I don’t dislike RE-MAIN so far, but I do see it as symptomatic of a larger problem in anime.  The growing segmentation of the medium, with the vast majority of series choosing a very specific box to squeeze into in order to chase commercial success, has stifled creativity tremendously.  And sports anime is not immune from this problem.  The box RE-MAIN has chosen has some very specific cliches inside it, and this series is making little effort to differentiate itself.  I’d hoped the presence of a relative heavyweight like Nishida Masafumi – who helped create some of those tropes – might insulate RE-MAIN from that a degree.  But on the evidence of the first two episodes he’s perfectly happy to color inside the lines.

Ultimately – and this is surprising given Nishida’s presence – I find RE-MAIN to suffer from stilted dialogue and flat characterizations.  Minato has an interesting story, and I feel empathy for his unusual experience.  But I can’t say I actually like him – he’s kind of a drip, to be honest.  The family stuff is better than the school stuff but a much smaller part of the narrative.  Maybe the new characters introduced this week will inject some life into the series (not so far), but I find both the captain and (especially) Eitarou to be very annoying more than anything.

What about the love interest, Chinu-san (the girl from the photograph)?  Too early to say, though her encounter with Minato was pretty silly.  Especially using the so-called bet he made with her to justify Minato agreeing to join the team.  I didn’t buy any of that for a minute, but that doesn’t mean Chinu couldn’t wind up an engaging character.  Her appearance here was pretty by the numbers, so it’s too early to say.

Things do improve once the boys get in the pool (three of them anyway).  The “PKs” are animated pretty well, and the process of learning about a sport always holds potential for interest.  Water polo (even I know this much) is a sport contested almost entirely below the surface, and it’s hardly a surprise that the desperately unfit Minato would cramp up after having to swim in place for a few minutes.  Any sports anime has the potential to be interesting in its depiction of the sport, so hopefully this one will be.  But it’s going to have to offer more on the character side to really hold my interest long-term.  Right now I’m honestly not super-optimistic.