Persist

Reanimation at two mana always demands a downside, and the one here is the -1/-1 counter: the creature returns permanently weakened by a point in each direction rather than sacrificed at end of turn or exiled after a swing. That single counter shapes what the spell is good at. It barely taxes fat targets (a 6/6 becoming a 5/5 rarely changes a game), but it draws a hard line at the bottom of the curve, since anything that would drop to zero toughness dies to the counter as a state-based action the moment it returns. That kills the naive plan of looping a fragile one-drop; the counter forces you to reanimate bodies that can absorb the point, then leverage whatever enters-the-battlefield or death trigger justified the return in the first place. The nonlegendary clause is the other constraint, walling the spell off from the graveyard's most abusable single targets while leaving the wide field of value creatures open. What separates this from older black reanimation is purely the rate: earlier versions of the effect priced it at three or more mana, where this compresses the return into one efficient card whose only tax is a stat point the right targets never miss. It does not fill the graveyard for you (that setup lives elsewhere in your list), and it is a single shot rather than an engine: the counter is a one-time cost paid on the way back, and the creature that returns is simply smaller, not caught in any loop.