ReLIFE Review (Spoilers)

I remember seeing this manga in the trending page for quite a few months and I thought it was the silliest story ever.  A grown man who is a NEET going back to attend High School.  Felt like a story of a man who missed his youth, but after seeing this over and over again as a trending manga, I decided to give it a shot and started reading it.

The first few chapters I thought was silly, but I laughed at the main character fail at his return to high school (after taking a pill to change how he looks like to that of a high schooler).  He forgot his pencil case, didn’t study, had cigarettes in his book bag despite being a kid, and was physically unfit for physical education.   It was quite hilarious!  However, I still found the story quite silly.

As I continued reading the story, I started falling in love with the characters.  The main character Kaizaki, just has it unfair.  He quit his job on impulse because of how badly his bosses mistreated his co-workers, to the point that his senior commits suicide!  Despite that, because he quit his job so early, he was unable to find new work, and the ReLIFE experiment was what was giving him the chance to restart and find a new career.  The other characters were of course, high schoolers, yet just because they were young didn’t mean that they were immature.  I forget that high schoolers are quite mature, mainly because my high school had many students with a bad attitude.  The students were just… real, and were able to talk with the grown man Kaizaki as a friend (even though they all thought he was around their age).

Then the love stories were great!  The love story between 2 side characters, and the love story between Kaizaki and another high schooler!  As Kaizaki is an adult, he was stressed out in telling her his true feelings since she was a high schooler and he was an old man she’d simply forget about once the experiment was over.  In a year, he’d make a group of close friends that will only just forget about him in the end, and that’s just heart breaking.  At the same time, it’s not different from real life as you probably don’t talk with many of your high school friends like you use to once you grow up, but in our case… at least they remember us.

The ending, without going too much into spoilers, was amazing.  I loved it.  It was simple and straight to the point, not pulling any 5 centimeters per second ending bullshit, and just jumped straight to what we wanted to see.  Now that the story is over, I find an empty void in my heart.  A manga that I was once laughing at had somehow become a big part of my weekly routine, and I found myself excited more and more for each chapter.  I really hope that Kaizaki has the best life after his ReLIFE.