Re-Main

When Minato Kiyomizu wakes up in a hospital, he learns that he has been comatose for 203 days. As it turns out, a car accident has caused him to lose all memory of his middle school journey. Eventually, he discovers his former glory in water polo and desires to continue where he has left off. However, embarrassingly becoming aware of the massive disparity between his old and current self, Minato begins intensive rehabilitation in hopes of starting anew—a life without water polo.

Yet, Minato is promptly reminded of his past prowess and a promise on his very first day in Yamanami High School. Soon enough, despite being completely aware of his ineptitude, he joins the school's water polo club! While needing to relearn the sport's basics, he, along with his clubmates, must recruit new members to attain the required seven-man roster. With that, Minato tries to rekindle his deeply buried talent for water polo—and become one of Japan's renowned players once again.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kiyomizu, Minato Main

Uemura, Yuuto Japanese

Joujima, Jou Main

Kimura, Subaru Japanese

Oka, Eitarou Main

Nishiyama, Koutarou Japanese

Kawakubo, Chinu Supporting

Lynn Japanese

Inomata, Yutaka Babayaro Supporting

Hatanaka, Tasuku Japanese

Ushimado, Yoshiharu Supporting

Hirose, Daisuke Japanese

Amihama, Shuugo Supporting

Saitou, Souma Japanese

Momosaki, Riku Supporting

Uchida, Yuuma Japanese

Ejiri, Takekazu Supporting

Furukawa, Makoto Japanese

Kakihana, Keita Supporting

Yashiro, Taku Japanese

Kimura, Makoto Producer

Ootsuka, Manabu Producer

Matsui, Chinatsu Producer

Saga, Hayato Producer

Reviews

Oct 2, 2021

calce

Recommended

This anime as a whole does not deserve more than a 7. I'm not being honest putting an 8. But the last chapter has made it so for me.

The first 7-8 chapters do not deserve more than a 6, the important event that happens made the series a 7 until chapter 11, but the last chapter.... ah!!! I loved it so much. it has made me bloom many beautiful emotions. There are many anime that I would recommend before Re-main, but if you have time and want to see a nice story of a group of students who become friends playing a sport, give it ... a try!

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Oct 2, 2021

KANLen09

Mixed Feelings

Re-Main: the old term for "offside" in water polo, but honestly, this anime can be also said in this manner: it Re-Mains to be seen of the potential calibre of how much this show could've had, that squandered some liberties to make this show a decent one.

Paraded as one of many shows at the MAPPA Stage 10th Anniversary event, Re-Main is the brainchild of Tiger & Bunny author Masafumi Nishida, of which this not-so-young director has oversaw the anime and movie adaptations of his work in the past. And now, Re-Main is his 2nd self-directed series, and imagine someone like him has to manage all ... of these positions: Chief Director, Original Creator, Series Composer, Scriptwriter, Sound Director. That's 5 main staff roles all burdened into one for some creative control, and I feel that while Masafumi Nishida might've overworked himself to the core (as with MAPPA's inhumane work standards), with the upcoming Ex-Arm "successor" lookalike show that is Tesla Note (which is also written by this guy), I'm not sure if Nishida-san is able to cope with the backlash that was the full-on CGI abomination when the anime comes out next season in Fall (trying to futureproof if it does look like Ex-Arm, which I hope it's not).

Back to the anime, Re-Main tells the story and plot of water polo from the perspective of Minato Kiyomizu, who was a prolific water polo player in his middle school days, until a traffic accident led him to comatose and being an amnesiac. Exactly 203 days later (which I really find it very specific, anyone can tell me why), Minato is awakened, but he loses 3 years worth of his water polo memories in exchange, both skill and expertise. The challenge is that with his "newfound" brainwash of a memory, Minato remembers that he has done water polo before (at the slightest hint), and that everyone idolizes him because he was part of a winning team, so much that they tried to recruit him. Nonetheless, he would come back to water polo being the newbie veteran that needs to jog his memories every so now and then, abetted from a fellow girl athlete that challenged him to be Japan's top water polo athlete. Win, and they'd be boyfriend-girlfriend; lose, and 110,000 yen (taxes inclusive) would be paid out from Minato's hands to her. If you can't tell already, Minato has a lot of things going for him at the height of his passion for water polo garnering fame and popularity, but alas the accident would tell a different story about a handsome guy like Minato, wearing a facade that breaks all expectations and reveals their true colours.

