'I want...
I want a chance to do it all again. To do it... right.' Tears showed in the Old Man's eyes. 'How ever did it go so wrong, Temple? I had so many advantages. So many opportunities. All squandered. All slipped away like sand through a glass. So many disappointments...'
'Most of them you brought on yourself'
'Of course.' Cosca gave a ragged sigh. 'But they're the ones that hurt the worst.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country
Think about the biggest mistake you ever made, your biggest regret that you can never fix no matter how hard you try, the one fuckup that completely derailed your entire life and profoundly affected you as a person. Now imagine how your life would be if you could strike it from history. Just how much would you give for this second chance? Would you really succeed, or would you once again fail? And would you be the same person afterward? Erased isn't about any of this. It's really just a murder mystery about a guy using the power of plot contrivance to travel back in time and save a girl from a serial killer. That's it. Yet for some reason, it gets constantly praised as if it was some sort of deep philosophical drama that it simply isn't.
The first four episodes of Erased are absolutely excellent... or so they tell me. Yeah, I don't really get what everyone likes about them. The first episode is your standard introduction spiced up by several completely retarded decisions our hero makes, and the second episode was OK I guess. The third episode is where the show implodes. You see, that is when I figured out who the murderer was. Yeah, this early. It honestly amazes me just how obvious the whole thing is. This is in part because the show absolutely refuses to give you any decent suspect. The ones we get either couldn't have done it or they get cleared two minutes after introduction. There are no red herrings, no false leads, no misdirection, nothing. It's a mystery show in name only.
While I don't think that the first four episodes were anything special, I understand where most people are coming from, since the rest of the show is absolutely atrocious. First we get a short return to the future. This entire section was set in motion by the already mentioned retarded decision from episode one and because of that, the entire section makes absolutely no sense. This isn't helped by the fact that all the characters are acting in a completely nonsensical manner and constantly come up with these bizarre conclusions as to what is going on. Back in the past, things aren't looking much better. If you somehow haven't figured out who the killer is, the show pretty much spells it out for you in episode seven. But even after that, they still continue to treat it as this big mystery, and it's honestly just painful to watch. Then they once again straight up tell you who it is in episode nine and the fucking idiot MC still doesn't get it. What the fuck? What the hell is wrong with this show? Even after all of that, they still try to go with this big reveal in episode ten. Does the author have absolutely no self awareness? YOU CAN'T HAVE A BIG REVEAL IF I ALREADY KNOW WHO THE KILLER IS SINCE EPISODE THREE AND YOU ALREADY TOLD ME WHO IT IS NOT ONCE BUT TWICE! Holy shit I am mad just thinking about it. Did I forget to mention something? Ah, yes, the romance subplot. You know, the one between a thirty-year-old man and a ten-year-old girl. On second thoughts, let's not talk about that.
And now for the characters. This will be quick since there aren't any. The show only has a few meat puppets constantly acting completely nonsensically to progress the plot. The only ones even worth talking about would be the MC, the girl and the killer (no joke, I don't remember their names). The MC may be the most mentally deficient character I have ever seen. He gets outsmarted by a ten-year-old kid. I know that the dumb MC has become a meme, but this guy really takes the crown. The girl is the show's designated pain pig. She can't go for five minutes without something horrible happening to her, and you are supposed to feel for her because of that. As you can imagine, this doesn't work and comes of as a lazy attempt at getting sympathy. And last but not least, we have the killer. The best I can say about him is that even the show's biggest shills all agree that this guy sucks.
There are many other smaller complaints I have with this show (children = adults but small, the final fight, the entire ending sequence, the girls' mother...) but there is one thing about this show that I want to praise. The presentation. The animation quality is overall very high and the soundtrack is decent. The opening personally didn't sit well with me, but I can see why people like it. Sadly, even here it's not all flowers and sunshine. Firstly, they really like to give the suspects glowing red sharingan eyes, and it just looks terrible. And secondly, they really like to frame scenes with this old 35mm film reel effect. It was alright when they first used it, but they spammed it like crazy, and it gets old fast. Overall, the presentation is the only thing that saved Erased from getting a big, fat one from me.
