There's no going through life without regret. And there's certainly no avoiding those moments where every mistake, error, goof, and flub comes rushing back through your cerebral cortex like a never-ending slideshow, leaving you wishing you could turn back time and redo them. The Revenge of My Youth is a manga that makes those feelings real, using its time travel plotline in a way that makes its pages feel spiritually redemptive at points, despite its otaku melodrama feeling lightweight overall.

This kind of story has been told before-- ReLIFE seems to be an obvious influence here since “ReLIFE” appears in Revenge's secondary title (specifically, ReLIFE with an Angelic Girl ). However, the logic here has been changed so that its main character Shinichiro has not only been de-aged, but Shinichiro travels back in time instead of remaining in the present day. This makes more sense in more than one way. ReLIFE's premise still works in the context of its story, but that pesky Devil's Advocate in me will not shut up about how Conan-y it is with its de-aging medical experimentation. I'm not saying it would make for something “better” per se, but it would be more--we'll say--fitting for the de-aged lead to relive his high school days instead of going through a set of new ones. Revenge does exactly that, and doing so helps make its motif of “if I could do it all again” resonate well with its readers, as well as being a nice leisurely read overall. Since Shinichiro's time travel is triggered by death and reincarnation, there's a faux-isekai element to this that is very apt for this type of story and meshes well with the overall concept.

Revenge is very quick in introducing its concept and gives its main character a personality overhaul right away. Fed up with being beaten down by the corporate overlords who loomed over his previous life, Shinichiro now dares to stand up for himself in this new life. He intimidates the bully who used to harass him for lunch money, inspires newfound confidence in his old love interest, and decides to make himself more heard at student council meetings. Things feel rushed here since these events come so suddenly and make Shinichiro's change in personality more immediate, but it's still fleshed out enough for its theme of rebirth to shine through.

This type of story has been told before, so naturally, it comes with cliches. Shinichiro can't freely admit that he was reincarnated similar to how ReLIFE's Arata can't announce to the world he's part of an experiment. He also has a best friend who's a hardcore otaku, a former boss who makes the Gendo Ikari hands, a sassy little sister, and a girl who, like another character in ReLIFE, was bullied into suicide. However, Revenge's girl, Haruka, serves as the old love interest mentioned a paragraph ago, meaning she gets to exist in this do-over of a timeline instead of remaining dead in the previous, overwritten timeline. Admittedly, Haruka feels a bit too much like a stock romantic interest character with her personality consisting of nothing but fondness towards Shinichiro and an appetite for light novels. But whatever helps inspire Shinichiro towards a better life is fine by me.

Honestly? My biggest problem with this manga is that the bits from Shinichiro's previous life feel a bit too interspersed throughout, often appearing in brief flashbacks that feel like they're interrupting the story. I feel it would have been to the manga's benefit to introduce some of these basic elements earlier on through a chapter or two, and then maybe save some of the more critical plot elements of the previous life to reveal more about Shinchiro later on. This is only a mild gripe I have since this is the first volume of the manga, so we could see this part develop later on. The manga's high school environments are well-detailed even if its characters look too conventional, and the first volume ends on an interesting cliffhanger. I doubt that this is a story that will reinvent the wheel any time soon, but there's enough substance here to encourage further reading.