Arata Kaizaki is an unemployed 27-year-old that has thus far been living with the financial support of his parents and part-time jobs. After leaving his first job after only three months, he has not been able to find proper work. However, after a night of drinking with his friends, he meets a mysterious man that offers a drunk Arata a pill that will turn him 17 again so that he can redo a year of his youth, all expenses paid. Will Arata find what he needs to live a happy life after one year in high school again?
We have all felt awkward or lacking in some way at some point, making ReLife an anime series that can hit a little too close to home sometimes. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like ReLife, then head on down below.
Anime Like ReLife
For Fans of Social Rehabilitation
Welcome to the NHK
Tatsuhiro Satou dropped out of college and has been living the hikikomori lifestyle for almost four years. In his isolation, he has come to believe many conspiracy theories, primary among them that a mysterious organization called the NHK is responsible for the rise in hikikomori shut-ins like himself.
Although Kaizaki maintains he is not one, both he and Tatsuhiro technically classify as NEETs, and through one twist of fate or another, they are both given a chance to try and rehabilitate themselves with the support of a complete stranger. While both are somewhat lighthearted in nature, Welcome to the NHK gets a bit darker, dramatic, and psychological than ReLife.
Kiznaiver
Katsuhira Agata is a quiet boy whose sense of pain has vanished. His complacent behavior has now made him an easy target for bullies, but he feels nothing they can do to him. One day, Katsuhira, his friend Chidori, and four others are abducted and forced to join the Kizuna System, one that connects them through pain, forcing them all to experience each other’s agony.
Although Kaiznaiver is not about NEETs, both series follow a scientific and social experiment whose ultimate aim is to make society better. Both series follow a series of teenage drama that focuses on the many relationships and friendships within and each series explores the hidden dark past of the main characters.
Kokoro Connect
Five friends at the Yamaboshi Academy are all members of the Student Cultural Society, a club where they basically sit around and do nothing. However, things start to get interesting one day when these five friends start randomly switching bodies, forcing them all to come to terms with dark secrets and emotional scars.
Both series are essentially just high school romance series, but each have a sort of experimental twist to them. Each series features heavy drama surrounding the mental state of a number of its characters and explores themes of jealousy, love, and friendship.
My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU
Hachiman Hikigaya firmly believes that a joyful youth is something that people make up just to lie to themselves. After writing an essay criticizing relationships, he is forced to join the Volunteer Service Club that is aimed at helping others solve their problems. With the only other member being the icy Yukino Yukinoshita, they use their wits and cold views on society to help others.
While Hachiman in My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU isn’t a NEET, he was well on his way there. Regardless, SNAFU focuses on its own sort of social rehabilitation through interacting and helping others in high school.
Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki-kun
Fumiya Tomozaki is the top player in Japan at a fighting game called TackFam. Despite holding such a title, he is a failure at everything else, blaming it on the unfair rules and mechanics of life. One day, the second best TackFam player asks to meet up. Tomozaki discovers that they are actually Aoi, one of the most popular girls at school. She, however, is disappointed that someone she respected is a failure at life. Now, she aims to teach him how to succeed at the glorious game of life.
Both series are about helping social outcasts rehabilitate themselves. Tomozaki isn’t so much a NEET, but he is withdrawn and unpopular. However, both shows have another intervening and helping the main characters become normal functioning people.
Sing Yesterday For Me
After college, unsure of what to do with his life, Rikou gets a job at a convenience store. There he becomes visited by a high school drop out with a pet crow as well as has rekindled feelings for a senpai that visits the store one day. This is the story of the growth of several individuals as they take their first steps into adulthood.
Both series ultimately focus on listless and adrift adults who, through one reason or another, are withdrawing away from society. However, Sing Yesterday for Me is more a relationship drama in which the main character faces their baggage and deals with the drama.
For Fans of Second Chances
Erased
Recently, the detached, struggling manga artist Satoru Fujinuma finds himself going back in time to just minutes before tragedy strikes around him. He has saved many lives with this power of “Revival,” but when he is wrongly accused of murdering someone close to him, Fujinuma finds himself sent back to his childhood. As he discovers, the recent death in his life is somehow connected the kidnap-murder of three children in the area that is about to happen. This time, he may be able to use his power to save more than just one life, easing his past regrets in the process.
In both Erased and ReLife, the main character is given a chance to turn back the clock. However, while Erased literally sends Fujinuma back to his childhood, Kaizaki is just given a new chance at youth. Furthermore, ReLife tends to be more comedic and upbeat while Erased is dark and mysterious.
Orange
One day Naho receives a letter from herself, one sent from ten years in the future. It details a series of events that transpire in her group of friends, starting with the appearance with the transfer student Kakeru Naruse and ending with his death. The letter instructs her to try and change the future in order to save him and ease the regrets of her future self.
Both Orange and ReLife are about regrets. Both main characters have a lot of them. However, in ReLife, the main character is given a chance to learn how to overcome his regrets while in Orange, Naho is able to send a letter to her past self which creates an alternate timeline where she can prevent her regrets from happening. Both series are mostly light-hearted, but feature some darker drama.
