It seems as if the non-traditional seasonal anime release model is going to become more and more prominent in the years ahead. That means I’m going to have to learn to accept it, but to be honest I still have a hard time consuming my anime that way. I’m not a binge-watcher and never have been, but it’s as a blogger where the Netflix model specifically messes with my biorhythms. I’m not sure if ReLIFE (actually on Crunchyroll) was the first show released this way, but it’s the first one I remember – so far that reason it’s always the poster child for it in my mind.
The fact is, I’ve probably never embraced ReLIFE as much as I would have had it been a regular weekly TV anime. These kinds of series tend to get shuffled to the end of the pile for when I have free time, because the weekly ones are always insistently there – and since I never really have free time, they get pushed back or lost altogether. I realize it’s kind of silly to be blogging Kanketsu-hen as if it were a Wednesday show several months after its entirety dropped on Netflix, but this is how I can force myself to deal with it – and there’s a big whole in the middle of the week this season just asking to be filled.
But now, as we approach the end, I find myself getting quite emotionally wrapped up in ReLIFE again. In fact there was a moment when Arata and Chizuru were at the end of their Christmas date (I love that she had no idea Christmas Eve was the traditional date night) when I get a little verklempt. That was when the two of them arrived back at the train station and Arata said “Can we keep walking for a bit?” There was nothing especially remarkable about that moment, except it so poignantly captured the feeling of wanting something you know is ending to never end. you know – like childhood.
Maybe there’s a deeper message to this story, that what we really want in our hearts is simple, but it’s as we enter a world of distractions and obligations that we lose sight of it. Chizuru and Arata on a date is not really a new thing – only her acknowledging it by using that word is. But as complicates as life feels when you’re in high school, it’s actually pretty straightforward compared to what’s to come – as both these people found out. In a funny sort of way I think the ReLIFE hook may be the weakest part of the premise, because it’s the least relatable part of a very believable story. But as a metaphor and a device, it’s certainly effective.
