A continuous feelings of going back in time and doing certain things differently is all I can relate to these days. Though these feelings last only for a few minutes and I snap out back in real time, I really wonder if I would have been given one chance to relive my time again, would I have been the person that I aspire to be now.
Well, I know most of us had those phases in our life where these thoughts just don’t go away and I guess that’s alright because reflecting on your choices is the right path of finding your true self.
By the earlier context you already might have guessed the plotline of the anime we are going to talk about in this blog today.
No, it’s not an Isekai if it pops out on your head XD.
The story of this anime revolves around the concept of time travel & murder mystery.
Ya it’s a thriller one which will keep you on your toes for sure.
The anime goes by the name “Erased”
The title itself gives the perfect vibe of mystery, thriller and in some context sorrow.
The anime Erased is adopted from the Manga series name as Boku Dake Ga Inai Machi in Japanese, written and illustrated by Kei Sanbe.
The anime was first broadcasted back in January 8, 2016 and ran till March 25, 2016 with a total of 12 episodes.
This 12 episode anime covers the complete story which makes it a one go sitter definitely , and from personal experience once you start it , you won’t be able to skip it for good.
Erased was a hit and soon live action movie in Japan and Netflix were serialized in March 2016 and December, 2017 respectively.
Meet Erased Protagonist
Let’s meet our main character and the protagonist before jumping into the story. A struggling mangaka and an employee at a Pizza shop of the town, Satoru Fujinuma. Satoru always finds himself going back several minutes in the timeline, and this phenomena of time travel always occur whenever something bad is going to happen around him. By going back in time he had managed to stop many mishappenings and accidents from occurring. He named this phenomenon “ Revival “
Now before jumping into the story and discussing some major plots of the anime , I would really appreciate your support by checking out our Instagram page and Youtube channel where we upload entertaining anime related contents, so, thank you in advance 😉.
Plotline premise of Erased
Satoru Fujinuma, a man nearly in his late 20’s is still finding it hard to become a Mangaka and thus doing jobs like pizza delivery guy to fulfill his basic needs.
One day on his way to pizza delivery, a holographic butterfly appears out of nowhere and suddenly Satoru finds himself back in time for a few minutes, he quickly started looking for odd happenings around and it looked like the truck that has just crossed passed him looks little off and he was right, the driver of the truck was unconscious and it was going to hit a kid who was about to cross the road. He manages to avoid any public casualty but in the process he gets himself hit with a car head on with its motor bike.
The protagonist explains this time travel as “Revival” and finds himself going back in time for around 1-5 minutes whenever something bad was going to happen around him. He had managed to stop the miss happenings most of the time without any casualties unlike this time.
Well, how the character goes through with this phenomena was not explained in the story instead the why is surely what got us hooked on to this show.
Spoiler Alert !!
So, the main story kicks in after the accident plot as after a few days from discharging from the hospital Satoru experiences a revival but he won’t find anything at that time. He was in the parking lot with his mother and luckily his mother noticed something strange when Satoru mentioned and asked her to look for something odd happening.
His mother was a media reporter by profession and she had that detective instinct within her so, she figured it out about that day’s incident as she claimed there presence in the parking lot saved a child from being abducted and she also had a theory that the abduction was similar to incidents that took place 18 years ago at their village. It might be possible that the convicted person was innocent and framed by the real convict and he is still alive and trying to pull off the same stunts as earlier.
Truth to be told, she was spot on and so does the killer know it, so he without hesitation stabbed and murdered Satoru’s mother and framed Satoru for the death of his own mother.
As, I said the story kicks in and panicking about the situation and watching police coming after him, he tried to run and Revival happened but not for several few minutes back this time he was back 18 years ago back in his hometown.
A little bit about the past of Satoru Fujinuma
18 years ago there was a mysterious abduction and murder of 3 children within a few days of interval and the suspect was a college student who lived nearby and used to talk with those kids. 2 of the children were Satoru’s classmate and 1 child was from another school nearby. The suspect that later on got convicted was also one of the best friends. This incident created deep impact on Satoru, and after almost 18 years these memories are still somewhere deep inside him, though he doesn’t put attention to these thoughts anymore until when he actually got transported 18 years back in time due to revival while he was getting chased by the police.
Satoru finds himself in a junior schooler body but with the consciousness of a 29 year guy. He was confused at first about this revival but soon understood that to save his mother in real time he had to stop and find the murderer 18 years back.
Thus, starts the mission of protecting today to save those in future.
With this revival which covers 18 years of time we can now say that it’s a perfect time travel situation but without any time machine or a vacuum hole. From day one, the protagonist started to care and give proper gratitude towards his mother and friends. The mission was to save the first child which was his classmate and her name was Kayo.
Kayo is the other main character of the show, who was a victim of domestic violence and thus she mostly stays cutted out with everyone else in her class.
The then Satoru Fujinuma
Satoru was an introverted child and had a small group of friends. In the story it was mentioned that he finds it hard to make new friends and thus he always tries to fit in by compromising or sometimes showing some fake self.
This had took a toll on his grown up life as his Mangaka journey was always missing his true self and asking him to deep dive within himself by the publishers.
The original timeline Satoru had always grieved about not being able to save Kayo’s life, if he had at least enough courage to talk to his classmate and be there with her when he saw her standing all alone in the park in the late evening, the day before her disappearance and then murder.
Satoru had more than enough reason not to let his previous mistake dictate the same consequences this time.
Now, should we discuss the complete story of Erased here, no definitely not.
Major Spoiler Alert !!