Remake Our Life
As an adult, Kyouya Hashiba left his office job to pursue a career in the video game industry. However, although he tried every role, nothing has worked out. Even with the bright potential of a popular game he got a job on after giving up, the division closes down abruptly. Now moving back in with his parents, he wishes he had gone to the arts university he had gotten into instead of the safer business university he chose so that perhaps he could have trained with the similarly aged Platinum Generation of hit game makers. Upon falling asleep one night, he wakes up as a high school graduate again getting ready to make his choice on which university to attend.
ReLife and Remake Our Life have almost the exact same plot save for the details. Both series feature adults in their late twenties who deem themselves failures. They are then sent back to their school days where they redo their education and social relationships.
Iroduku – The World in Colors
In this world, there is only a small amount of magic left. Hitomi is a descendant of an old witch family who lost her emotions and ability to see color at a young age. Feeling bad for her granddaughter, the great witch Kohaku sends her into the past where interactions with her young self and Kohaku’s friends will hopefully foster some growth in her granddaughter.
While ReLife explains being able to go to high school again with a program, Iroduku uses straight up magic, but at least they both at least try to explain it. Regardless, both feature main characters with some sort of social dysfunction being rehabilitated through being able to go back to their school days.
Angel Beats
Otonashi wakes up without any memories, only to be told that he is dead. What’s more, a rifle-toting girl named Yuri suddenly asks him to join the Afterlife Battlefront to wage war against the Angel that rules this world and the unfair god she serves. Unable to believe Angel is evil, he tries to talk to her, but the meeting does not go as planned. From there, Otonashi gradually discovers more about himself and the mysteries of the afterlife.
While Angel Beats is heavier on the supernatural and drama, essentially it tells a similar story. Both series allow the main character to relive their school years where they build deeper relationships and have actual fun. However, because Angel Beats is a drama about dead people, they all have much sadder back stories.
For Fans of Girls with Poor Social Skills
Kimi ni Todoke
Misunderstood Kuronuma Sawako often has her timid nature mistaken as maliciousness by her classmates. However, longing to make friends she continues to try and reach out. Her yearning to be normal naturally attracts her to Kazehaya Shouta, the most popular guy in class. When he starts talking to her, suddenly her life begins to slowly change.
Both shows focus heavily on exploring the social connection and challenges that occur in adolescent life. The female main characters in both series are somewhat socially inept and have problems making friends, but possess a desire to change. While both series also features romance, they shine more in their presentation of realistic character interaction and emotions.
The Kawai Complex Guide to Manors and Hostel Behavior
Kazunari Usa is a freshman in high school and is living on his own for the first time in a boarding house. However, when he meets his masochistic, bondage-obsessed roommate, Usa is ready to find somewhere else to live. However, just when he is about to leave, he crosses path with his sempai, the beautiful, but bookish Ritsu Kawai that also lives there. He decides to stay.
The similarities between ReLife and Kawai Complex lie in its characters. Both male protagonists care deeply about other people and want to help, but the most similar characters are the female leads. Both are cold and somewhat unsociable, but otherwise they are highly intelligent. Throughout the series, you watch both come out of their shell while surrounded by a whole slew of other charismatic characters.
My Little Monster
Shizuku Mizutani is apathetic and only cares about getting good grades. However, when she is tasked with taking homework to Haru Yoshida, a troublemaker that hasn’t attended school recently, her outlook begins to change. Both understand little of human nature, but through their friendship, each has their social world expanded and gains a unique perspective other than their own.
Like in ReLife, the female lead in My Little Monster is very smart, but very poor at making friends and interacting with others. However, through the help of the male lead, they both end up coming out of their shell a little more. The major difference is that Mizutani can be a little more aggressive at times and seems to have a more firm grasp on her own feelings.
Higehiro – I Shaved and Then Brought Home a High School Girl
Office worker Yoshida finally worked up the courage to ask his boss out, only for her to swiftly reject him. On his way home from getting completely drunk to drown his heartbreak, he sees a high school girl sitting outside by herself late at night. After discovering that she was a runaway, he ends up taking her home while constantly shutting down her efforts to pay for her stay with her body. Talking to her further, he discovers that she traveled for six months from Hokkaido trading sexual favors for what she needed. While trying to figure out what to do, he puts her to work cooking and cleaning instead so she can have a place to stay.
Don’t be put off by Higehiro’s title, it’s not what you think it is. The big similarity here is you have an older guy that is not trying to be in a relationship with a high school girl, but you end up kind of rooting for them anyway. Yoshida, like Kaizaki, also helps this high school girl work through her own problems while dealing with his own.
The Pet Girl of Sakura Hall
Unable to resist taking in abandoned kittens, and amassing quite a collection of them, Sorata Kanda is forced to move to Suimei High School’s infamous Sakura Hall. This dorm is used to house all the misfit students that don’t quite fit in the regular housing. There, Sorata meets an array of different oddballs that inspire him to work towards getting back into the regular dorms and away from them. However, when a new transfer student moves in, he meets the incredible artist, Shiina Mashiro. While talented, she is completely incapable of taking care of herself, and so, Sorata brings her into his care and his strange days truly begin.
While The Pet Girl of Sakura Hall doesn’t have the same element of an adult going back to their school years, it, like ReLife, focuses on a guy that is trying to find something he can be passionate about in school. You watch deep relationships form among the group and it has some nice romance and comedy as well.
Do you have more anime recommendations like ReLife? Let fans know in the comments section below.
