If you could go back in time, what would you do differently? It is an interesting question to ponder, but never something to dwell on. However, while you can’t change the past in reality, there certainly are a lot of anime about a main character given a chance to do just that by regressing back to their past.
Youth is a resource we all waste, but regressor anime indulges the fantasy that some characters can change the past by redoing their younger years. Sometimes they are trying to prevent calamity. Sometimes they just want to build a happier future for themselves.
If regressor anime about characters redoing their past is for you, then give these anime recommendations a try.
Regressor Anime
A Returner’s Magic Should Be Special
With as much as fantasy anime wields magnificent magic, it is actually surprising that there are not a lot more standard fantasy series about main characters being able to redo their past to defeat an evil that won.
However, A Returner’s Magic Should Be Special offers just that. The main character suffered through a brutal future, losing many allies and friends, only to be wiped out by the great evil’s self-destruct. However, he was given a chance to go back to well before the conflict to his school years to redo things.
Unfortunately, this “magic school anime with OP MC” is often more focused on the main character just trying to save two friends that died in the future rather than laying any sweeping groundwork towards success for humanity.
Tearmoon Empire
Tearmoon Empire provides a regressor story mixed with a bit of a kingdom management plot.
The series follows an princess of an empire who is imprisoned and executed in a people’s revolution. Upon her death, she awakens as her younger self several years before the revolution and realizes she is holding her diary detailing her imprisonment – proving it all was definitely not just a dream.
As such, she makes a number of moves to avoid her execution as she navigates critical events. The fun thing is that she is still a spoiled princess on the inside, but everyone loves her nice – and often misinterpreted as nice – actions. However, by seeing her exposed to different people, you also do get to enjoy a change in her character as well.
Remake Our Life
Every adult will have a period in their life where they feel a bit like a failure and have nothing but regrets. Maybe they can think back to one critical choice that could have made their life so different. Remake Our Life is about that “What If” fantasy.
This series follows a guy who made the safe choice of going to a business university instead of an arts college for game design after high school. While he still ended up working in game design, after his project and company fail, he is forced to move back in with his parents. Wishing he had chosen differently, he wakes up one day as a teen about to make a very important choice of college for his future.
While Remake Our Life started about being able to redo career regrets, it ends up becoming more and more focused on character drama as it goes on. It also provides a unique look on romance in a redo scenario.
Erased
A good murder mystery should be gripping to the audience, but that is a difficult feat to pull off. However, Erased manages to make a murder mystery that is gripping as well as neatly meld it with time travel.
Erased follows a failed manga artist with the ability to go back several seconds in time during certain events to prevent calamity. One day, after witnessing the murder of someone close to him, he is sent back even further in time to when he was a child, a time where three classmates are about to be murdered over the course of the next few months.
The murder in his adult years is related to the murders in his childhood. As such, he is given the chance to now save several lives by figuring it all out.
Tokyo Revengers
No one would have expected a shounen anime about delinquents to have a central plot point be the ability to time travel – but it works. In fact, the ability to go back and forth in time is a natural way to set up the arc-based storytelling of traditional shounen.
Tokyo Revengers follows a failure of an adult who believes he peaked as a middle school delinquent. When he discovers that his girlfriend from middle school was violently murdered by a gang, he magically goes back in time where he meets the leader of that future gang and determines to get in good with him to save his girlfriends’ life.
While it starts off about saving one girl’s life, he grows closer with his new gang comrades and is determined to better their futures as well. With the ability to occasionally return to his adult years, essentially Tokyo Revenger is about thugs and navigating The Butterfly Effect.
Orange
Orange is actually a rather unique regressor anime in that it isn’t actually one? However, while the characters aren’t magically getting younger to redo their past, it is still about a magic storytelling device that lets them change their regrets – so it is age regression in spirit.
Orange follows a group of teens who, before school, strangely receive letters that say they are from themselves, 10 years in the future. Each letter states a series of regrets that they have that led to the suicide of their not-yet-friend, a recent transfer student.
Going to school on the day of the new transfer student, events start to transpire that align with the letters, which makes them realize a dark future awaits but they have a chance to change it.
As Orange goes on, it starts to work with parallel timelines as you explore the adult versions of the characters and get a glimpse at their lives in both futures.
My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom
While My Next Life as a Villainess may have kicked off the new villainess anime trend, it is actually one of the few with age regression-based regressor plot.
