To Be Resurrected
To Come Back To Life
intransitive verb, godan verb
This word consists of kanji with hiragana attached. Because the hiragana ends with an う sound, you know this word is a verb. The kanji itself means revive, but in this case you're the one getting revived, so this means to be resurrected.
蘇る is a dramatic-sounding word for something coming back to life. It can be literal (yes, even zombies), but it's also used for figurative resurrections, like being vividly reminded of an old memory.
Fun fact: the word originally means "to return from 黄泉(よみ)," the land of the dead in Japanese mythology. That's why 蘇る sounds so dramatic — it makes you think of someone returning from the underworld to the mortal world!
The person you most want to be resurrected is the 読み-guy (よみがえ) — the guy who teaches you the readings of difficult kanji. He died from overwork after you asked him too many kanji readings, so you really want him to come back to life and help you study some more.
Alternatively, you can remember this as 黄泉(よみ) + 帰る: coming home from the land of the dead. Just don't forget the rendaku on 帰る!
死者が蘇る
a dead person is resurrected
記憶が蘇る
memories return
思い出が蘇る
a memory is recalled
この音楽を聞くと、学生時代の記憶が蘇ります。
When I hear this music, my school days come back to me.
あの作家は、死んだはずの人がゾンビとして蘇る話しか書けないんだよ。
That author can't write anything but stories about people who should be dead coming back as zombies.
ゴミだった物が、リサイクルで新しい形になって蘇るのって、なんだか素敵じゃないですか。
Isn't it kind of wonderful how things that were once trash can be recycled and come back to life in a new form?