If one were to look up the word ‘overrated’ in the dictionary I’d really like the name of this show to be mentioned there somewhere. That’s not to say this is a bad show. Overrated does not mean ‘bad.’ But at the time of this review, it’s the 10th best anime ever made according to the users of MAL. Please. I like this show. I do. It was entertaining each week. But holy fucking shit was it stupid. This is not a proper review. You can read other reviews that give it a 10 or people who give it a 3, there are both out there. This review is for my own self-satisfaction. Each episode, each week, there’s been something that has driven me insane with frustration – small things that are just so unnecessarily stupid but the show does it anyway and expects us not to blink. Here is a list of these things.
1) First of all, his power. How the fuck does this work? Is this seriously just a plot convenience for the writer? I was fine with it at the beginning where he couldn’t control it and the sheer shock of seeing his mom dead put it into overdrive and sent him way further back than he’s ever gone – I liked that. But then in a later episode he just wills himself back by yelling GO BACK. How can I buy into any tension whatsoever when we have the knowledge that he can just yell really loudly and go back in time whenever he wants? Hinazuki could die all she wants and he could just keep ‘reviving.’ There’s no rule or consequence or known limit. It’s just a plot device that allows the author to decide what time line we should go to next without having to actually write anything of substance.
2) Why does he run when he discovers his mom’s corpse? No sane person would ever do that. That is literally the most suspicious thing you could do. A normal person would trust that people would not overreact and that the severe lack of evidence would prove him innocent. But no, Satoru bolts out the door like an idiot – which leads into my next point.
3) At the end of episode 1, the last place we see Satoru in the present time is running away from the police outside his door on the second floor with the police in pursuit. Later, when he returns, he’s on the ground floor around the corner with nobody chasing him. What the hell happened? How did he get down there and why is nobody chasing him? Are the cops from Metal Gear Solid where they just forget he ever existed once they lose sight of him? If his location at that time changed because of something in the past, then the whole murder should have been different, no? So why? Oh right, because if Satoru returned to where he left he would be in front of the police and would get arrested and the story couldn’t continue. Good job Author-san, you did it again.
4) Why did the killer light Airi’s house on fire? There are so many fucking problems with this. First, the actual lighting of her house. He could have done it in 2 ways – 1) light a small fire somewhere in the house and let it spread slowly or 2) fill the house with gasoline or some other kind of combustible substance and have it spread fast. Both have massive problems and unnecessary risk involved. In 1, the killer would have to rely on the idea that Airi is retarded and will never leave her room for any reason once while the small fire spreads. She will have to stay in there and not notice at all that there’s a fire. If she went to the bathroom, or to the kitchen, or did any kind of normal house task she would notice the fire immediately and be perfectly fine. In scenario 2, he would have had to enter her house and made quite a bit of noise preparing the fire. Again, if Airi left her room at any moment for any reason she would see him immediately and killer-sans plan falls the fuck apart.
5) About the Airi fire again, it seems the killers plan was to frame Satoru by having him text a phone of an arson victim making it look like he did it. Except… the phone would be completely destroyed in the fire, no? This one I’m not 100% about but it just adds to the overall unreliability of this plan as a whole.
6) FIRE ALARMS? DOES AIRI’S HOUSE HAVE NO FIRE ALARMS? The only explanation for this is that the killer went with scenario 2, as listed in point 4, and entered her house to start the fire while removing the fire alarms at the same time.
7) Continuing with the Airi fire, she opens the fucking door. Okay, I won’t fault her for this. Reason being, nobody would expect a fucking backdraft outside their own bedroom door. Why, you ask? I did some backdraft research. Backdrafts occur in compartment spaces where there is no ventilation or air flow causing a severe lack of oxygen in the room. The room will then be searching for oxygen from any source; sucking it in (this is the main way to notice a backdraft, if you see smoke being sucked it at any point like under a door or through a window crack don’t go near it, which is something that was absent from the show by the way). When oxygen is re-introduced quickly (such as when a door is opened) it will ignite and, simply put, result in an explosion. There are so many god damn issues with this being used in the show. First of all, these occur in compartmentalized areas where oxygen will be in short supply, such as a bedroom, NOT a hallway. From my understanding, for a backdraft to occur in the way it did in the show the rest of her house would had to have been on fire long enough to burn all of the oxygen in the entire house and it would also have to be completely sealed everywhere for no oxygen to come in. The unlikelihood of this is staggering. I can’t even imagine how long the fire would have had to be going for this to occur, but it should be way longer than it takes for somebody to notice that their house is on fire. Backdrafts occur in buildings that are fucking infernos. Second, backdrafts literally kill firemen – you know, the guys that are fully geared for a fire. What happened to Airi, who was wearing a delightfully seductive casual outfit? Bitch got knocked out and charred a little (no permanent burns of course, because then people wouldn’t like her anymore). The backdraft that occurred in the show seemed to consist of smoke only which doesn’t seem quite possible to me and even if it were, the temperatures should be scalding enough to do some serious damage to Airi. But nah, the invincible waifu genki’d her way through it once again.
