English Dub Review: Remake Our Life! “Nothing Was Working Out”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

28-year-old Hashiba Kyoya has hit a new low after losing his job at a shady game developer. He originally quit his steady office job to work in the creative industries that he admires, but it’s proving to be a challenge even for a motivated go-getter like him. As he finds himself back at his parents’ house, between jobs, he can’t help but wonder what would happen if he had a chance to redo his collegiate studies. Maybe things would turn out differently if he had gone to art school instead… and, shockingly enough, he might just get a chance to test that theory.

Our Take:

It’s moments like this where we wish we could fix our past mistakes and live a better life than we have now. The show I’m looking at is that exact moment. Time traveling is nothing new in anime or any other type of show, with the primary example being ReLife. However, that didn’t stop the anime community from finding more weird ways to send their characters through time. One of the ideas they came up with last year happens to have someone transported back to their college days through sleeping.

One crucial detail about its first episode is that it’s twice as long as any other episode, clocking in at around 50 minutes compared to the usual 23 minutes. This means that we get two separate chapters for the price of one. This approach is pretty common in specific shows on cable television, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it being done in an anime series before, let alone one from the drama category. So it was a different experience for me as a whole.

The first episode offers enough in its extensive runtime to reflect on its time-bending concept and characters, mainly Kyoya Hashiba, who was laid off from his job at SucceedSoft when its ambitious project was canceled. Although, its pacing can be slightly inconsistent during a couple of scenes. The first 16 minutes were spent on Hashiba’s experience as a laid-off employee, which does sound boring at first, but it serves a crucial role in the upcoming episodes. Then you have a scene with Hashiba finding himself on a movie set after falling asleep in the Share House Kitayama. I’m sure there’s a reason why this sequence exists, but I don’t see it as far as I’m concerned.

Aside from its runtime, “Nothing Was Working Out” marks a solid start to the time-traveling series that could become better in the later episodes. The character introductions were decent, with Aki Shino (voiced by Lindsay Seidel) and Tsurayuki Rokuonji (Kamen Casey) as my possible highlights. The animation by Feel was also compelling in its colors and settings. These aspects were enough for me to keep watching the show for even more surprises, along with the fact that it involves filmmaking. Anything related to movies is an instant attention-grabber for me, so you better believe I will keep watching.