Re-Kan! Episode 13: Summer Memories (FINAL)

“I hope we’ll all continue to spend our days together, one by one, just like this.”

After the events of Amami losing her sixth sense, we finish off the show with one last round of fun with the entire group, humans and ghosts. This was such a simple finale, there’s really no need for me to summarize it with a lot of detail.

Like any other plotless episode of Re-Kan, this one involves the friends spending time together the whole day. They go to an amusement park, and then afterwards they go to Amami’s house for a sleepover. This episode gathered all of the ghosts that we’ve met in the show and showcased them here. As a surprise to Amami (and Inoue), Uehara and the others invite the ghosts with them to the amusement park. They even have the slasher site ghost through live feed. They go on rides with the ghosts on them too, they eat, and they go into a haunted house, where funnily enough Amami was afraid of the fake ghosts inside. What I thought funny was roll-call samurai’s reactions to everything, like thinking the carousel was full of dead animals and the animatrons in the haunted house being bound ghosts.

We were introduced to a little ghost girl for a bit, though we never got a story with her. As a little girl, Amami went to that same amusement park with her father. She had gotten separated from him and wound up lost and crying. The little ghost girl helped her and led her to her father. They thank her, and all she says to them is to come back with her friends to play with her. Amami recalled coming to the park before but she didn’t really remember much. When they were at the park the group found a little boy who was lost, and the little girl popped up again. When the boy’s parents were found, the little girl ghost told Amami that she was glad that she had come back. And it was at that moment that Amami remembered the little girl. Not much in terms of story, but now Amami’s made a new friend, and I’m sure in the future she’ll be paying her visits whenever she has a chance to go to the amusement park.

The group heads to Amami’s house for a sleepover, they do fun summer things, Amami and Inoue share a cute shippy moment (to which I agree with the gross cat), and the show comes to a close. For a finale, it was really calm. It felt like it could have been any other episode, and I think last week’s episode could have been a better finale, for drama’s sake. But I suppose it was fun to see the friends spend time together after that ordeal.

Amami really has special friends, and as the slasher site ghost said, unusual. Like I had mentioned in the first episode, they could have gone in the usual direction where Amami was bullied for her sixth sense, but they didn’t do that, and I’m glad. Her friends are really understanding, and I think they’re the only people that would ever invite ghosts for Amami to hang out with them. It’s really weird, but it’s so normal for them. They became friends with these ghosts and they’ve become so accustomed to them. It’s not easy to find people as open-minded as them, so Amami is a very lucky person to have them all. You can tell they really care about her too, and the ghosts, because they really didn’t need to invite them, but they did anyway.

Re-Kan has been completely ignored. The only people that watched this show are me, the couple people that comment on my posts, and probably a rock. Basically, it’s been swept under the rug of the Spring season shows. And that’s a little saddening because I liked this show. Was it fantastic? No. It doesn’t bring anything new to the table because stories like these have been done before. And I can admit that there were episodes that I found boring. But there’s just a certain charm to this show that kept me drawn. I was worried in the first episode because with a slow-paced slice of life like this, I thought I wasn’t going to be able to handle it, but I was wrong.

I think the charm I found in this show were the ghosts. They weren’t scary or anything. Rather, they were pretty cute and silly. This show wasn’t meant to be scary anyway. There’s a lot of ghosts in the show and they can make the normal and boring everyday life to be much more fun and colorful. They all have different personalities and it was nice to see them all gather together in the finale. You could see just how many ghosts Amami knew and how many they all became friendly with. When you have a comedy ghost story you expect the ghosts to bring something to the table and in this case they definitely did. My favorites are a tie with Kogal and roll-call samurai.

Even though I knew this was going to be a comedy story, I was thrilled when Re-Kan took some serious episodes to share some ghosts’ stories. I think this is where the show shined the most because I would always find myself as an emotional wreck in the end. Kogal and the little hospital girl’s stories were the best in my opinion. The episodes weren’t over-dramatic. They were touching and they made you really feel for the ghosts and the people involved. In that regard, the showed shine. As with any other slice of life series, other episodes consisted of Amami and her friends hanging out with ghosts causing shenanigans in the background. Some were good and others were skippable. I would laugh here and there, but not crack up. The comedy was very simple, with people in the background staring at Amami talking to thin air, and the usual gags of Inoue screaming when ghosts were around.

The ghosts were the charm, but how did the human characters hold up? When it comes to development, it was minimal and mainly went to Inoue. The others were pretty okay, but I have to admit that I needed awhile to memorize their names. Some characters got some backstories, like Esumi and Uehara. Of course we have sweet little Amami, and tsundere Inoue. I think the character that got the least amount of screentime and attention was Ogawa. We don’t really know much of anything about her except that she loves zombies. And then there’s Yamada…yeah. So when it came to the actual human characters, they could be a little lacking.

Animation and sound? The OST was overused. It’s like they didn’t have much songs, but at least the OP and ED were cute. Animation I think was its biggest weakness. The production value of this show is pretty low. You could tell with zoomed-out shots. There isn’t much when it comes to detail either. Like the show, the style is very simple. And I just hate that with Esumi and Uehara, they would still draw their eyes when they had hair covering over it. I don’t know why they decided to do that, that’s just extra work when drawing. But it’s also really ugly and just makes this anime look like it could have aired in 2005, which I think is a reason why people never bothered watching this show.

Even then, I really liked this show. It was sweet, relaxing, cute, and it could be funny while also touching. With the emotional episodes I was always teary-eyed. I was actually really impressed how they were able to adapt a 4-koma manga into a good series. There’s not much replay value when it comes to Re-Kan but I still think people should check it out. If you want to watch a cute show to pass the time, watch Re-Kan. You might get emotional like me, too. Though this show wasn’t perfect, I liked it a lot and would give it a 7/10.