Anime comes and go, but every once in a while a particular exciting show comes along with a strong premise and a very promising story.
In the past these shows can be Future diary and SAO for example. In the case of Boku Dake ga Inai Machi or ‘Erased’ in its English title it falls more in to the category of what Future diary did.
We have our main protagonist Satoru Fujinuma who is a 29-year old delivery man. Satoru feels responsible for not being able to prevent the deaths of three classmates and even after 18 years have passed Satoru still feels the after-effects of the events that took place.
I have to say I don’t particularly like Satoru’s character. What Satoru needed to realize was the fact that Satoru didn’t befriend Kayo Hinazuki when they were younger didn’t have any real effect on her death or not. The anime even goes to show that in the first ‘Revival’
When you’re an 11 year old, there was no real way in being able to stop the murder as I’m sure the killer has the victim in his sights the whole time. Even if they were friends or not, the outcome would be the same and the fact that Satoru went unnecessarily out of his way to stop deaths from happening almost cost him his own life.
What I hated the most (and this applies to a lot of situations that happen in real life) is that he ran away from the police after they suspect Satoru of murder. Surely the police would know that Satoru hadn’t killed said person after he just came home from work. Surely Satoru would have alibies and surely the police would actually have found the killer if Satoru hadn’t BLOODY RUN AWAY!!
The ending for Erased also being similar to Future diary ended in an unsatisfactory way. Satoru changes the timeline and the fact that Satoru completely justifies his actions in changing the past as the correct choice is quite arrogant. Surely if I had the ability to go back in time, I’d be betting on the scores of games or getting the winning lottery tickets, but hey! Why not save a few kids who may or may not end up being future serial killers themselves right?
It all comes down to the fact that if you go back and kill someone it may not change things for the better and if you save someone things also may not change for the better as a greater evil may take its place.
While I’m focusing heavily on the negatives, I still found Erased to be a very good show. I felt that a loss of direction stopped this from being a truly great anime and I feel with this anime it ended up being what Future diary and SAO had become. Characters like Kenya were particularly mature for the most part and does evoke suspicion because of that. While Satoru has the best intentions despite his flaws so I can’t fault him on that. Satoru also did a good job of challenging the killer with his limited knowledge of the past events.
The sound for the show was great and I particularly enjoyed the opening song and the animation behind it. Character designs were a bit different from what I’m used to seeing, so it was fresh.
Overall I did enjoy Erased. Despite the lack of direction the anime had I felt that the story and the characters carried the show best throughout the middle. Erased is by no means a bad show, for me it just didn’t fulfil its full potential.
I give Boku Dake ga Inai Machi a 7 out of 10 and a recommendation to watch this series.
Thanks for reading guys. Have a nice day!
