Anime review: ReLife

ReLife is yet another show that is more about themes that execution. As long as you like its premise and find the characters likable, it doesn’t matter how it plays out. For example, many people found it very relatable because they could really understand the problems the characters are facing. I found nothing relatable in it; I hated high school and the idea of having to relive it is horrifying.

But first things first. The premise is about a NEET who is given the chance to become younger with super technology and go back to high school. Supposed, the only way he can find meaning in adult life is by repeating the boring and aimless routine of going every day to the same place and learning about things he will forget as soon as the exams are over, while being surrounded by people with half his knowledge and experience.

The premise completely ridiculous. If you have psychological problems, you go to a psychiatrist, you join a therapy group, or you talk about it with friends and family. You don’t run back to a lifestyle when all your needs were taken care by adults and the worst thing that could possibly happen to you is your school club losing in some competition.

My point is, the show pretends to be about healing one’s mental wounds, when it’s closer to escapism, not any different from most other anime that take place in the golden years of one’s life. Which for some reason is high school, where everybody is a hormone crazy asshole, and not elementary school when everything is simple and the whole world is a magical playground. Why ain’t those years the most relatable?

I will tell you why. Because no sex. We can’t have romantic interests and intercourse without being sleazy pedophilia. The truly most relatable years are sacrificed for the sake of shipping wars and sexual tension, the stuff that attract most people to anime. I mean, hearing about the premise of the series you would immediately expect the protagonist to be constantly trying to have sex with girls half his age. That’s what the average male would try to do first, if he is amongst naïve and easily exploitable schoolgirls. But, just like in any non-hentai series, nothing happens besides a lot of cock-teasing.

Of course that’s not how the show is presenting itself as. Since we see everything from the perspective of an adult, means that everything is far more self-aware about what is going on. Which is completely not like any other school comedy, since those are written and voiced by teenagers thus are not self-aware, am I right? Having an adult amongst teenagers is nothing more than a running joke. Oh look, he is not allowed to smoke or drink alcohol, so funny. And look, he gets tired way faster during gymnastics, this is hilarious.

What’s even worse is that the show is hardly about the protagonist retracing his footsteps. Most episodes are about normal teenagers having typical teenager problems you can find in any run of the mill series with a school in it. The very theme is not explored much.

What’s even worse than that is the magic pills which are used for kick-starting the plot. I find nothing relatable in a premise that is based on a ludicrous usage of high-tech. I mean, holy shit, you discovered a drug that makes people look young. This could revolutionize the cosmetics industry and open up a dozen philosophical schools of thought, concerning the importance of aging when it’s no longer visible. The entire human history would change forever! And instead of that, they use it for letting a few NEETs run back to high school, with the hopes of becoming better people by reliving it.

And the magic technology does not even stop there. No matter what happens, everybody will forget the protagonist after one year. They literally reset everything at the end, so there won’t be any actual repercussions for his actions, and then they insist this is not about escapism. And holy shit, how do they expect people to get better out of this project when they know the friends they made, the experiences they had, and the things they learned will be all wiped out at the end? What kind of a NEET would become a better person this way? He is just going to waste his time not studying or making friends and will instead be fucking school girls. And when it’s all over, he is just going to be an expelled sex offender, begging to be given more pills, so he can continue doing the same shit for eternity.

And wait a second, if you have mind-wiping technology, why are you using it like this instead of taking away the devastating memories from tortured victims, or the memories that made someone a criminal, thus giving them a second chance in a normal life? Why are you instead making hundreds of normal people to forget someone and risk causing some sort of a mental disorder? They did many things together and all of a sudden they won’t be able to remember who was sitting right next to them for a whole year. Hundreds of innocent people will go nuts!

But it’s not like we get a conclusion to realize that, since the show has no ending and there is not much source material out for a second season. There is not going to be a sequel for many years, and by the time it does nobody will care about it anymore. All they give you at the very end is a last moment plot twist about a girl in the class being another guinea pig with the same age as the protagonist. And so conveniently happens to be the one the protagonist tries to have sex with first.

This convenience allows us not to consider him a manipulative asshole who is boning girls half his age. It’s also lazy writing but it’s not like anyone gives a shit about that. All it matters is to be relatable by having an adult pretending to be a teenager and offering shallow meta-commentary about stuff you get in any run of the mill school comedy. Boring!

There were similar anime in the past, all about guiding a hopeless generation, from Great Teacher Onizuka, to Welcome to the NHK. None of them had such illogical stuff in their premise to break the immersion right away. Although they were usually pretty optimistic and naïve, I never felt like they were bullshiting the viewer to this degree. ReLife is just pandering a core audience and then pretends to be smart and different. It’s not, it’s another shitty school comedy with awful messages that go against the very life lessons it’s trying to teach.