I never watched the original manga / animation, so this is purely a review of the Netflix series from someone with no pre-established expectation and bias.
The story started with the premise of someone who's made certain grave mistakes in his life (or feels like he's made those bad decisions) and has the ability to go back in time and correct them ... not entirely a novel idea, but there's a sense of mystery / suspense in it, and I enjoyed binge-watching the first few episodes. It was a solid 7/10 for the first half of the story.
And then it took a wrong turn, and without spoling the story (but to be honest, there's not much to spoil) it went down an extremly predictable good vs. Evil storyline. I don't know why, but the time travel element was just removed all of a sudden with no explanation. The main premise which made the story somewhat special is gone all of a sudden, and the story is bland as hell all of a sudden.
Worse, once the mystery of the plot is gone, the poor acting by all actors in general is painfully obvious. The actors, for the most part, are just spitting out lines. You can't feel the inner struggle, pain, sacrifice, fear ... of ANY actor.
I don't know how the original manga ended, but it was a huge letdown past the midpoint of the series. The only saving grace was that each episode is only ~ 20 min, so it's easiler to swallow. Still, every episode felt painfully long.
If you are really into time travel stories and you've run out of content to watch then maybe this one's worth the time. But otherwise there are lots of better choices out there and I'd just skip this one.
The story started with the premise of someone who's made certain grave mistakes in his life (or feels like he's made those bad decisions) and has the ability to go back in time and correct them ... not entirely a novel idea, but there's a sense of mystery / suspense in it, and I enjoyed binge-watching the first few episodes. It was a solid 7/10 for the first half of the story.
And then it took a wrong turn, and without spoling the story (but to be honest, there's not much to spoil) it went down an extremly predictable good vs. Evil storyline. I don't know why, but the time travel element was just removed all of a sudden with no explanation. The main premise which made the story somewhat special is gone all of a sudden, and the story is bland as hell all of a sudden.
Worse, once the mystery of the plot is gone, the poor acting by all actors in general is painfully obvious. The actors, for the most part, are just spitting out lines. You can't feel the inner struggle, pain, sacrifice, fear ... of ANY actor.
I don't know how the original manga ended, but it was a huge letdown past the midpoint of the series. The only saving grace was that each episode is only ~ 20 min, so it's easiler to swallow. Still, every episode felt painfully long.
If you are really into time travel stories and you've run out of content to watch then maybe this one's worth the time. But otherwise there are lots of better choices out there and I'd just skip this one.