ReLIFE リライフ

I recently finished watching the ReLIFE anime. Here are my thoughts:

Bland art style and character designs. Animation is mediocre and often looks cheap and sloppy (and I did watch the BDs.). I did kind of like the super-saturated colour tones that are sometimes used, but besides that the anime is weak visually.
Unremarkable OST, however the rapid switching between tracks and/or silence is used well for dramatic effect. Overall, the production quality feels like a cheap disposable seasonal anime. Which is a shame because I think it deserved more. This anime would have benefited from a higher budget and/or better technical staff.

Quality of direction seems to vary a lot. Dramatic scenes are often handled poorly. Suspense is built up well but I feel like the climatic scenes are often 'fumbled' for lack of a better phrase. Comedic relief is sometimes used inappropriately. I'm already innoculated against this from watching lots of anime, but it can be pretty bad in this case. Overall, I'd say the direction is weak to mediocre at best. As someone who values direction more than visuals for this kind of genre, the weak direction is the most significant flaw of the anime in my view.

It's kind of cliche but I really liked the premise and thought it was promising (28 year old NEET relives high school - what's not to like?). Whether or not the premise was capitalized upon to its full potential is highly subjective. The plot ended up evolving differently from the way I expected it to, but I still liked it.

As you might expect, there's a lot of situational humour, which I'm fond of. Humour isn't a selling point here, but I did chuckle to myself a number of times while watching.

Decent script.

Good voice acting, especially the female cast. Kariu's VA in particular is absolutely terrific. I found myself rewinding many times just to hear her deliver some lines over and over again. I was extremely impressed by her talent.

[continued ITT]

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MC is sort of unlikable, in my opinion.
Overall though, the cast is likable (ONOYA IS LITERALLY ME). Characters are well-developed. There was less focus on the MC than I initially expected, which was a pleasant surprise in my view. There are certainly some memorable characters. I miss them and want to go back. In particular, the female cast and the interactions between them were really enjoyable. Felt very real and human. The main female characters are the best in the entire series, in my opinion. The male cast was bland in comparison, despite receiving a similar amount of screentime.

Great writing. I get the impression that the source material is excellent and I hope to look into it sometime. Well-done character-driven drama is something I very much enjoy. Judging this anime before watching, I expected that it would basically be a large serving of hedonistic escapist fantasy. Again, I was pleasantly surprised in this respect, and this serves as a lesson to refrain from judging an anime before actually watching. Actually I would even say this anime is the opposite of escapism because one of the underlying themes is confronting real problems or personal shortcomings in your own life (trigger warning). Absolutely the writing is good, however I should clarify that I didn't find any of the themes explored to be all that engaging on a personal level. For this reason someone else might derive even more enjoyment from the series than I did.

Envy is a theme that comes up in the story and I applaud its use because it's such a common aspect of human nature. Jealousy permeates this disgusting world we live in, yet its representation in fiction is rarely commensurate. I think a lot of people can relate to this or at least would find it an engaging theme in fiction.

Very watchable. I watched the first 8 episodes within ~12 hours which for me is extremely unusual.

Many anime start out strong and then flop in the later episodes. ReLIFE was the opposite experience for me. It started out good, but it was only in the latter half of the anime that it really started to shine. This is mainly due to payoff from developing rich characters earlier in the series (take notes, anime writing staff). My progress through the later episodes was slowed because there were far more scenes that I needed to appreciate by watching over and over before continuing.

I'll try to comment on the romance component without spoiling anything. Despite the poor direction, especially in this regard, ReLIFE is still pretty romantic. It's not strictly a romance story, but there are certainly some romantic scenes and moments. ReLIFE owes its romantic merit entirely to the underlying writing. It is probably the best het-romance of 2016 (competition is not stiff). Please feel free to respond with alternatives for that title though.

This anime has appeal to a broader audience. Would be easily digested by casual anime fans. Despite its flaws I'd still recommend it. I think I'd actually recommend this to a woman due to how much the female perspective is explored during the romantic story arcs. Again, the female characters are such a strong aspect of this anime; I really can't overstate it.

I rate this anime 8/10 for great writing with great characters and a good script with good voice acting. I really wanted to rate this higher but I can't overlook the flaws in its execution. The show is like a poorly polished diamond; the beauty is there if you look closely.

Due to the series being continued in OVAs released 1.5 years later, and the peculiar obsession that imageboard users have with watching things the instant they air, I think that this show (or at least the OVAs) may have been overlooked by people. It also serves as a lesson for why you should wait for an entire series (including BDs and extras) to be released before watching. In my case, jumping right from the last episode to the OVAs (instead of waiting 2 years) provided a vastly superior viewing experience, especially with consideration to the plot of the show.

The OVAs feel very rushed to me and I would have much preferred a complete second season, or at least more than 4 OVA episodes. Production quality and direction of the OVAs was just as poor as the original tv anime. Truly a shame because the story is great.

Update since writing the above review draft while still watching the anime:
fucking hell this is really starting to tug at my heartstrings. The waterworks have started.
tl;dr: *sobbing mess* b-but m-muh direction and production quality

final update: okay I cried a lot but that doesn't invalidate my criticisms and my rating remains unchanged.

In retrospection, it might be better to approach this franchise via the literature. I'm getting the impression that the source material is vastly superior to the anime adaptation. Maybe someone can respond with their impressions of the manga. I jumped into this anime completely blind without doing any research; maybe that was a mistake.

What did Yea Forums think of ReLIFE?

>Unremarkable OST
Lost me there m8

provide an example plz

I recently finished reading this user's review of the ReLIFE anime. Here are my thoughts:

The first thing that stood out is that it is longer than his other reviews. Despite the show being just over a quarter of the length he managed to write a lot more than he did for 3-gatsu no Lion.

He generally backed up his opinions well by citing things from the show. I understood very well why he found the direction weak, but some other sections were underdeveloped, such as him not describing how the plot challenged his expectations; this may have been to avoid spoiling. One strange choice he made was to comment on the script and writing separately.

He kept it very subjective, a positive from me, but unfortunately made a broad statement about one of the themes the show used, which always comes off as pretentious. He was also mistaken in believing it had the best romance of 2016, as that was obviously Mitsuha and Taki.

I didn't like his snarky comment about imageboard users, as that includes me. The best joke he made was when he implied recommending the anime to a woman as a realistic scenario.

I rate this review 7/10 for coherent writing with decent justifications, with a few hiccups. My overall thought is that this user peaked with the Sansha Sanyou review, and if he is going to continue to write longer reviews he should consider MAL.

The whole bloody thing

I hope you don't expect me to read all that, Anonymous.

You should know me better.