English Dub Season Review: RE-MAIN Season One

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Minato Kiyomizu is an all-star water polo champion, but everything changes when he’s involved in a horrific auto accident that sends him into a coma. When he wakes up, months have passed and he’s no longer the water polo player he once was. Over the course of the season, Minato has to figure out what to do now and remember what water polo means to him. He joins a new high school and is recruited to the water polo team by dedicated captain Jo Jojima. The team has a lot of new players to recruit and a lot of practice to get done, but by the end of the season they’ve mastered the true art: teamwork.

Our Take:

RE-MAIN wasn’t really on my radar when it premiered last year. I’m not the biggest fan of sports series, and I’ve barely even heard of water polo before, so coming into this show I wasn’t sure what to expect. So I was surprised to find a series that led with an interesting hook but still had enough below the surface to sustain itself for a full 12 episodes. RE-MAIN certainly isn’t what I’d call a traditional sports series… but that’s a good thing.

It all starts with that opening hook, which is that Minato has lost all of his memories of water polo and his teammates. Basically, this is Amnesia: The Series. Minato starts out as a fresh-faced, cheerful fella who is a lot more positive than you’d think given the personal tragedy he’s underwent. He throws himself back into water polo happily enough, making friends and having fun with his teammates. And then disaster strikes again and Minato loses his new memories, but regains his old ones. Is it a dramatic moment? Yes. Is it scientifically possible? Probably not, but it sure added a nice mid-season wrinkle into the show.

Up until that point, the series was pretty predictable for the most part, with Minato forging friendships with his teammates and working to regain the physical stamina he once had. But after building up those relationships, that twist took them down. Long story short, the old, pre-accident Minato was kind of an asshole. He beefed with teammates, didn’t give his family the time of day, and was only in it for himself. That’s why it’s so effective to have him step into the show when he does; after all the development the show did with him, it was like a new character took over. It was a risky move to be honest, and there were moments that kind of felt a little familiar, as he had to go through the same character development twice. But in the end, I think it was a good move for the show and Minato himself.

But Minato’s not the only character worth rooting for. The Yaminagi team is made up of a number of misfits, and it all started with Jo Jojima. Jo’s the captain of the water polo team, and also its only member at first. He’s definitely the funniest character in the show, and I liked seeing a goofball get to be the leader of the team, at least officially. There’s more to him than gags, though, and by the end of the show we’ve seen a sweet reunion with his father as the two of them bond over water polo. The other supporting cast members on the team aren’t quite as larger than life, but they still have their roles. There’s Eitaro, the only one who knew Minato formerly, Amihama, who gets a nice storyline about being his older brother’s rival, Ejiri, who makes great sweets and that’s about it, Babayaro, a bad boy with a heart of gold, and Ushimado, the least physically strong member of the team who ends up scoring the last points of the season.

The English dub is definitely one of the things that makes the show special. Led by Robbie Daymond as Minato, the cast through and through is one of the best ones I’ve heard in a dub in recent years. Mark Allen Jr. does great work as Captain Jo. Brooklyn Wade is remarkably good in her first role as Asumi, Minato’s younger sister. Even the script, adapted by Clayton Browning into English, is sharp and on point. One of the marks of a truly great English dub is when it sounds like it was originally made in English, and RE-MAIN hits that head on.

All in all, this was probably one of the most unexpected shows of last year to me. What couldn’t been a run of the mill sports drama quickly became a series that alternated between sport action, witty banter, and some surprisingly deep themes. It’s one of those shows where the focus is less on the games (they only play like 3 in the entire season) and more on the characters and the love of the sport itself. Their final game of the season may not have ended in a win, but RE-MAIN still ended up being a real winner in my book, and I would happily watch more if it gets another season down the road.