. Let's get onto reasons as to why.
The worst part about ReLife is how it handles its narrative, I usually don't follow a mindset of "anime that doesn't have what I want is bad", because that is just bad criticism in my eyes, however, ReLife completely doesn't acknowledge its own base, which leads to it falling flat spectacularly, the kind of falling when I was probably 5 and tripped over the curb. ReLife is a different product from what it initially set out to be. I will get what I mean.
The whole point of ReLife Project is
an opportunity for him [Arata Kaizaki] to relive his youth in an attempt to change his current self.
The first flaw about ReLife is that it fails to present Kaizaki's youth, so you never actually know if things were going good for him or not, or in other words, you don't know exactly what reasons are there for him to even merit an experiment, but this can be looked over since he is described as a NEET for reasons, again, no one knows of. Then the next logical flaw happens, the one that actually matters, Kaizaki being a ReLife subject is now taking on the school life for the sake of life improvement for his future, how the aspects align is beyond me and I honestly don't want to think such a mess through. Where this aspect goes really wrong is how it means nothing, quite literally nothing, abyss of space nothing. I have no clue if ReLife is trying to prove how its flaw doesn't actually work realistically, or if it just completely forgot to connect the two dots together. Whatever it was, it didn't work for sure. You see, since Kaizaki is on a road of life improvement, you'd think that his interaction with high schoolers would (even if unconnectable) be of use to him. However, not once did I see him reflecting on the people he has talked with, or interacting with as a means to better himself, if anything, considering the silly amount of drama in this anime, he did the opposite of what was intended and instead told others how to better themselves. In other words, this entire anime is a generic high school story where every unique idea can be looked over since they don't actually serve any importance. Whilst I would generally be fine with generic high school stories, I have to say ReLife lies to itself time and time again. The number of times I have heard the ReLife experiment being in process midway and how Kaizaki isn't allowed to spoil anything is just proof to say ReLife doesn't admit to its limits. It consistently tries to tell you it is more than what it seems, but I fail to understand how it is more than a generic high school story when nothing actually matters or happens.
Another thing to touch on is the drama, when I first watched this, there was no "Drama" tag on this on the website I was using. There is a lot of drama. Pretty pointless as it ties into what I was saying above about how it actually doesn't matter and it is pretty much there to drag the plot forward in some way. The drama here also focuses on the wrong people, I say "wrong people", and I don't mean to sound as if X character > Y character, but when you literally have an MC who has no spotlight on what is going down, I don't know what else you want me to say. Rena Kariu is the hot spot girl for every type of drama that goes down, one was for a dumb misunderstanding where the author thought they were writing a Nickelodeon sitcom script, the other was something I long forgot but I think it was sport-related and pride-related. Considering how the story isn't focused on her I have no clue if the writers just forgot who the MCs were. Anyways I found it to be a very cheap excuse to drag the story out. I can't blame them though since this borderline generic high school story is generic, but considering it overdoses drama, there is nothing actually to praise, more so, you can find plenty of things to criticise. Can you even call that generic anymore, to me, that is unpleasant writing.
When looking at the characters, they feel like a strange case. I feel like the characters were alright as to who they were. What I mean is that they aren't anyone I would find dislikeable. They seem like the kind of characters to fit in just about any romance high school setting thrown at them and still be likeable to the audience. Though it is a strange case because the story was bad, I don't come across a lot of anime with a bad story yet with decent characters, since the two aren't mutually exclusive. When one fails, the other does, and vice versa. It just goes on to show how much the wasted potential was thrown from the anime. I suppose I could link the intelligence of characters, but no one here is a "dumb" character, hell no one here is bad. At worst they are annoying but liveable to sit through and watch, namely, Kariu being the centre of drama without fail, and Ooga being a living plot device. There was also Onoya who was a wasted character with Yoake being utilised in a wrong unrealistic way. But then I thought to myself, everyone who isn't Onoya and Yoake, no one here is a bad character, though even they have their "character conveniences" that doesn't sound too far fetched when you understand everything that happens in the anime, they feel more like victims of the bad storytelling rather than them being bad in themselves. As said, it is a shame really.
