https://piezoradeon.wordpress.com/2016/03/25/erased-boku-dake-ga-inai-machi-review/
The characters. The characters turned out to be bland and puppets made of clay moulding themselves to the convenience of the story. The anime fell short of characters which aren’t so good like you remember them forever like Light Yagami( Death note) and Natsu Dragneel, Happy and Gray (Fairytail). The viewer doesn’t feel at home with the characters. They sometimes behave awkward with respect to their ages too.
The 29 year old Satoru was boring and wasn’t interesting at all while his childhood self was lively and happy because of his friend Yuuki, a friend of his way elder to him but was always good to Satoru. I never understood why he becomes dull in the present.
Kayo Hinazuki, the first girl out of the three girls who go missing and found murdered was abused by her mother. The depiction of the scenes was mortifying and moved me. But Kayo was one character I liked a lot. She is simple naïve and was in need for a friend. Satoru was a support for her through her bad times. But, sometimes I felt that Kayo’s character and backstory had little to do with the story.
Kayo was given a lot of screen space. But there was no back-story or anything much related to the other two victims! They just have about two episodes with very little mentions for each of them.
The series seemed hushed and was finished just so that the story could be wrapped up in 12 episodes. I felt that a 16 episode series would’ve done justice to this anime.
The story becomes a little boring around the 8th episode. The story goes on like a flipbook made by a twelve year old!
Now, the villain. He/she wasn’t portrayed quite well. His/her character seemed to contradict his actions. There wasn’t any real reason shown for him/her (I’m not giving you a clue about the villain).The motive isn’t quite clear and satisfactory too.
Just as much I am full of praise of the first three episodes, I could praise it until the 7th episode. The story becomes hazy, the pace becomes too fast with very less descriptions and loses the charm it held. Well not all of it, but only in a few aspects.
The art and the animation of the anime seemed apt and perfect for the setting and themes in this anime. The backgrounds and the light shades of colour are pleasing to the eye and also the expressions and the drawings of the characters were great except, whenever I saw Satoru’s mothers pout always made me cringe.
It story is in bits and pieces which haven’t been merged properly with thin strands of logic connecting each other but barely.
The over-all series is just alright, thanks to the climax that spiked a little interest back into the story.
Would I recommend it? Well, it is a good anime and could be in the best anime in the year, but I would say that you could add it to your must watch list, but not necessarily in the top.