The series follows a human girl who wakes up as the younger version of the villainess of her favorite otome game. Knowing that the villainess meets a number of bad ends in the future where the game takes place, she is determined to not die by changing her ways and befriending everyone.
Watch her dodge every potential death flag with ease by just acting like a nice, albeit it wildly dense, person who everyone ends up loving.
Charlotte
To explain why the unassuming Charlotte fits this particular bill is actually a pretty major spoiler. You could say even including it is a spoiler, but even then, I’m not harvesting the joy you would get from going to watch it to figure out why.
As a series about a school gathering up a series of children who develop superpowers and use them disruptively in a society that doesn’t know people are developing superpowers, it is not so hard to wedge regression into the plot. It a shame that it is in the portion of Charlotte that suffers most from poor pacing, though.
Ragna Crimson
Not unlike a certain slayer of goblins, Ragna Crimson is all about a man who moves and breathes due to his hatred of humanity-decimating dragons and his vow to kill them all.
Motivated by a traumatic event from his youth and the constant loss of comrades, the titular Ragna went from incredibly weak to powerful dragon slayer, but even he was felled in the end. However, he was given the chance to go back to when he was just a weakling, giving himself all the power he had accumulated so that he can change his past and future.
Redo of Healer
Not every regressor story is a pleasant one.
Redo of Healer has a bit of a reputation, and for good reason. The series follows a boy who manifests the gift of healing, a coveted skill that causes the hero’s party of ask him to join. The hero’s party then goes on to treat him like trash, which includes verbal, physical, and sexual abuse daily.
However, given the ability to go back in time just before he was recruited by the hero’s party, he makes specific moves to become overpowered, then overpowers them instead.
I hope you like sex and violence because the rest of the series is pretty much just him getting his revenge by viciously murdering any men, sexually assaulting the women, and brainwashing them into liking it with magic.
The Tatami Galaxy
The Tatami Galaxy offers an interesting look at being able to redo your past. The series follows a miserable man who regrets his college years. He failed in love with his crush and ended up a miserable guy who ruined other peoples’ happiness. Venting to what turned out to be a god in a bar, he is given the ability to redo his college years.
The twist in this series is he redoes his college years – a lot. He constantly manages to mess up his relationship with his crush and end up miserable again. So he keeps trying until it reaches its end.
As a ponderous anime that enjoys its symbolism, subtle visual story-telling, and HEAPS of dialogue, The Tatami Galaxy has an approachable-sounding plot told in a complex way that may not be for everyone.
Re:Zero
There are actually quite a few isekai about being sent to another world as a child or even a younger version of themselves – and they are all not on this list. None of them are about redoing their past mistakes in the actual past, but rather, they are about learning from their past lives to live a happier new life in a new world.
Re:Zero, however, built its isekai quirk fully around the ability to redo past mistakes – he just has to die to do it.
Unlike other series that are about adults going back to their younger years, Re:Zero is often about going back short amounts of time to redo events that would result in his death and the deaths of people he cared about. While this is an interesting concept for a fantasy anime, it is made even more delightful as the main character accumulates mental trauma from feeling the agony of death so many times.
Doctor Elise: The Royal Lady with the Lamp
Doctor Elise provides a unique hybrid of a regressor story mixed with a reverse isekai.
It follows a young noblewoman who was executed as empress in her previous life, reincarnated and educated to become a renowned surgeon in our modern world, killed in a plane crash, and regressed back to her younger years before becoming an empress in her old world.
She is truly a woman who has lived – and died – more than most. However, she fell in love with being a surgeon in our world, and aims to bring that medical knowledge to her own in order to preserve her own life and prevent her beloved family from dying miserably in the troubles to come.
7th Time Loop: The Villainess Enjoys a Carefree Life Married to Her Worst Enemy!
Why regress back to your younger years once when you can do it seven times?
That’s what 7th Time Loop is fully about. In each life, a woman is broken up with by the crown prince and forced to flee her country. Over these seven time loops, she has had a number of careers and honed many skills. However, each time she is killed by a war that ravages the world after a new emperor ascends to the throne five years later.
On her newest time loop, she wants to find a way to live a life of leisure as well as live a long life. This desire leads her to cross paths with the young emperor-to-be whose war would kill her later. Surprisingly, her attitude also causes him to propose to her on the spot.
Do you have more regressor anime recommendations where the main character is able to go back to when they were young to redo their past? Let fans know in the comments section below.
