English Dub Review: RE-MAIN “Hey! Look this way!”

 

Overview (Spoilers Below):

It’s been a month since the water polo club officially became a thing, and the boys decide that that means it’s time for a training camp. They’re hoping to pull together as a team before entering into their first competition tournament in a few weeks, and they need all the practice time they can get.

Everyone is progressing pretty well except for Ushi. While everyone else has been getting stronger, he isn’t seeing the same level of progress from himself, and that’s dragging him down. When he disappears during the camp, Bobby informs the others that he might be suicidal and there’s a rush to locate him. Luckily he’s alright and it’s a false alarm, but they still need to handle his problems in the pool.

Our Take:

RE-MAIN’s streak of pretty decent episodes had to end at some point. The show has done a good job of successfully balancing its slice of life/sport/comedy chops so far, but this week’s episode definitely felt like a step down in terms of pacing and plot. Hey! Look this way! isn’t a bad episode per se, but it doesn’t quite come together as cohesively as the past episodes of the show.

The episode starts out with the guys taking part in a water polo training camp to improve their skills. The typical upbeat comedy vibe of the show is front and center here, and spending time with the guys outside of the pool is fun. The best part of the episode is definitely after a long day of practice when everyone is sitting around playing a game of confessions. It does a great job of meshing the more comedic side of things, like Ejiri sharing his bank information, with the deeper stuff, like Minato confessing that he’s scared of his old memories returning because there’s a slight chance they might make the new memories disappear.

Going into a little more serious subject matter works well in that scene, but the second half of the episode falls apart a bit in this aspect. Ushi has always been one of the quieter members of the team, and it’s cool to give him some more exploration… but this just wasn’t a great way of doing it. He’s discouraged because of his apparent lack of progress, and then leaves a weird written message on a chalkboard, which leads to the guys thinking he’s suicidal? They run around school calling for him and Minato ends up yelling at him not to hang himself when it turns out they were way off base. It just came across as being very awkward and almost played off for laughs in a way that felt gross.

Later on, Ushi shares how he was kind of socially pressured into joining the water polo team, but that he’s come to enjoy having a group of friends to share a passion with. It’s sweet and all, but then the episode tries to wrap up his storyline about not being athletic enough by having Minato suggest yelling while he throws… which somehow immediately makes him a great water polo player. It’s really dumb and felt like a cop out to move on from Ushi without really giving any good closure.

Combine that with a final awkward scene between Minato and his fake GF and this is my least favorite episode of RE-MAIN so far. I enjoyed seeing the water polo club’s camaraderie at the beginning during training camp, but Ushi’s storyline just felt like a wasted opportunity to add more depth to him. And trying to make it seem like Minato and Chinu are close friends now when they’ve barely gotten any screen time together feels unearned. If RE-MAIN wants to remain in my good graces, it had better land more of its shots next week.