If I had to pinpoint one of the turning points of my life, high school, and the final year in particular, would definitely be one. It's when you decide which university courses you want to apply for, it's when you do most of the work and exams that will contribute towards your ENTER (or ATAR, or whatever it's called now) score, and to me, it felt like the last period of time where I stopped being a child, and turned into an adult.
While I was at high school, I didn't understand why so many people wished they could go back. High school wasn't a particularly fond part of my life, and when I think about some of the things I said and did while I was in high school, I'm really glad Facebook wasn't around then. Even though I was probably better at maths, physics, chemistry, English and biology back then than I am now, I was stupid. So, so stupid. A part of me does still have that awkward naïveté, and I still want to save the world somehow, but honestly, I was so stupid back then. I've come a long way since then.
So imagine if you could re-do your final year of high school with the knowledge you have now. That's the basic premise of the movie, which is based on an anime, which is based on a manga series): 27-year-old Arata was the top of his class in high school and at uni, and scored a job after he graduated, but he quit after 3-months and is now a NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training). He has part-time job, and is barely making ends meet, but he's still pretending to his friends that he works full time and is doing well for himself.
On his way home after a night of drinking, he encounters Ryō, who introduces himself as a scientist running an experiment called ReLIFE. He tells Arata that if he takes the ReLIFE pill, he will return to his 17-year-old self, and have the chance to complete his final year of high school again. At the end of the program, the ReLIFE team will help place him in any job of his choosing. Plus, all of his expenses will be paid during the experiment. The only catch is that he will be interacting with real people, but at the end of the year, all memory of the 17-year-old him will be erased.
It seems his drunken self decided to take the pill, as he awakens as a 17-year-old and goes back to high school. He tells himself that he'll be in the shadows, and just do what needs to be done to make it through the year. Plus, it'd be weird to date someone who is technically 12 years younger than him. And creepy. So, so creepy. Despite his best efforts, he ends up befriending a group of people, though there are many jokes about how he's "an old man" - especially when they go to his apartment and see that he has mini-discs and a walkman.
The rest that follows is a lot of the typical anime tropes: the high school competition drama, romances, awkward love confessions, the festival, the vacation away.
The movie was enjoyable in a shallow way - it's one of those feel-good movies, like My Best Friend's Wedding, that make you feel happy at the end, and then you go on with your day with a smile on your face, but you forget why after a day or two. MrFodder said they changed some of the story elements from the anime, and based on what he said, it really changed the tone of the movie a lot, and not in a good way, from the sounds of things. But then again, they had to condense a 13-episode anime into a 2-hour movie.
I asked some people at work whether they'd do something like this, and everyone said no. I guess for a lot of us, we have "made it", in the sense that we graduated university (it still boggles my mind how I achieved that), and we managed to find stable work. Some of us are married, own a house, and one guy has two kids. If we were to go back, we might do things better this time around, but would we still be as well off as we are now?
If I had done a lot better at high school, would my parents have pressured harder for me to go into medicine or law? I already talked about how I couldn't stomach medicine (except maybe if I had gone into psychiatry), but I think I could have gotten through law - especially because I like writing, and I like nitpicking. But the legal field is incredibly competitive, and I don't think I'd survive. One of the girls in my ice-skating class was a family lawyer, and she said that sometimes it's so draining doing what she does, and it has definitely had a toll on her relationships (she was single at the time). Then there's another friend who works insane hours. I remember her telling me that if you wanted a 9-5 job, going into law was not for you.
Then there's the stack of dominos that led to me meeting MrFodder: meeting Nico at enrolment day (which indirectly caused me to follow through with switching to software engineering – not because I didn’t want to do mechanical engineering with him, but because I had decided I was going to do it, then I told him I was going to do it, so then I had to do it, otherwise I’d look like a liar), joining him at the clubs fair, joining the anime club, attending an anime club event in second year where I first met QCN, meeting her again in a comp sci class, joining her at an MSO concert.
I think that's one of the warning signs that help me realise I'm starting to sink into depression: if I start to dwell too much on the aspects of my life where I feel like I made the wrong decision. When I'm feeling "normal", I can think about those things, and realise that I'm pretty lucky to have ended up where I did, but when the black dog comes barking, I start circling the drain with "what ifs".
Oh, I forgot to mention this on my other posts about the Japanese Film Festival, but they had some surveys which I thought were really clever.
You don't need a pen to fill them in (unless you want to enter the competition to win prizes). You just tear the slit that corresponds to your answer. It probably wouldn't work if you had too many questions, and doesn't quite allow you to elaborate on any answers (but you couldn't do that if you didn't bring a pen with you anyway).
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