Review of ReLIFE

TL;DR I fully reccomend this series to whoever is out of high school and sometimes misses those times of his life. As a pretty casual anime fan, ever since I left high school and later found myself in the "real world", I more often than not end up finding many series immature, clichéd or dumb. For this reason, I generally give up on those series. After having seeing too many high school romcoms, weather I was searching for a guilty pleasure or simply following reccommandations, it feels like they always revolve around the same plot points, they follow pretty standard timelines and, more irritating than anything,they always treat the audience as japanese high school student.

This last point is probably nothing wrong itself, considering that theyr are aiming at such an audience, but as a west-born-non-high-school-student (or even western high school students), I already reached a certain level of maturity that would make me wanna skip certain plot points and focus on others.

ReLife, in this sense, is a great experience. The series is 100% self aware, it has a more mature vision of high school romcom, and in my opinion, it's trying to communicate a message and it should be seen as a different kind of series than usual.

From now on the review may contain spoilers.

To me this series, is more of a "memory therapy" that allows the viewer to travel back in time with the main character and enjoy the happy time of high school once again. I have seen people arguing that the story is clichéd and predictable, the characters are tropes copypastas and that the anime in general is not that interesting. I believe there is a reason for it to be this way and I'll bring it up later. First I'll comment about few things:

The art was cool, I don't know too much, but there wasn't any moment so bad it stood out, so a 7 is fair imo.

I loved the sound of the series, I'm not an expert in voice acting, so no comment on that, but the music was great. It reminded me a lot of Durarara!, from the OP to the soundtrack in general (like that jazzy piano that sometimes does not fit the situation at all), it was good. The series sounds more mature than it looks, which is amazing when they want to convey certain messages in scenes. Like I can rememeber few "romantic" scenes, in which the music playing was totally out of mood, which reinforces the idea that a high schooler might get excited, but you know what's happening and it's no big deal.

The characters were cool in my opinion, nothing too relevant, the main character was great.

The enjoyement was really what drove the series forward. The comedy is on point, I hardly laugh at anime comedy, but this series had be cracking a couple of times.
It seeems that thsi series really appeals to the older high school romcom viewer: often I was expecting certain scenes to move in a certain way, only to take a more logical path. The characters are all written in such a way tha their personality will end up solving all the conflicts. The story is directed in such a way that there are no real stakes to the actions. It's all fabricated to perfection.

What's the point of watching such a series then?
ReLife, to me, was like going on vacation to some fancy sea side locality: The beaches are all cured, the hotel is perfect, the whole experience is fabricated to perfection such that you will enjoy, relax and have fun. Everybody is stressed for "real world problems" as much as everyone else, everyone needs a break from it to look back at the past and remember the good old days. Enjoying this series is exactly what it's meant for and to me, it does a great job at it. It's no 9 or 10, but it's a sure 8 for me.