8) Holy shit why did Satoru meet with Airi? Was it not obvious to everybody watching that she was being watched/followed? Satoru can make some pretty intelligent deductions but in situations like this he is so retarded. But, of course, if he didn’t meet with her (you know, like a somewhat competent person) then he wouldn’t have the opportunity to get caught and yell himself back in time. Author-san, at it again.
9) Why the fuck is the blonde kid so smart? Being a genius or precocious is one thing, but no child has ever acted like him in the history of the world. He acts more like a 29 year old than the actual 29 year old. I knew this kid was bullshit the moment he took Satoru aside and asked him ‘who are you’? First of all, no fucking kid notices changes in any other kid. That’s the one thing that is unanimously true among all children is that they’ve not yet developed the ability to think that deeply about other people. But after less than a week, only a few hours a day, this kid notices enough of a change in Satoru that he asks him such an abstract question. And it’s not even like Satoru is obvious about it. For some reason, Satoru’s speech pattern adapted to that of a child almost immediately (something I’ll touch on next). If he were talking like an actual 29 year old maybe I would give the blonde kid some credit for noticing, but literally the only difference that he could see was that he started caring about Hinazuki a little bit. Totally unbelievable.
10) This question doesn’t even really need answering as the answer is obvious but, why is Satoru such a god damn pedophile? Why does he get all blushy, blushy with a legit 10 year old? Would any real person react like this? I’ve rationalized it, for my own self sanity, that the reason he behaves this way and the reason his speech pattern changed perfectly is because, while his mind and memories are that of an adult, his body is still that of a child and therefore still feels what a child would feel. Sure, I’m fine with this. What I’m not fine with is the show not even touching on this slightly and forcing me to justify why his desire to hold hands and play doctor with this actual child isn’t a pedophilic thought. Seriously, in one of the later episodes he’s watching the door between him and a bathing loli and is blushing. What thoughts are you having Satoru?! And then later on the scene where he’s sleeping with her and his mom and she says ‘am I in the way?’ to which he immediately responds ‘yes’ without thinking as if his primal urges to ravish this loli are about to burst. As funny as that scene was, what the fuck Satoru? Why can’t the show at least casually mention him wondering why he wants to fuck a 10 year old and not leave it to the viewer to figure out why? Oh wait, Japan. Being an adult man that is attracted to young girls is a normal thing over there.
11) A chocolate bar? A fucking chocolate bar? Why? Why the fuck is it a chocolate bar? This is a perfect example of this show being unnecessarily retarded in small aspects. How could a marriage fall apart because of something like this? Sure, one could say their marriage was at a breaking point and this pushed them over the edge. But what about his job? As far as I remember, he got suspended for 3 months for being accused of stealing a CHOCOLATE BAR. What?! Why?! Why even write this?! The author could have easily written something more believable and gotten the same result. Holy shit, how does this not fucking drive people crazy?
12) In episode 9, when Hinazuki mom comes at Satoru mom with a shovel, the bitch doesn’t fucking move. She doesn’t even blink when the shovel is swinging at her head. If the two CHILDREN didn’t react EXACTLY as they did her fucking head would have been caved in. Did she know? Did she know the two actual children would act just in time to save her? She made absolutely no effort to move. I get not wanting to look scared or not backing down but bitch you almost died. Again, a small thing that is absolutely retarded but we’re not supposed to blink and just take it at face value. This god damn show.
