Re-Main

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.

Here's an odd take but probably not a unique one. I think quite a few will be feeling the same way. Re-Main is a sports anime that would have benefitted greatly by not being a sports anime. An anime torn between being a character driven type drama and a sports anime, failing to deliver on both and ending up to be average in all areas. I can't give it a low score as the anime was not bad. But there was a lot of potential left unfulfilled. It's middle of the road 5/10, there is better out there, and I would only recommend if you ... are really bored. Continue reading for some light spoilers and more in detail explanation.

As a sports anime, Re-Main leaves a lot to be desired. I came away from watching feeling I know very little about Water polo. The anime itself featured very little as most episodes focused more on the characters. Even episodes that did feature water polo still focused on the characters and how they were feeling during the game. It's worrying when you're watching the final episode and there are still people narrating the rules of the game to themselves to keep the audience up to date with info. Meaning the first 11 episodes have not done enough to educate the audience on exactly on what's happening. This detracts from enjoyment in a sense, as when you do not know what is happening, you do not know what to feel.

The character front, the main focus on this anime, it's also surprisingly weak. The only character given any real depth is the MC, Minato. After having a date with Truck-kun, he loses a span of time and years worth of memory. The anime follows his growth of learning about who he was as a person, people's perception of the "new" Minato, as well as when his memories return and how he copes with this and his "new" life. I actually really like this idea. There's a lot that can be done with this, interactions with characters can change quickly given knowledge of characters, previous experiences etc and this did happen to small extent. If the anime focused more on this, and was not tied down to a sports setting, I feel it could be a very interesting watch. Re-main is not that show. It could have been used a lot more and to greater effect.

The supporting characters are weak. Even after just finishing, I barely remember any names. They fall into their stereotype, and that's how I remember them by. They have maybe 1 story element (although I'd go as far as to say, some have almost none), each that gets semi resolved by the final episode but none of them are noteworthy and any investment was not rewarded.

Re-Main is a long drink of water. It's certainly not bad. It ticks enough boxes. But it falls into mediocre valley. It's not good, and not bad enough to be entertaining (though the latter I find is rare in anime). Regarding art and sound, again both are serviceable but forgettable. There was nothing much to standout so this review will feel rather bare bones because of it. I will not remember Re-main or look to rewatch this further down the line. As for Sports anime, there are lot better out there. For a recent example, Bakuten! a sports anime for gymnastics is one I would recommend. It's also not perfect but I'd rather watch that over Re-main. Please feel free to read my Bakuten review for further thoughts recommendations.

Thanks for reading :)

*SPOILERS*
This is my first time writing a review and for this show because what this show did was special. The fist 7 episodes were great I was ready to put it in my top 3 for sports anime but then episode 8 came along and ruined the whole series for me. Everything was fine until they decided to make the mc a jerk and mean to everyone. This dosent make sense seeing as how everyone was treating him after the accident. They were not scared of him or anything. I have to drop this anime because the only two ways I see this anime going. ... He keeps his jerk ways and gains his new memories back and changes for the better, or he dosent regain his new memories and just becomes nice which I dont see happening. So i cant keep watching because none of these seem good to me.

or a third option where to hits his head and goes back to how he was after the accident

Alright so this anime Is gonna be join Free in The
MOM I CAM EXPLAIN WHY IM WATCHING SOME SHIRTLESS BOYS IN A POOL!! for us males

Story 6/10
I didn't hate the story but didn't think it was amazing as well it's a nice story the fact that they made an anime on water polo was good the best part about the story was that it wasn't to boring too watch


Art 10/10 Sound 7/10
Damn mappa did an absolutely amazing job on the art I loved it
The sound hmmmm not being a k-pop fan I still liked the op and the waterr splash ... sounds are good as well

Character 8/10
I liked the characters a lot and the protagonist minato is pretty good as well the best is eitaro oka



The overall is 6/10
Its really good but a 6 is a fine rating as watched the episode every week and trust me i recommend it to you
Also I can change the rating it depends

Sayonara

Disclaimer: I played competitive water polo in college and a 5 out of 10 to me is average

For most people, water polo isn't something you start at a young age, especially on the east coast. To take it a step farther, most people don't even know about the sport at all. I swam for years, but I really wanted to spend my college years doing a team sport. Just like with Shuugo, having a background in swimming really helps in the ability to keep up with the play. As we saw with the first quarter of the last episode, there's a lot of times ... where you're swimming back and forth. There's also strengths that you need to possess to succeed at each individual position. Re-Main provides us with these characters with unique personalities and strengths that go beyond a lot of sports anime out there.

To me, this season of Re-Main invested most of its time to creating the team we care about rather than the sport of water polo. This was probably for the best, as from my experience you really learn the most by playing in matches. There's more strategy that's integral to every match, but again that wasn't the focus of the show. We are practically given the blueprints to how this team that's not very good now has the potential to be great. It's a very standard plot, and when it tried to be different it was eh. I wasn't really interested in the hot potato game of Minato's memory/personality. At the end of the day, we do see relevant and interesting growth of these characters, although it took the entire season for the payoff in the last two episodes.

There were obvious plays that only exist in this realm of sports drama like the whole team defending Minato. But there were some very basic technical aspects that are glaringly wrong. Minato, even with all of his experience, tried to block a right-handed players shot with his right hand. You need to rather use your left to be in parallel with the ball for a block to actually happen. And realistically, it's incredibly difficult to play water polo with no subs. Even in the best condition, there's just a strategic advantage to having subs, since you can come back in whenever unlike soccer.