Since this is a sports show, no doubt that the characters will have to play the most important aspect of the anime: sell their characters of their teamwork, camaraderie, and objectively their likeness reflected towards us the audience. But this is where Re-Main shows it's Achilles Heel of characters that are nothing more than one-note motivational spokespeople, while having their backstories as simple as possible to fit into the context of the entire anime. That's not to say that it's bad though, it's just that there was something missing towards the overall execution that kinda hampered my watching experience of watching so many sports shows come and gone, using them as bookmarkers of comparison. Maybe it's the idea of knowing who is your rival, should at least help to have a goal for yourself, that the anime failed to focus on what's important at certain scenes.

Starting off with the MC Minato himself, the first thing you'd see him of is the cheerful and innocent young boy look who kinda resembles the mentality of a 6th grader. And you'd be right because of the loss of his memories that exhibits his youthful self to others. Turn things up a notch, and you'd see a darker side of Minato, which is nothing like who he was initially. And take everything that I said about the "Light" Minato and turn it on its head to see a boy who is quite proud, arrogant, spiteful and full of ego because of his accomplishments, thinking that it's all a one-man show (which is painfully, obviously not). Minato, maybe you should learn this adage not to "take things too far". Minato's "stalker" Eitarou Oka is a spirited, bubbly boy who is like a walking encyclopedia about all things Minato related and not to mention water polo as well. But like Minato himself, Eitarou bases on lies and deceit just to follow the icon around in his tracks and acts whatever is appropriate to be like the water polo ace in every regard.

I'll touch on the other players in a lightning round (because there isn't much to say about them):
- The fellow Yamanami High players of Captain Jo Jojima, Shugo Amihama, Takekazu Ejiri, Yutaka Babayaro Inomata and Yoshiharu Ushimado, along with Minato and Eitarou. Captain Jo has to bear the beginning grunt of recruiting members into the water polo team. Shugo has a beef with his older brother, Shogakukan's Keita Kakihana, because he always felt that as much as he is a fellow sibling, he's also a rival that Shugo looked up to in swimming, before Keita's tonal shift to go water polo broke his momentum and gave up swimming altogether. It's the efforts of Jo and the rest that brought him back to water polo. There's the hot-tempered Ejiri, the sweet-making Inomata and the soft-spoken Ushimado, and that fits the 7-men water polo team.
- The "rivals" that are all against Minato because of his expertise: the Rikka Academy's "Hokuriku Three" of a hilarious trash losing joke team (Takeshi Toyama, Akihisa Fukui, Norimichi Ishikawa) and the serious contenders from Minato's former rival team Shogakukan High (Riku Momosaki, Koki Toguchi, Akimitsu Bizen) which gives them a real challenge.
- The girl at the very beginning, Chinu Kawakubo, she's just there to fill in where the plot breaks are to "smoothen" relations between herself and Minato. Like she's a LITERATE plot device, and that kind of characterization is always a no-no when it comes to AniManga, especially an original series like this one. To say the least, she acted out of sympathy and spite towards Minato, so she's no love interest or anything. What a sad thing to squander her character like that.

I'll give credit where it's due: whether you'd think that MAPPA is turning into the modern Madhouse where it used to be quality over quantity (and now the other way around), you cannot deny that there're some good production artistry within Re-Main. All of these are still heralded by Masafumi Nishida, who devoted himself to research about water polo, even the effects that you see in the anime are all actually based off from real-life water polo sports, add in the effects for some colorful visuals that's culminated in the show's OP. MAPPA always pumps out some good animation and visuals, and Re-Main adds itself into the catalogue of being artistic more than anything for a nice touch.

Music, top-notch. The experimentation of K-Pop bands resurging in anime has been a popular choice to break away from the usual J-Pop stuff that becomes more stale overtime, and look no further than ENHYPEN's debut into the J-Pop scene with the OP song "Forget Me Not" I find it quite the fascination that while I'm not so much of a K-Pop hypebeast fan or anything, this inclusion (which is slowly becoming the norm) is a great one to diversify the music scene in Japan and for good reason. But to me, Shuugo Nakamura's ED was a pure winner because of one main reason: it's pellucid tones and lyrics (which foreshadows Minato's character development in the entire show) which makes the song a lot more enjoyable, one of my absolute favourite EDs of the season worth the listening repeat loop. In the backdrop of Summer shows of pretty mediocre OSTs, Re-Main managed to stick the landings for both songs.

