Okay so ERASED was the most hyped anime among all of the Winter 2016 anime as far as I know and then when it ends, it disappointed so many people out there, some of them even saying that this is just like Sword Art Online (in which I can't deny it fully since both are produced by A-1 pictures.) Okay so I personally think that ERASED isn't that bad. It's just average. So without further ado I'll review this anime.
First of all, we have the characters called Satoru Fujinuma, in which acts like your typical shounen Seigi no Mikata (Ally of Justice), helping everyone in trouble with his 'revival' power, in which let him to time travel back to the past few minutes. He works as a pizza employee with a teen girl called Katagiri Airi, and also having a mom in which love him so much. To be honest the characters introductions were great, as well as in the end of the episode 1, the murder incident and Satoru's time travelling back to his childhood era makes us glued to what can actually happened next.
So then Satoru, believing the culprit of her mother's murderer was the same as his friends murderer during his childhood, he decided to protect his childhood friend while also try to findout the culprit while more characters were introduced within the story. Okay so here lies the first problem for me. Actually, by seeing on how the characters act, there's already a pretty big clue on how is this on the 4-5th episode, so basically, the major mystery ends here. The way of that culprit somewhat a bit nervous and contradicting his past words already makes that culprit very suspicious. But still somehow as a 29 years old in mentality, Satoru our protagonist, seems never noticed that.
Next I'll talk about the first murder victim Kayo Hinazuki. Despite the story are based upon Satoru's POV, Kayo is actually the most well written character among all of the character. The way she act, is somewhat feels realistic for me. As a child who's being treated that bad, there's no way that she won't be mentally down and shut herself upon others and also having a bit paranoid. Also, her ending was realistic enough for me. No single problem with Kayo.
So what's the problem with this show? Why there's so much rants, complaints, etc upon this show? Okay so from now on, I'll tell you about the problem that lies within this show. There might be a little spoilers here but I'll kept it minimum.
The first problem of this show is that has a bunch of plot device on it. What are them? First, it's the 'revival' ability. Honestly this 'Butterfly Effect' ability sounds pretty unique for a person to have one, but until the end of the show, as probably other reviews told, this abilities was never explained or explored further. On the other hand, although this ability seems to come out randomly when there's a person who gets troubled, it also will loops our protagonist back to his childhood when he got caught by the police. Is this the rules or just a coincidence? We never know. It's never explained further within the stories. The background of other victims of the murder was never explained further too, which is also for me, counts as another 'plot devices'. As for Airi, she had at least some background on why she being nice to Satoru and so on, for people who saying that she's not a well written character, I'd like to say that based on her amount of screentime, she is a pretty well-written character (yep we need more of her screentime tbh.) There's plenty other 'plot devices' within this story (e.g Satoru's childhood friends, etc) but well let's just end this section.
The next problem of this story lies in the execution on the last 3 episodes. Most people said that the revealing was bad, but I'd like to say that it's not and it's perfectly normal, what isn't normal for me is when another major clue was introduced a.k.a the loli, Satoru still can't recognize the culprit. SO where's the problem within this part? So when this culprit decided to drown Satoru in the car, I found that it's pretty weird if he can't just slip below the seat belt to escape his fate, as his body is tiny enough to do that, not to mention that the car window was open wide.
Satoru as a protagonist is well, pretty unexplored for me as a 'Seigi no Mikata' type of protagonist. And also sometimes although he is a 29 years old in mentality, sometimes he acts in reflex just like a 10 years old. Well of course he must act like one to avoid others suspicion, but sometime I found that his way of act is somehow like not pretending but a real, childish act.
As for the pacing, well I don't read the manga, but I feel that when Satoru tried to save his other schoolmates, it was clearly rushed. I can't tell on how he survived during the incident I said at the previous paragraph. Well I heard it's explained in the manga though, that's why I said it's rushed. And also as for the ending, some people might disappointed due the difference with the manga, but after I heard about how the manga ends, I found that the anime ending was far more realistic than the manga, considering Satoru's condition during that time. But still, there's some part on the last episodes about Kumi which is a bit miss for me because of the rushed pacing, but well I still can relate on what Satoru's did to her so that's not a very big problem for me. The culprit itself isn't that bad as a villain, he's just average for me, although his reasonings may be not that relatable, but at least he have one not like your 'evil for the sake of being evil' villain.
So was ERASED that bad? Not really. As an atmospheric anime fan, the scenery from Erased and the artwork was indeed a very well drawn, not to mention that the music which brought us to a mysterious and cool place in a winter during Shouwa era. As for me I liked the ED more than the OP, perhaps because I'm really into that kind of music. Perhaps this show had a big budget revolves around it so that they can make it that great. Also overall, ERASED was a quite enjoyable anime, despite of its major flaws.
For a story in which the main plot revolves around the time travel I highly recommend Steins;Gate, although I don't really like a hardcore Sci-Fi myself. The exploration of the theme, settings, and characters are somewhat better in that anime.
Thank you for reading my reviews and have a nice day.
