Review of ReLIFE

(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 tobasically 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, 52 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. And when I say good, I meant a genuine 7/10 good instead of the average one people love to use.

Narrative:
The worst part about ReLIFE is how it handles its narrative, now I may sound like I am egotistical here in that I came into the anime expecting some alright romance and not much else. There was no "Drama" genre marked onto it in the MAL database, though it is ironic how that turned out to be, so I was expecting some elongated blooming of a relationship with a touch of drama as opposed to what I am about to tell you, for a romance. But that didn't happen in the least. The anime instead goes on with the concept in hand and does these three major flaws with it:

1. Forgets it is even telling the concept, creating a mediocre high school story
2. Focuses on the wrong characters
3. Keeps reminding the audience about the ReLIFE experiment which links to the concept
4. Other flaws that I forgot about

The points may sound contradictory. How can the anime simultaneously remind the concept and forget to tell it at the same time? Well, what I mean by the concept is what I was on about earlier, we want to change the past and the mistakes that have been engraved in them. The anime hints at multiple times this exact concept with characters telling other characters to "why don't you change up a bit", there are also characters themself changing in the same sense, naturally, due to surroundings. Ok, so the overarching theme is set in place. But how does the anime forget to conserve the theme throughout? It doesn't conserve it at all. Instead, we get a crap ton of drama with characters who exist solely as devices for the story. It isn't even funny how long the drama lasts, over half of the anime is drama on one character's life. To be fair, this idea isn't so bad if done well. ReLIFE could have used these characters as a base point for the formation and change of characters, kinda like a child-parent relationship with the child shows what the parent is missing in their life. But that too doesn't happen, no one reflects on anything that goes down on this show, so then you are left with soulless anger for the sake of "need more episodes plot please go forward my fans will get really angry".

With the 2nd point, most of the anime just focuses on Kariu, or the conspicuous centre of drama. I mean if that supposed "blend of Copper Penny and Tuscan Red" hair didn't give that away, I am not sure what will. Obviously, it was forgettable drama, with characters that serve no use after their arc is over and done with, you know, Tamarai and co. Not very sure why this level of writing was allowed, but it happened regardless. MCs Kaizaki and Hishrio didn't get the time they deserved to develop as characters due to this. Some time on them would have probably allowed for a greater character background to evolve or other character necessities needed to make them seem more like an individual.

When looking at the characters, they feel like a strange case. I feel like the characters were alright as 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 decent characters, the pair seem to work hand in hand with one another. 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. If I was feeling a bit harsh I could point out that the characters seem very unrealistic, 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, though even they have their "character conveniences" that doesn't sound too far fetched when you understand everything that happens in the anime, no one here is a bad character, 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 the 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 the 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.

Audiovisuals:
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 is writing this review well later than when I finished this, I still have a good idea on 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 was non-piano 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, you should listen to the whole ED too. It is catchy as hell. Other aspects like seiyuu were fine. Nothing more to comment on that.

Enjoyment:
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.

Dear anime industry,

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 as 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 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 with the 3rd major flaw used over and over again with the story. 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.

Overall - 4.33 (4, lowered significance of audiovisuals)

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TLDR Review:
Story - 2: Dumb pointless drama everywhere.
Visuals - 6: Box standard 2016 anime quality.
Audio - 8: Nice use of piano, EDs are varied but not very memorable with most of them.
Character - 5: Fine characters, they would fit well with anything thrown at them, though can feel unrealistic for the sake of the story.
Enjoyment - 4: They keep doing the dumb thing and saying the dumb thing all the time.

Overall - 4.33 (4, lowered significance of audiovisuals)
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This review came out way after it should have, gotta thank school for that. I watched ReLIFE when I was a little down, just hoping for some sweet romance to just get the good things in life going. Maybe I watched this at the wrong time, but I sure didn't really like this anime. It looked so very interesting too. Seems like my powers of knowing a good anime from it's 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.

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 how all the lower scored reviews seem to have been swamped on too. 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. Only time will tell.

And retell haha.