I am not even going to bother writing about ReLife's worldbuilding either, to be honest. ReLife makes no attempt for you to even be interested in the world in the first place. We will just say people can do things when the writer demands it disregarding any kind of consistency. To be fair, I wouldn't say that not focusing on worldbuilding is a major flaw, because I ended up not caring about the world because of how bad it was written. Unless you find yourself interested in this world, don't get your hopes up with what it gives.
Drawing towards the end and everything starts to correct itself, I won't go and explain everything word for word as spoilers would be introduced. Though, I thought the ending was at least better than the mess from behind. What can I say really? At least there was something to look back and comment positively about.
The audiovisuals are alright. You can tell that there was no intention to show off animation or character design of any kind. This is just your box standard 2016 anime in terms of visuals.
Audio, however, is interesting, the majority of the OST is done on a piano. And for someone like me who has a memory literally equivalent to Disney fish, I still have a good idea of the different sounds that were used. Solely using a piano may not sound like a good idea, but it did surprisingly well for the anime, different tempos and pitches used as well to add to the variety, there were other OST, but, ironically, I don't have them saved to my memory. OP is alright, though the attention was clearly shifted to EDs, there was a unique one for each episode, and whilst they weren't the best thing in the world, they were nice to hear in the moment of things, the one I really loved most was ED 12 "Natsumatsuri (夏祭り)" by Whiteberry, quite a popular choice.
Let me first get the personal disappointment out of the way, and for the very small amount of people who may be similar to I am.
Mini kuudere rant irrational behaviour has brought me to when I first wrote this review:
If you are going to make use of a female who struggles to express emotion, id est, the "kuudere" as a main character. Do yourself a favour and utilise their character properly, too many people love kuuderes, as shown with various polls and comments, and they aren't all that common around anime, so it is such a shame to see them go to waste like this. Pretty please, with extra sprinkles and a cherry on top.
Thanks, NextUniverse.
In any case, I wasn't too happy watching this. Aside from this poor utilisation of Hishiro, the stupid drama which took up half the anime really did have an effect on how much I enjoyed this. In addition to that, there was the constant referring back to "ReLife is an experiment" as mentioned before. over and over again it kept going back to that same statement. The problem with doing that is it kills any mood that settles in the story, because we know that at the end of the day, for the 100th time now, what goes down won't matter after a while. No one here, I would like to believe, is an idiot. We can understand the plot when given first hand. Not sure whose great idea was this but it surely didn't let me enjoy this anime.
Story - 20: No sense of direction. Doesn't even know what it is telling. The very definition of not understanding the basics behind a story.
Visuals - 60: Box standard 2016 anime quality.
Audio - 80: Nice use of piano for OST, nice to listen to, EDs are varied but not very memorable with most of them.
Character - 50: Fine characters, they would fit well with anything thrown at them, though can feel unrealistic for the sake of the story, some are wasted potential and there is also little to work with some characters.
Enjoyment - 40: They keep doing the dumb thing and saying the dumb thing all the time.
Another revamped review, because there wasn't enough criticism for this anime and I needed to write something or I'd have a heart attack as to how lazy I have been getting recently.
I originally went into this thinking it would be well worth my time but this anime generally doesn't understand what a story needs to make sense. Hell, I actually came here more for the romantic content because I needed to watch something sweet and I was a little down but how trash that was is truly something else. Seems like my powers of knowing a good anime from its cover isn't working so much anymore, goes to show don't judge a book by its cover, for the better or for the worst… I can't recommend this to anyone in all seriousness, you are better off with another romance that is claimed "generic" by the anime community, those in themselves are way better than what has been given with this anime. I heard the manga was better, well, I still have an intention of reading it because I feel like I should do, I heard the anime generally destroyed this manga, so I will have a look at what is up and I just love Hishiro I guess.
ReLife is essentially overhyped rubbish probably because of the themes it plays with, mix that with a community average of 7/10 and you get this nonsense. Not surprised if this review gets downvoted for hell for reasons I am never actually too sure of. But who knows, I might be in Kaizaki's position one day only to love ReLife in every aspect because of how relatable it is. I tell you now, I feel like I am getting there… Only time will tell.
And retell haha.
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