Streaming: Funimation
Episodes: 12
Source: Original
Episode Summary: Half a year ago, Minato was on top of the world. He and his middle school water polo team were national champions. But a freak car accident left Minato in a coma, and now that he’s finally awakened he’s missing those memories of middle school and the sport he once loved. All he wants is a feeling of normalcy, and when he pledges to re-join water polo it’s because he wants his family to worry about him less. But his atrophied muscles and the fact that he still has to study for high school entrance exams mean that his promise to take up his formerly favorite sport again is one he likely won’t be able to keep.
After 8 months of studying and rehab, Minato is accepted into a perfectly average high school that’s close to his house. Moments into his first day, however, is when he starts getting bombarded by requests to join sports clubs, including the water polo club. Jo, the head of the club, recognizes Minato from his middle school days, and Eitarou (Minato’s biggest fan) corroborates this against Minato’s will. As Minato runs from his two pursuers, he discovers one more forgotten relationship that may have once held a place of high importance for him.
Impressions: You know me, I’ve always got some kind of sports anime on my radar. What was once an overlooked or even maligned genre of anime has now become deservedly well-loved by a good chunk of anime fandom. It’s difficult to understand how stories about people achieving great things could have been so frowned upon in earlier days except for the fact that a certain strain of geeks have always tended to look down on sports in general. That’s a soap box speech for another time, though. The modern era of anime fandom has been pretty bountiful in terms of sports anime, to the point where it’s easy to crack jokes about anime storytellers having to dig deeper and deeper to find more obscure sports to set themselves apart from the myriad stories set on the soccer pitch or baseball field.
I know very little about water polo except for the little bit we played in my high school swimming class, and in that case I’m almost positive we weren’t following all the rules to the letter. After watching this episode of Re-MAIN I feel like I haven’t learned much of anything about it beyond what I already knew by osmosis, and that’s a bit of an issue for me. Character drama in sports anime always takes center stage; that’s something I like about the genre. But sports anime is such because, ideally in my opinion, it frames its character drama around playing sports and the relationships formed in that social microcosm. We spend so much time dealing with other parts of Minato’s story that we haven’t made it to the (to me) more fulfilling ensemble portion yet.
This episode is mostly about Minato and his recovery, which is fine. I like that he doesn’t leave the hospital and seem to be instantly well as in many other series. I think the issue is that his amnesia situation stretches my ability to suspend my disbelief, and so I’m left spending too much time thinking “oh, this is kind of silly” and wishing that we’d just meet some other less cringe characters and get on with things.
Amnesia is a weird plot device. I think in real life it’s much less common and absolute than anime makes it out to be. Anime storytelling tosses amnesia around like candy at a parade. Everyone can have some! It’s a convenience when you want your main character to be as uninformed about something as most of your audience, because then you have an instant POV character whose inexperience can serve as an excuse to info-dump. But why go so far as to make Minato into an amnesiac? Why bother telling us that he was top-tier at his sport and that he had these great relationships with his team if it suddenly doesn’t have to matter? I get that it’s a convenience, but it simply starts to feel cheap. I’d rather he just be a noob than someone with an unconvincingly-portrayed history.
As for the rest of this episode, it’s a pretty standard opener in most respects. It’s not bad by any means, but I think I was looking for something to “wow” me (or at least teach me something) and it’s not quite there yet. Unfortunately I just completed a re-watch of Stars Align a couple of days ago, and while that series’ non-ending is a bit of a challenge it really manages to balance the drama and action really well, so perhaps that’s partly keeping me from forming a quicker attachment to this series.
Pros: I came down a little bit harsh on this episode – that’s the danger of having too many expectations ahead of time. But in most respects it’s pretty solid and I wouldn’t want my pretty specific complaints to misrepresent the overall package.
One thing I liked is that, although it was portrayed in montage, it’s clear that Minato has to go through a lot of hard work to get back to a physical baseline. He spends 8 months both studying to get into high school and also undergoing physical therapy so that he can build some muscle tone back and walk without a mobility aid. One thing I think anime isn’t great at is portraying how people recover from injuries or long hospital stays like this. I mean, so much of anime is part fantasy anyway; even slice-of-life series aren’t necessarily in the business of showing the daily grind of living. I like that Minato’s struggle (and love of manga) is shown, even if it’s fast-forwarded.
Cons: It’s rare for me to feel compelled to complain about specific characters, but by golly Eitarou is about as annoying as they come. I don’t know how many of you might remember the old DiC English dub of Sailor Moon, but there was that geeky character Melvin who was pretty annoying. Eitarou is kind of like that times 10 for me.
Content Warnings: PTSD/Nightmares related to a traumatic event. Drowning imagery.
Would I Watch More? – Debatable at this point. So far I’ve marked this as “paused” and I suspect I’ll come back for at least another couple of episodes, but it’s not as high a priority as I would have expected. I think it has potential, but the very questionable use of amnesia as a framing device has soured me on it a bit.