I don't know about you, but while Re-Main isn't bad (or good for that matter), both the base and its foundations are quite shallow-thinking if you sum the anime up altogether as a whole. It's interesting if you're a pure Yaoi fangirl to gleam at the guys' naked 6-pack bodies with sporty underwear to cover privates, but as a sport, Re-Main falls short of something that is prevalent in most sports shows: consistency and good build-up, not rando situations that feel off and doesn't transition well with the core themes of the show. It's great for eye-balling naked bodies, but it's not on a story-character level, and the potential was there that sadly didn't get developed much. A shame, really.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Nov 19, 2021

chateaughost

Not Recommended

Informative

(spoiler-free)
This show is one of the strangest sports anime I’ve ever seen. Calling it just a bad show feels wrong somehow. And don’t get me wrong- this show is not good, but there’s just something so, so weird about it. It can’t seem to decide what it wants to be. It seems like they want to tell a more serious story but can’t figure out how to. None of the characters are likeable, and the show has a bad habit of retroactively making itself worse. The worst example of this is the final scene, which is so genuinely unsettling in its implications that I have ... no idea what to make of it.

Let’s start with the plot. In the first episode, we are introduced to our main character, Minato. He used to be a star water polo player, but on the way back from one of his games he was in a traumatic car accident that put him in a coma and caused him to lose several years of his memory. He has no memory of ever playing water polo, nor any particular love for it. In addition to that, his body has been affected by the year-long coma, and he isn’t in any condition to play a high-intensity sport like water polo. When he’s asked by his family if he intends to keep playing, he straight out tells them no. Of course, we as the audience know he’s going to get back into it- it’s right there on the cover! But the way that this happens is… not great.

Minato gets back into water polo not because he wanted to, but because some random girl tells him that before his accident, they agreed if he doesn’t become Japan’s best water polo player, he will owe her a lot of money, and she’s going to hold him to it. Putting aside the fact that no sane person would hold Minato to this deal he doesn’t remember making and is physically incapable of fufilling, this is dumb and creates further plot-related problems down the road. It takes away Minato’s agency as a character- he’s not taking up his old hobby because he chose to, he’s doing it because some rando is convinced he owes her money.

As for the sports aspect of this sports anime, they do the same thing every other sports anime does (school club with no members gets all the members they need except one, the guy they recruit has some baggage related to the sport, they give him group therapy for an episode and the show moves on), but the issue is that they’re… REALLY bad at water polo. Like, genuinely terrible, and they don’t ever get better. On one hand, I’m glad they didn’t try to make us believe this group of total amateurs has a real shot at winning a national tournament, but it’s also a bit frustrating watching them struggle to tread water eight episodes in. At one point they lose a practice match against a middle school team, and they take it embarrassingly hard.

The real issue with this show isn’t the water polo, though. It’s how every single character is an absolutely irredeemably awful person.

Multiple characters in this show take advantage of Minato’s condition, lying to him about past events or holding him responsible for things he has no memory of doing. Without getting into spoilers, the girl I mentioned before reveals something later on that completely ruins the show retroactively and also just makes her seem like a terrible person. One of the characters on the water polo team is, genuinely, one of the most unlikable and disgusting characters I’ve seen in a while. Don’t get me wrong- I love shithead morally grey anime boys as much as the next guy, but he is so out of place in this show. His actions feel too real, and he is never framed as anything but a sweet guy who might just be a little misguided in his attempts to make friends. He comes off as such a manipulative little toad that I genuinely had to get up and take a walk to calm down at one point.

The team constantly feels like it’s on the verge of falling apart. Nearly everyone has a token “I’m quitting the team” moment, but they never feel properly resolved. These moments don’t feel like road bumps they have to overcome as a group, they feel like wedges driving the characters further apart. It’s not even fun to watch them interact, they barely have any chemistry.

The final scene addresses a new aspect to the plot that was always there, but the show was carefully avoiding addressing directly. I don’t think the writers meant to retroactively turn their sports anime into a borderline psychological horror, but they sure did. After the final episode, I had to spend a few minutes just sitting in front of my screen, processing the implications of the protagonist’s final line. I have never been made so uncomfortable by a sports anime before.

Overall, I really can’t recommend this show. It can’t decide what it wants to be, and in its confusion it creates a surprisingly heavy plot that it simply cannot handle properly. I know that everyone has different tastes and are entitled to their own opinions, but I genuinely struggle to understand why there are people who like this show. If my description piqued your curiosity in any way, I would honestly just tell you to save your time and read a plot summary. There are a lot of hidden gem sports anime out there, but this is not one of them.

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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