ReLIFE

8.0(637,195)

MAL Score

Ranked #819

Popularity #151

Drama
Romance
School

Episodes: 13
Duration: 23 min per ep
Aired: Jul 2, 2016 to Sep 24, 2016
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

At 27, Arata Kaizaki has become the kind of man others write off—unable to hold a steady job after leaving his first company and drifting from one short-term position to the next. His routine is interrupted when Ryou Yoake of the ReLife Research Institute offers him a strange chance at a fresh start: take an experimental pill and rebuild his life. Arata agrees, only to wake up the next morning in the body of a 17-year-old.

The offer comes with a condition. As part of the experiment, Arata must spend a full year attending high school as a transfer student while Ryou keeps a close watch. Expecting adulthood to make the experience easy, Arata quickly learns how much has changed—academics, fitness, and even school rules don’t bend to his confidence. Caught between past regrets and present challenges, he works to adapt to his second adolescence and connect with classmates he’s only beginning to understand.

Otaku Consensus

ReLIFE earns its strong fan reputation by turning a familiar second-chance hook into a character-driven school drama, with Tomochi Kosaka’s direction and the Yokote/Hyoudou series composition giving small interpersonal shifts real weight. Viewers consistently praise its wholesome emotional payoff, Arata’s growth, and the Rena-Chizuru conflict as more engaging than the premise first suggests. The recurring criticism is equally consistent: TMS Entertainment’s TV production is visually modest, leans too often on chibi/slapstick shortcuts, and has patches of uneven storytelling.

Why You Should Watch

Watch ReLIFE if you want adult regret processed through school-drama mechanics without isekai wish fulfillment or melodramatic excess. It scratches a similar itch to Welcome to the NHK in its concern for social failure and rehabilitation, but trades cynicism for a warmer, more observational tone; it also overlaps with Toradora!-style classroom friction, especially in how misunderstandings harden into emotional standoffs. The appeal is not that Arata is magically competent, but that his maturity often fails him in ordinary ways: tests, rules, fitness, and basic communication become pressure points. For viewers who like romance to grow out of behavior rather than grand confession scenes, the show’s careful attention to awkwardness, jealousy, and self-correction gives its 13-episode run unusual emotional density.

Key Characters

A
Arata Kaizaki
Arata stands out because his school-life comedy is filtered through the shame, caution, and workplace scars of a 27-year-old rather than the usual teenage insecurity.
R
Ryou Yoake
Ryou functions less like a standard mentor and more like a clinical observer, making ordinary classroom scenes feel quietly monitored and ethically uncomfortable.
C
Chizuru Hishiro
Chizuru is the show’s kuudere-adjacent emotional puzzle: a student with almost no communication skills who is actively trying, and often failing, to change.
R
Rena
Rena gives the series one of its sharpest social conflicts, with her tension against Chizuru turning school rivalry into a study of pride and insecurity.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
The strongest AniList tags are Rehabilitation at 97% and Age Regression at 93%, which accurately signal that the series is built around recovery and behavioral change more than a simple romance setup.
2
TMS Entertainment’s adaptation is not praised as a visual showcase; critics specifically call out limited visual design and animation, while noting that the character writing carries the show past those constraints.
3
The 13-episode structure gives ReLIFE a brisk TV-drama rhythm, with reviews noting that individual episodes often introduce meaningful developments even when the broader storytelling feels inconsistent.
4
The Rena-Chizuru conflict is singled out in available episode coverage as a major interpersonal flashpoint, and it is one of the clearest examples of the series using school drama to expose emotional immaturity.
5
The production leans on chibi and slapstick comedy enough for critics to identify it as a stylistic habit, making the humor more overtly cartoonish than the show’s heavier rehabilitation themes might suggest.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: ReLIFE is based on the work of original creator Sou Yayoi, with Tomochi Kosaka directing the 2016 TV anime at TMS Entertainment.
Fun fact 2: Series composition was handled by two writers, Michiko Yokote and Kazuho Hyoudou, which helps explain the show’s mix of workplace-adjacent adult regret, school comedy, and romance-drama beats.
Fun fact 3: Junko Yamanaka handled character design, while Kentarou Akiyama served as art director and Tomoko Zama handled art design, separating character readability from the show’s restrained background presentation.
Fun fact 4: The anime aired from July 2, 2016 to September 24, 2016, finishing as a compact 13-episode seasonal run rather than a long-form school romance.
Fun fact 5: Its database footprint is unusually strong for a modestly produced character drama: MAL lists it at 7.96 from 637,135 votes with a #151 popularity rank, while AniList records a 78/100 score and 6,955 favourites.