In short, Satoru did managed to save Kayo on the day she was abducted but couldn’t saved her at all as Kayo went missing 2 days after that and suddenly Satoru is back in his original timeline, still convicted and chased by the police in charge of killing his own mother.
Getting busted soon after he went to meet Airi (a co-worker in Satoru’s original timeline, who also saved him from Police) as she was getting tracked down by the killer. While Satoru was getting handcuffed by the police men, he witnessed a rising smiling face half hidden under his long cap, smirk of a winning attitude. It was the killer, Satoru felt so defeated and he just could not accept this fate of his, so he screamed for a last chance, a last try to change everything. He got transported again and this time he wouldn’t fail.
How I perceived this anime ?
Well to be honest, I would like to mention again that there are many moments in life where we feel stuck and we just don’t know what’s solution of it. If you are feeling somewhat similar and this anime suddenly comes to you, it will just hit you differently.
I would like to point out few of my realizations
1. What could you have done differently
Satoru spoke his mind beautifully and it just implies so damn well during those phases of our life whenever you don’t think of what to do next instead what went wrong and I could have done moments. Though the revival is not an option in real life but there’s a great subtle message at the end of the story that it’s common to have those thoughts once in a while but the important thing is to keep believing in yourself and keep thriving towards your goal.
2. Appreciating and be more generous
One thing that Satoru did the very first when he got teleported back 18 years ago was to see his mother. In the original timeline he kept himself distant from his mother and even though he met an accident he just said Airi, he didn’t want to bother anyone by leting them know. This shows how much he was living in a shell and also being a little selfish when it comes to his relationship with his mom. His attitude was surely because what happened back in time during the conviction of Kayo’s murderer. But he realized it and thus enjoyed every little moments with proper gratification when he returned to his childhood timeline.
Most often we forget to live with gratification and takes things for granted, Satoru did get a chance to fix everything but we can fix everything from today in our life.
3. Don’t fight alone
One thing happened when he transported that Satoru was a 11 year old kid with a 29 year old intellect and so does his actions and thoughts. The first and only person to realize that was his friend Kenya Kobayashi. Of course Kenya was one of the character which is very much mature in comparison to his peers including Satoru. Yes, there’s an instance when Satoru was desperate to save Kayo’s life after getting a second chance of revival, he was almost convinced to commit a crime himself but Kenya understood the situation and stopped him. Kenya always had his back and tried to help Satoru in his plans to save Kayo and others without asking any questions to him about what he is saying, thus showing how much he trusted Satoru.
If you are going through rough times, ask for help I’m pretty sure you will get someone like Kenya to fight along with.
4. Life is a gift
Well this point will be pretty hard to explain and honestly I don’t know if this is the right way to explain. So, Satoru did saved all the victims but found himself waking from coma after 15 years without any memory of what had happened back 15 years ago. His mother completely dedicated her life to take care of him while he was in coma, that’s called selfless love and no one but only parents can selflessly care and love their children.
Satoru’s new life was a gift of his mother which is peculiar because Satoru did went back to change the past in order to change the future, the future where his mother won’t be murdered by the killer.
This one example might be even more hard to understand, Satoru risked his life to save Kayo, Hiromi and Nakanishi. The most challenging one was of course Kayo’s one and in the process Satoru & Kayo did came very close to one another which was kind of sparking a love story. But fast forward to 15 years, Kayo comes with a baby in her arms and all of a sudden your perception of a happy ending will be just poof…….
And that too with the very person you saved life next to her Hiromi.
Many will argue that they did wrong to him, but in their defence the only reason Satoru got back his memory was the children of Kayo and Hiromi.
And to back my point of life is a gift, Kayo did the correct thing not to waste her new life by holding on until Satoru’s revival from coma which was uncertain and as per Hiromi, he also had same gift from Satoru. So getting together with Kayo and honoring the sacrifice of Satoru to live a happy life was the best thing they could have done for Satoru.
More importantly, it was never shown that Satoru was grieving about Kayo and Hiromi’s relationship instead he was truly happy for them.
I guess this point will cover most of the fan’s dilemma as to “why Kayo and Satoru didn’t end up together?”.
Conclusion
The depth of the story of Erased has subdued the animation quality and sounds in the very corner which is truly great as a story teller for the author and the director but of course the hard working animators had put great work in bringing each and every character so lively, so hats off to the entire team behind Erased Anime.
I will not talk a single thing about the antagonist of the show instead one line of his own is good enough to explain his deeds .
"The essence of good deeds and evil is the same. They’re both no more than a person’s actions to make up for a defect in themselves."
Where to watch Erased Anime?
The anime was broadcasted back in January 2016 and its streaming partners are Crunchyroll and Funimation & Netflix. While Netflix has right to stream the live action of Erased but the anime is still not available for all countries. And if by any chance you are not able to get those options in your country then you should try zorotv and 9anime, these are some community streaming channels you can check. Happy watching.
Last thoughts on the anime
Erased anime is one of the best thriller I watched after a long time and I’m truly amazed by its heart wrenching story , depth of characters and overall experience of anime as a whole.
I hope my thoughts and review of this anime did justice to it, and if you liked this kind of detailed analysis and review of anime unlike our regular one’s then do let us know, you know how to reach us 😜 , until then
2 replies on “Erased Anime: Full Introvert’s Review”
I have to thank you for the efforts youve put in writing this blog. Im hoping to check out the same high-grade blog posts by you later on as well. In fact, your creative writing abilities has encouraged me to get my own website now 😉
Thanks and all the best steveieraexxx