English Dub Review: RE-MAIN “Sorry, Who Are You?”
Overview (Spoilers Below):
Minato awakens to find himself in a hospital bed. After a car crash, he’s been in a coma for over six months, and though he’s out of it now, he’s lost the last three years of his memories. Thankfully, he has his father, mother, and little sister Asumi to lean on.
As he regains his spirit and drive, he decides to study hard in order to make it to high school despite missing the last three years of his school knowledge. He makes it in, but is hounded by an old friend named Eitaro as well as Jo, the captain of the water polo club—will Minato rejoin the club or remain in stasis?
Our Take:
I hadn’t heard much about RE-MAIN before Funimation announced the dub’s imminent arrival. The series is relatively new, having begun airing during the summer anime season. On first glance, it looked like a standard sport anime, but the premiere has a lot more going for it than that. With an intriguing plot and some solid relationship dynamics, the first episode of RE-MAIN is off to a good beginning.
It all starts with Minato. As the main character, we’re always in his head, and the writing delivers with some clever inner monologues and healthy doses of both optimism and sarcasm. One could argue that he’s a bit too happy about waking up with three years of memory loss and a non-ripped body, but Minato is an upbeat guy who’s fun to follow along with. Asumi, his younger sister, is a lot of fun too, and the banter between them was one of my favorite parts. Many shows focus too much on crazy plot contrivances and miss out on making solid dynamics between the cast members, but RE-MAIN seems like it’s hitting a home run on this front so far. I hope as time goes on the show doesn’t neglect Minato’s family to focus on his school chums, who are much less interesting in this episode.
On a technical level, the premiere was pretty solid as well. Nishida Masafumi is the chief director, and it’s animated by MAPPA, so the series seems to be in good hands. Funimation’s dub is above average when it comes to the main cast. Robbie Daymond may sound a bit too old to be playing a first year high schooler, but he gives it his all and has some nice range when it comes to delivering enthusiastic performances of Minato’s inner monologues. Asumi’s performance, credited to Brooklyn Wade, sounds like an actual child, which is great to hear. The only question marks I still have are around Minato’s father, who sounds a bit off, and Eitaro, who sounds a little insane.
RE-MAIN is still a big question mark in most aspects. It’s not based on an existing property and I’m most familiar with MAPPA for shows like Attack on Titan and Terror In Resonance—something this show is definitely not. So far things are off to a solid start, with an interesting background story for Minato as he recovers his mojo and eventually rejoins the water polo team. I just hope things don’t devolve into a standard team sport drama where more time is spent on the sport itself and less focus is put on the characters and their interactions.
