RELife Episode 1 [Quick Look]

If you had the chance to redo a year of your life, would you take it?

Eva’s First Impression

If you had the chance to redo a year of your life, would you take it?

Kaizaki Arata is approached by Yoake Ryo who works for the ReLIFE Laboratory to be their No. 2 Test Subject for a one year experiment. Right off the bat we learn how Arata has made a handful of poor life decisions. He quit the one job he had after three months and has been unemployed with no success in passing his job interviews ever since.  Unfortunately for him, it only gets worse when he wounds up taking the darn pill because he was drunk. But perhaps this could possibly be the best decision he has ever made in the long run. He has now signed year contract with RELife’s program and has been appointed to attend high-school once again to experience his final year yet again. Needless to say, it will be interesting to see what he may or may not do differently, but regardless of what he chooses to do- he is already on a rough start. His first impression to his classmates is a delinquent after being caught with cigarettes, clumsy when it comes to remembering to bring his utensils and crazy for his sudden outbursts. Arata will also be facing a challenge of befriending his fellow classmates, it is already terribly awkward for him as he is really a 27 years old grown man- not to mention his self-esteem got pierced by another arrow after learning his teacher is in fact two years young than he is.

I decided to take a look at ReLIFE because the concept of the story intrigued me. In fact it is a question I am sure many of us as ourselves, “If you had the chance to redo a year of your life would you take it?”. When I asked myself this, I realized I wasn’t so sure if I wanted to do it despite the fact it could be helpful for those who struggled or had a terrible experience under certain circumstances such as last year of high-school, take everything which we learned through our previous struggle and adapt and adjust accordingly in attempt to not repeat the same mistakes. That being said, I am interested in seeing where did Arata go astray and what contributed to his poor decision he had made later on in life.

While the premise of RELife’s is a solid one and the moments of darkness are definitely piping my interest, all I could think of is, “Maybe I am better off just reading the manga?”. There were a number of things that threw me off and contributed to the discouragement to watch this show. My biggest problem with the premiere so far is its horrendous background music. I can’t tell you how distracting the god damn music was- especially the piano bits. It was so bad and annoying to listen to, I actually felt like it was ruining some scenes. The next is the lackluster quality, the visuals and colors are super bland. Mix that with the crappy BGM, it’s not exactly the combination you want to have. And after looking at the manga, while the character designs are more or less the same, I can see that I would much prefer to read it than to watch it.

Possibility of Blogging: No.
Possibility of Watching: No – Will Read Manga instead.

*Extra Note: All 13 episodes are out.