Jul 22, 2016
I have a pretty simple test to whether or not I recommend anime to others: if it makes me watch the entire series in one go, then I recommend it. The degree to which you’ll like this show is going to depend on your life experiences – if you’ve tried to work as an adult in society, I think this show will really click with you. Throughout the series, it addresses one of the most common questions young adults face: what does it mean to “grow up” and become an adult?
Story 7.5/10:
The premise of the story sounds a little bit like an eroge – I
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mean come on, a 27 year old reverting to the body of a 17 year old? Girls tend to be easily attracted to guys around their age that “seem” older, and Kaizaki not only seems older, but is older (just not on the surface). Luckily, the story itself is non-sexualized so I can definitely say that this show wasn’t directed towards adolescent males, otherwise there would have been a lot more boobs and hot springs scenes, and to me, not having more of that is a big plus in the current state of anime.
Although Kaizaki is the protagonist, the story doesn’t really revolve around him. It focuses more on the inter-relationships between all of the other characters, with him being more of a mediator/observer. Other than the magic pill that turns his outer appearance to a 17 year old, everything else is pretty standard slice-of-life.
Characters 10/10:
I’m not going to go too deep into the character development and relationships here since I want to cover that in-depth in my full blog post (you can find that here: http://bit.ly/2a4nhuG). Let’s just say ReLIFE has some of the most realistic depictions of characters that I’ve seen in a long time.
I can pretty much sum up the moral of the story in one sentence: all of our insecurities and problems are self-inflicted. Yup, that’s right: self-inflicted. And since they’re self-inflicted, we can self-fix-it too. ReLIFE follows this moral throughout the show and if you keep an eye out for it, you’ll find that pretty much every flaw and problem each character has was self-inflicted. This really resonates with me because I’ve seen this happen time and time again in real life, including myself. I think you’ll enjoy the show tenfold if you introspect while watching the characters develop and you’ll find a lot of similarities and real life lessons.
Animation 8/10:
I’m a pretty simple guy when it comes to animation, I just take it at face value and if it doesn’t really disturb my viewing experience then it’s pretty good in my books.
Music 7.5/10:
The music was pretty on-point, although a bit loud at certain points (maybe it was just my headset). I thought they did a pretty good job of syncing up the music with the atmosphere of various scenes throughout the show. They even had Mika Nakashima’s “Yuki No Hana,” although I’m a lot more familiar with the Korean version sung by Park Hyo Shin. Overall, the music wasn’t good enough for me to go digging for the OST, but it still did pretty well as a behind-the-scenes support to enhance the different atmospheres in each scene.
Overall 9/10:
I have to give this series a 9/10 because although most of the aspects of ReLIFE weren’t super original, we shouldn’t judge anime by its ability to be original (since then, everything is a copy of something else). Instead, I thought ReLIFE did an excellent job in doing one thing very well – character development. I think this series will really appeal to those who are young adults now and have experienced the ups and downs of human relationships and the difficulties of adapting to society.
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I have the full write up on my blog (https://closetsenpai.wordpress.com/2016/07/23/review-relife/), where I go over the review in more detail as well as discuss the characters in depth. If you're interested in Anime reviews or just talking about life and growing pains, I do that on my blog too.
Thanks for reading!
-Closet Senpai
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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