__RE-MAIN is about a water polo champion who at the start of the series is greeted with a car accident. Not only does he suffer a coma he wakes up with amnesia, now having to rebuild his love from water polo again.
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Misleading Advertisement
This by far is one of the most intriguing intros to a sports series I've ever seen, so I was extremely excited. Turns out the series ended up being 75% about the character development of the characters, and 25% about the actual sport. You'll have to wait to till the very end of the series to actually see them preform a full game. The rest of them is primarily the cast alone at practice and learning to deal with the own emotional adversities.
The main poster of the anime, as well as the trailer that Funimation had rolled out definitely gave out the vibe that the series was either about water polo/a mix of how the drama effected the water polo, so it felt very false advertised so I spent a large portion of the anime upset that they weren't really going to showcase the sport.
There are two kinds of sports anime; sports anime that focus only on the sport (like Haikyuu) and sport series that divide the sports with the drama in half (like Kuroko no Basketball). This show barley passes for a sports anime. For such a short series, I think it they needed to sacrifice some of the drama in the earlier eps for a (full) practice game to have even the balance.
Character Development
This was the main focal point of this series. Our main hero, Minato, personality is constantly changing through the episodes. His adventure from discovering what his past started off very interesting seeing I have personally not tackled series that have dealt with amnesia before. However, by the end of the series they took a very cliche route (despite them quite literally in the series saying they wouldn't) and it became disappointing.
Aside from Minato, it was refreshing to have a team that for the most part were newbies and were struggling with their own demons but excluding Minato, the team captain was the only other team member I thought had a compelling storyline that remained fresh throughout the series. Shuugo, one of his teammates, also had notable transformation but his character was not charismatic enough for to truly enjoy his growth to the fullest.
OST & Animation
The animation was standard but on the higher end of the spectrum. Their choice of when to use CGI was fair as CGI goes, no complaints there.For the few times they did play the sport, the animation pulled through. The OST was forgettable. Not to be misunderstood with bad, I just wouldn't be able to recite anything from the series or identify it if someone played it for me without context. I don't think they choose to use OST a lot, but I think it really could've helped some of the moments for the extra kicker.
Overall
The series was O.K. I would never go out of my way to rewatch it, but if a new season came out I would probably watch it with a small hope they try to obtain an even balance ratio of game to drama ratio. It would also be interesting to see how they would pursue Minato's character development, seeing the amnesia route can only last for so long. I do truly believe this series should've been advertised more as a drama. As a graphic designer, this mistake probably costed them a lower rating due to accidentally attracting an audience who had initially came for more action. I think if one goes into the series with knowledge that it's more of a drama, they'll have a better liking to it than I.