13) I don’t understand how Yuuki was convicted. Okay, as far as I remember the incident went down like this according to police. Hinazuki’s mom beat the shit out of her, put her in the shed for a few hours with the intention of taking her back in before she freezes to death, surprise, surprise Yuuki shows up and takes her out of the shed, brings her somewhere, sprays shit on her to speed up freezing, and puts her back in the shed before dawn. The mother, noticing this around 12:30, called around asking about her. The police report specifically mentions that her disappearance was between 10 and 11pm that night. How the hell do they know that? If the mother didn’t even notice at 12:30, what evidence supports her disappearance during that time? Going forward with the report, there is an insane amount of detail here. How is any of this provable? The only evidence they have is the footprints in the snow and the autopsy. I don’t think the autopsy results would provide such accurate numbers (time of death is one thing they can prove but the gap of time between supposed disappearance and discovery of body is at least 8 hours which is way too much time to determine anything in specific details; there’s simply too many variables) and how are footprints enough to convict somebody? Does Yuuki have the only pair of boots in the entire town? After having read something about the police in Japan having a 99% conviction rate, I’ll leave this weird and unbelievable police report, with more holes than a fucking honey comb, to the idea that the police in that time care more about convicting SOMEBODY than they do about actually solving the case.
14) This is less of an issue in itself but more of something that implies that other issues really shouldn’t exist. This killer is smart. Unbelievably smart. The reason Hiromi dies is so insane that I feel like many people didn’t think it through fully. Let me explain. Hiromi was murdered because he looks like a girl. Up to this point, I assume the killer has killed only lolis. The police know this, and the killer knows the police know this. So to throw them off his trail, he killed Hiromi, a male. Simple, right? Fuck no. The reason this worked is because the police reasoned that the reason he killed Hiromi, a target outside his pattern, is because the killer thought he was a girl. So logically, the killer should not be a person that knows Hiromi; a complete stranger. If he did know Hiromi, then he would know he’s actually a boy, not a girl. So using this logic, they omitted all people who knew Hiromi from the suspect list in order to narrow it down. This is a really smart deduction but the crazy thing is that the killer would have had to predict ALL of this for his plan to work the way it did. That’s INSANE. In other words, this killer is an actual genius and should never make any retarded mistakes ever. Haha.
15) I just want to mention how cheap a character Hinazuki is. We’re just supposed to automatically feel bad for her because she gets beaten by a laughably evil mother. This is the laziest possible way to draw sympathy for a character. At least if a reason was given it would be a bit better instead of the mother just being a senseless force of nature.
16) Why, God why, leave Hinazuki alone in a fucking bus? In what world is this the safest method? And shouldn’t she freeze to death out there? What’s the difference between a shed and an empty bus in terms of insulation? I just don’t fucking get Satoru’s logic. This show quickly became ‘Satoru fuck up of the week.’ I get hiding her somewhere the killer can’t find her until the day of her death passes, but hiding her in public like that is straight up retarded. She’s probably in more danger there than she is in her house where she gets regularly beaten.
17) Why isn’t Satoru telling his mom about revival? It honestly seems like a relatively easy thing to prove if you remember any events from that time. On top of that, it is repeated throughout the show how intelligent and sharp the mother is – I find it hard to believe that she would shrug it off immediately. And if blonde kid can notice a change in Satoru, sure as hell his own mother (who, again, is supposedly a sharp as a knife) will notice too. Oh but wait, if he told his mother about it then every problem in the show would probably be solved. Sorry Author-san, I forgot how you write.
18) So many times I’ve read about this show being heralded as a cinematic masterpiece; how the “cinematography” is incredible. Fucking please. Apparently all you need to do to be a cinematic masterpiece is use low color tones and wide screen.
19) Teacher's the killer huh. Incredible. During that scene in the car where all his candy fell out of the dashboard I thought to myself 'no writer with any self-decency could possibly make him the killer after this scene, this has to be a fake.' Holy shit was I wrong. There were really only two ways this could have gone down 1) the teacher is the killer or 2) some random character gets introduced later as the killer, both if which are fucking awful. Author-kun dug himself in a hole day 1. I actually think, bare with me here, that the reveal was supposed to be a twist - but since it was so stupidly obvious (Satoru even says this in episode 10) it makes everything up to this point feel kind of pointless. If it wasn't supposed to be a twist then why hide it for so long? The only reason this is so awful is because the story has had such a strong focus on the 'whodunit' where it fails spectacularly. What kind of mystery presents a single suspect? The show should have never tried to be a mystery and instead focused on being a thriller.
20) I was going to keep updating this as airing. After watching the finale, there were so many points coming up that I just fucking stopped caring. I'm tired of thinking about this shit. 19 points is good enough.
