Anime Review: ReLIFE – It’s like 21 Jump Street except I liked watching 21 Jump Street

But for real, they should make 21 Jump Street into an anime.

 

Plot

MC-kun is a 27-year-old part-time clerk, full-time loser who’s approached by a blonde-dyed shitfuck who offers him approximately $4k in under-the-table benefits to take some sketchy pills that’ll purportedly turn MC-kun into a 17-year-old high school dirtbag.

Having always been a pedophile at heart, MC-kun takes the creeper up on his offer and transfers into a fancy prep school so he can use his 10 years of life experience over everyone to statutorily rape a bunch of insecure high school girls. The only wrench in MC-kun’s dick-dousing plans is his lack of ability in both academics and sports at a high school level. Which, as we all know, are the only two characteristics chicks look at in their potential pubetic mates.

Will MC-kun overcome the failures inherent in his own existence in order to grind some high school pussy? Or will his blatant demerits as a human being screw over his chances to screw minors? Well, it’s anime, and I didn’t open the review with a glowing recommendation, so you can probably rightfully assume he fucks it up somehow.

 

 

Characters

 

MC-kun, Kaizaki Arata

We’ve been over MC-kun.

 

 

Class rep, Hishiro Chizuru

Class rep can’t smile, and has problems making friends. She’s the first chick MC-kun tries to fuck, cuz she’s clearly the easiest route.

 

 

Pretty boy, Oga Kazuomi

He’s smart and good looking and a good person, but… Actually, there are no buts. This guy is one mabushii motherfucker. Why the fuck does he exist? Gives me a fucking headache.

 

 

Volleyball vice-captain, Kariu Rena

Kariu likes Oga, but her most defining character trait is “straight bitch”. Drenched in self-pity and unreasonably selfish, Kariu is a terrible person, but I bet she fucks like a tiger. ?

 

 

Best girl, Onoya An

She’s like 26 or something and totes DTF. As a character, she stops being relevant to the plot when it’s revealed that she’s part of the organization that created the de-aging pills. Actually, she pretty much gets shoved in a closet after that.

Bad move on removing best girl — I’d kill to get blackout drunk and vomit chunks of overpriced sushi into a mid-tier hotel toilet with her.

 

 

Literally whoever, Yoake Ryo

He sorta mattered in the first ep cuz he got MC-kun on the pill. Wouldn’t call him a main character, but the image I threw up for the section has him in, so… yeah, that’s why he gets a write-up too.

 

 

Muh Problems Tho

The gimmick fails to justify itself. MC-kun’s trauma didn’t need to come from adulthood if the entire series was going to be set in a high school. It seems like something to set the show apart as a back-of-book descriptor, rather than an honest attempt to differentiate itself in what is really a crowded field of highschool dramas.

No sense of urgency or purpose in the series leads to arcs that feel like filler. The volleyball arc exemplifies this, with supporting characters that provide less value as characters than they do as easy means of building up Kariu’s self-confidence. Yet that’s not even handled respectfully — we’re forced to endure a bunch of contrived, “oh wow just accidentally overheard that oops but now I totes understand everything” scenarios. Was pretty hard to respect the relationships set up by the show after that.

Everything’s too easy for the characters. Painful and awkward situations are resolved in ways that lack long-lasting consequences, meaning you’ll never feel the characters are playing for real stakes.

World-building is forced to an unnatural level. The show dedicates an episode to the shadowy corporation that’s in charge of the ReLife experiment, but fails to say anything meaningful during it. So what’s the point? Would have been better if they just kept the corporation in the background, because the show’s really about the character relationships of high schoolers. As far as the experiment goes, it’s very poorly thought out too, since MC-kun is so stupid he spends half his goddamn time doing make-up tests when the purported reason he gets sent back to high school is to spend his time building up relationships and his confidence interacting with other members of society.

The soundtrack appears to be sourced entirely from royalty-free piano samples. Rarely will I complain about sound in a series, but this shit got really goddamn annoying and ruined a fuckton of scenes. Effort, please.

 

 

Worth It?

Eh, I guess. But ReLife’s not a series you can point to and go “this is something special”. All in all, this is yet another high school drama with an unnecessary gimmick and little ambition to justify its existence.

If you’re all outta anime drama options, this show punches slightly above the average (the final episode is… pretty fucking satisfying), but if not, fuck it, just watch Toradora or something and get back to me about how great my taste is.

Whatever, I give it a 6/10.