Overall, I came into this show already with a background of water polo, so I can already admit that I have extreme bias and different wants from this show. But as a sports show, there's been better as well as much much worse. It'll be interesting to see if another season comes in the future, but I'm glad that it exposed many people to a sport that I love very much!

Re-Main had a great potential but couldn't display as per it's calibre. This Water Polo themed sports anime by MAPPA had great animation, a simple but captivating plot, but the execution felt 50-50.

With just 12 episodes, Re-Main didn't covered enough aspects of the game to give a thorough enjoyment. A bit of comedy, with some past of the characters, the anime was strictly fine, not because it was short, but because it couldn't capture any aspect perfectly, be it with friendship, personal life or sports whatsoever.

It was an okay affair for me and I hope if it gets a sequel announced in the near ... future, the story is built better. Among the leagues of Haikyuu, Kuroko and other sports anime, Re-Main was a decent watch, but couldn't create a big impact.

My Rating : 6/10

Trying to make a mini review based on 5 chapters, I would say that this anime disappoints me a little, although, I had some funny moments and the protagonist is nice, this anime has quite disappointing things,
to start .....the "conflict" is horrible : MInato Kiyomizu its a water polo genius, who after winning a national tournament, falls into a coma after a traffic accident, wakes up after half a year and 3 weeks and it turns out that he lost all his memories of 3 years? why 3 years? We do not know. They don't give us any kind of explanation for this, then ... at school, a girl comes out of nowhere and kisses him, tells him about a couple of stupid things about an agreement they had, and she leaves and automatically stops caring for the HISTORY.
several friends reappear in his life, basically the girl who gave him a kiss before forces him to return to water polo, even if he did not remember anything about it, his captain and other guys who decide to join work to get 7 members in the team, here we meet shuugo amihama, the most "interesting" character (for now, although he really doesn't have much to offer) after forcing him back, they have a match where the kiyomizu group loses outright. Up to this point in the series, I lost all interest in the conflict and the protagonist's problems, the secondary characters couldn't matter less and the sports scenes couldn't be more uncomfortable.
has some awkward scenes, like when everyone in the
Kiyomizu group are in a very small bathtub for their bodies, and for them it is the most normal thing in the world, but it is very uncomfortable for the viewer to see, there are also other boring scenes that you could quietly skip and it would not affect the story at all.
The opening, without the intention of offending, is a bad song, visually mediocre and even uncomfortable, the ending is acceptable or even good, but this anime fails a lot musically. It has a good animation, in general, but when the characters are in the pool playing, some things start to look bad and even start to be annoying to enjoyment. But it doesnt really matter... i think this anime is other spokon for the year that will be forgotten and finally finish.

by the way, I'm going to keep looking at it hoping to find something really interesting.

The anime is quite abnormal, but unique for a sports anime, but it's watchable. It 's also created by MAPPA so the animation and art-style is top notch. Though there should have been more content on the 3 year and 1 year long periods, like when they kind of "co-existed". Although in sports anime there's always a character who is a lot worse than others, nothing bad in it, but it's kind of "used". The characters were intriguing but I wish there was more content with his old team. I think some people might love it, others, well... enjoy it. It's a hard anime to ... hate.

Good anime. I can say the same thing I said about Buddy Daddies. Short and sadly unfinished. That's all the negative things I could say about it.

I've already stopped watching the 1st season anime, because most of them are just used as Novel promotions, and a lot of good stories went to waste.

Another sin of Remain is that it's an anime original :/ I can't find out what will happen after the anime and it hasn't been continued for almost 4 years and it may not get one. -.-

The story dealt with the past and the present at the same time, and this is true ... of the new and old teammate. While the story also had a family and love thread, and he turned from an egotistical MC into a normal guy and team player! It had everything a good anime needs. (good start)

It's worth watching, but unlike Buddy Daddies, it didn't get an ending, only the season ended with the beginning of a new life, but the plot itself remained unfinished.

It's worth it, but it's unfinished, so everyone should think twice before starting.

I gave it an 8 for the beginning, but there's been no news about the sequel for almost 4 years, no manga or novel about how it will end, so I finally decided to rate it between 6 and 7.

If there is a sequel and this quality remains, I'll give it an 8 rating again.

I did not Re-Main Watching.

'Haikyu!!' is the gold standard when it comes to sports anime. That's unavoidable. So when Mappa came out with Re-Main I was excited to see how this would measure up. It has an interesting story premise, water polo prodigy Kiyomiza Minato fell into a coma after a car accident and has forgotten who he is, his teammates and has to re-learn who he is and how to play. Also Mappa has a great animation team (when they're not being crunched into dust) so I was hoping for blood pumping water polo action.

Unfortunately, you won't see any water polo until around ... maybe episode 3 or 4. The first half of the season is dedicated to developing the team which is fine. They all have good chemistry with each other and there are some genuinely funny moments but... it's not anything you haven't seen before if you've watched a sports anime.
By the time I had gotten to episode 6 I wasn't interested in continuing and thats a shame because it is a beautiful show. The one match I did watch was well directed and animated but it just... didn't make me feel pumped. For it's interesting premise it's sports anime formula is generic.

I think I might give this another chance when I have a bit more time. I do know people who enjoy it and I don't want to turn off new viewers from giving it a chance because I do want to support original anime, but for right now it hasn't got enough to keep me watching.
So for right now:

5/10 mediocre