Re-Main || A Review on Water Polo Sports Anime

Have you ever played water polo before? Or have you seen how it is played? So before I've watched this anime, I'm not really familiar with what it really is. I know that there's a sport like that, but I didn't know what they do during their games. So based on the anime I'd watched, water polo is a team sport that's played in a swimming pool. It's like a combination of swimming, soccer, and basketball. Swimming—because you really need to be a good and experienced swimmer since the game is in the pool and you need to stay there for quite a long time. Soccer and basketball—because it's like you're playing soccer—you need to pass the ball to your teammates, then you need to shoot a goal only that you do it not by feet but by hands. It's also like shooting a ball but not towards the ring, rather they will shoot it towards the net.

Like the previous sports anime that I've shared, this one is also physical. It is even called there as water wrestling because the players need to wrestle for position. Defenses are also employed in this sport—may it be one-to-one or zone defense—depending on how strong the shooter or goalie is. This sport is really a tough one because you really need to stay afloat in water for the four quarters of the game that have eight minutes each, and the stoppage during a foul was called wasn't included in that eight minutes yet. You really need to have intense training in swimming, especially in treading, because this game requires the players to stay afloat for quite a period of time.

Just watching how it is played in anime made me wonder how amazing those real-life water polo players can be. So enough with the sport's intro, let's join our mc in his towards being the main again—his journey to be Re-Main.

About the Anime

Re-Main is a sports anime that premiered in the summer of 2021. It aired from July 4, 2021, to October 3, 2021. It was produced by Bandai Namco Arts and animated by MAPPA. It's genre is obviously sports with a bit of drama. Like most sports anime, its story revolves around school and team sports. This isn't an adaptation because it's an original anime that has 12 episodes all in all.

So it started when Minato Kiyomizu finally woke up from his comatose state. It turned out that he's been out for more than a half of a year, and to make things worse, he lost all his memory about his middle school—including the memories of him playing water polo. Later on, he discovered that he's a former ace of their water polo team—he's in fact the best in Japan—but with his memories all lost, he decided to just abandon water polo and start something new in his high school year. However, things will not go his way as he met a former team member of his old water polo team and an overly enthusiastic water polo club captain. When things couldn't get worse further, he also met a girl whom he unfortunately made a bet with.

Forced to enter the water polo to save his broke self from an expensive bet he made before, he started relearning the basics again. He thought that his body would remember how he moved before the accident, but he was wrong. It seems that for almost half of the year he spent in coma, his body forgot how he used to play. It's like he's starting all over again, and the lack of memory isn't only his problem. Can he still recover the memories and abilities he had lost? Or will he sink to the seemingly bottomless doubts he's experiencing?

I really thought that I wouldn't enjoy this anime. Unlike other sports anime, the first episode didn't appeal to me. It was kinda of boring and predictable. But since I downloaded the rest of the episodes, I just decided to continue watching it, and that's definitely a good decision. Unlike other sports anime, this one is slowburn. I think they deliberately made the first episodes bland so that the tension would build up on later ones. It's unusual, but for me it was kinda predictable (in a good way).

As I've said, the plot may be predictable, yet what really stands out is how unconventional the mc was. I really thought that he could work miracles like the usual sport's prodigy mcs in other anime, but I was really wrong. His character was pretty relatable and definitely realistic because most of the sportsmen who thrive are egotists. I don't wanna spoil how he can be that if he's back to zero with his skills, but even with that pretty unlikable character he has, he's really relatable (I don't want to spoil how relatable he can be—but like other sports anime mcs, he also had this character or he's even greater in applying this).

As for other characters, they're really diverse, and some of them were even unusual for sports anime. I like how they gradually got their character improvement—the end may not be in their favor, but I definitely like how hopeful it ended. It's like an open book full of possibilities, and I hope they get another season.

On the hand, the art style wasn't really that great for me. I don't know, but I'm expecting more from MAPPA. I mean, most of the character designs kinda look bland, and the mc doesn't look like he's the mc at all. His face looks really familiar; it's like I've seen him a lot of times from other animes. His character design doesn't strike as a mc for me (it isn't unique enough, I guess), but anyways, what I really like is Babi-chan! He's really cute, and he's really one of the reasons why I finished this anime. My fangirl heart just melts like a jam for him (OH MY! I quote him ahahhaha). Also, this anime made me doubt my husbando stereotypes because it's unusual that I don't like the usual cool guys; rather, I somehow like Jo Jima, which was really opposite of the cool and quiet anime husbandos I mostly simp (am I also changing now?).

The opening song somehow got me surprised because I didn't expect that it would be sung by non-Japanese. At first, I thought they were really Japanese singing, but when the opening was about to end and I saw who sung it, I was quite shocked. Forget Me Not by Enhypen was really a catchy and nice opening song. It really gives off good vibes, which really match with the light mood for the opening. While the ending song Kowareta Sekai no Byoushin wa by Shuugo Nakamura was most likely the opposite of the opening. It was both nostalgic and melancholic, and I really liked how those two songs contrasted with each other.

Overall, my personal rating for this anime is 7/10. I felt that this anime doesn't really focus only on sports, which is pretty undestandable because that's what most of the sports anime do. They tend to mix up some drama (and even comedy). Yeah, there's a vague background on how it was played, but I think it was just explained during the main games, which happened in the later episodes. I really thought they'd at least give the sport—especially it's a minor one—a brief introduction on how it is played.

I just later search for what it is played before proceeding to the next episode because I'm the type of viewer who's really curious about the context. I'm glad that story doesn't solely revolve on the mc, but if it will have a season 2, I hope they'll explore Babi-chan's backstory (I'm really interested hehe). Nevertheless, I enjoyed watching it, especially when I saw how its characters got their improvements. So if you're up for a sports anime with almost naked men wrestling on pool pretty relatable mc and interesting sports, then you read the right review because they're sure in Re-Main.

Before I end this review, I gladly share with you its trailer, so—

Have you watched this water polo anime before? Or is this your first time encountering it? Feel free to share your comments if you have seen or if you're now interested in it. That's all for today, minna-san! I hoped you enjoyed reading my review.