WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS (MOSTLY) SOFTCORE XXX SPOILERS, PROCEED AT OWN RISK IF YOU HAVE NOT YET SEEN THIS MASTERPIECE

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” – Gandhi

“Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.” – Horace

“YOLO” – random 16 year old

Now this may be shocking to long-time readers, but the following post is not actually about cute girls doing cute things. Okay, that’s only a half-truth, but this show is so much more than its admittedly adorable af cast. Before we get started, let me first preface this by stating that I have not, in fact, reverted back to being 12 and thinking quotes from dead people will improve everything I write. They do all tie into the central theme of E R A S E D and sums it up in such a succinct way that I hope y’all will forgive me this indiscretion. In any case, onwards and upwards.

I first ran into the manga that the anime was adapted from while trawling the late night depths of 4chan’s /a/ board for entertainment. It was one of those threads where users would post a single page from a manga with no context, along with a short description, as a sort of speed-dating manga recommendation thread. The art style was neat, but what really caught my attention was the description: a “time traveling aspiring mangaka who delivers pizza as a part-time job”. Jesus, a time traveling pizza guy! Fuckin’ AWESOME! I love time travel (see: Steins;Gate; we’ll get back to that) and I love pizza! So I delve right into it and, well, I was hooked.

Merely referring to this manga as “Time Travel Pizza Guy” does it a great disservice (but it’s catchy and easier to remember than “Boku dake blah blah” so we’ll stick with it). The time travel is a major plot device but the manga doesn’t dwell on even really mention the mechanics of it. Which is GREAT because as soon as you start trying to explain time travel the plot holes start appearing; it’s kinda like aliens in a way, ya just can’t explain it. It also doesn’t really play on the nostalgia angle of time travel very much. A great example would be Stephen King’s 11/22/63, where the reader starts reminiscing about an era that he’s likely never even experienced. TTPG focuses on the character relationships, and that’s where it really shines. In any case, I read up until what would’ve been around ep. 8/9 of the anime, and that was when I heard the news. TTPG was getting an anime adaptation. What’s more, it was being animated by A-1 Pictures, a subsidiary of Sony and thus has unlimited budget (not really). They’d also put out quite a few high-quality shows recently like Your Lie in April, Saekano, and GATE (haha jk). Needless to say, my hype was through the roof.

And at first glance, A-1 Pictures did not disappoint. The animation was fluid, the music was top-notch, the art was amazing, the character designs were AMAZING AS FUCK. Like seriously, it’s amazing how much budget they poured into this adaptation. Almost makes me feel bad for the other A-1 shows this season, NIPPON Nationalism (GATE) and MS Powerpoint (Grimgar), who obviously got shafted HARD by the budgeting department. Just take a look at this shit:

But lets take a few steps back. TTPG, while containing both time travel and a guy delivering pizzas, is ACTUALLY a mystery/thriller that follows Satoru Fujinuma, a man on a mission to collect the kawaii-est pre-pubescent harem in Japan…I mean, uh, lets try that again. A mystery/thriller that follows Satoru Fujinuma, a part-time pizza delivery guy and aspiring mangaka who with a special power. A power that sends him back in time just before a traumatic event, repeatedly, until he manages to fix it. In a way, it reminds me of Steins;Gate, where Okabe goes back in time again and again to save Mayuri, except Satoru doesn’t have a beautiful tsundere teenage genius assistant girl to assist him.

The first few chaps follows Satoru as he bumbles around delivering pizzas, saving kids from lorries, hitting on a super QT 3.14 high school grill, and lamenting him being rather boring and somewhat of a failure at life. He also thinks back to that time, fifteen years prior, when his town was rocked by a string of child kidnappings and murders. This is a good time to note that TTPG is, at its core, pretty damn dark. I mean, the plot centers around Satoru traveling back in time, again and again, to save his classmate from being abused and murdered to death. Child abuse being a touchy subject that is seldom explored in a non-exploitative manner (Now and Then, Here and There is another one that comes to mind, but I can’t in good faith recommend that to anyone), TTPG actually does a pretty damn good job of keepin’ it real, but at the same time not utilizing it solely for shock value. But I digress. Eventually, DISASTER STRIKES and Satoru is sent all the way back to the year of our Lord 1988 when he’s still a wee lad, and he embarks on a journey to save the Original Loli and everyone that he loves. That’s actually a pretty terrible description, isn’t it? But we’re not here to talk about plot, we’re here to talk about FEELINGS. So anyway…

What really makes TTPG stand out from all the other temporally displaced fast-food delivery man manga out there is the strength of its characters. The main guy, Satoru is a true everyman character. For one, he doesn’t look like he stepped off the cover of GQ mag. Other than his time travel, he doesn’t have any special powers or skills (and even his time travel cannot be triggered at will). He goes through the story relying solely on his ingenuity, help from his tomodachis, and an innate sense of rightness. For all intents and purposes, Satoru is Sir Galahad trapped in a frail Japanese boy’s body. Except he fucks up a lot more. Anyway, here’s Satoru:

And now, best girl. Airi actually doesn’t get a lot of screen time in the anime which is a damn shame. She spends a lot of time being cute and, uh, being really cute. She does, however, believe in Satoru during a critical time of his loli-saving journey. She also appears in…well, lets save the best for last. In any case, here’s Airi in her natural habitat of KAWAII AS FUCK:

Another thing that sets this manga apart is how great the mom is. Seriously, words cannot express how great she is. First of all, she’s got that MILF-y look going on which is never a bad thing. But seriously though. With anime parents so often being essentially non-existent (like seriously, one would think Japan is a nation comprised solely of orphans), it is quite refreshing and surprising to find such a great mom in manga. She’s meddles in Satoru’s affairs for his well being, but she manages to do so without being oppressive. Raising Satoru alone after her husband left her for reasons unknown (like seriously, that guy better be on a quest to capture all the rare Pokemon or something because there’s NO WAY a sane man would leave her), she continues to support Satoru through his various attempts to save the loli. Like seriously, she is so great. I would give her the title of “greatest Japanese mom of all time” but unfortunately that title already belongs to Hana from Wolf Children. But that’s almost an unfair comparison because Hana is nothing short of divine, so I’ll give Sachiko a close second. Anyway, here’s mom:

And lastly, we have the raison d’etre of TTPG. Kayo Hinazuki, aka the girl whose childhood life was basically the foil of Satoru’s loving one, and the girl who was brutally murdered by He Who Shall Not Be Named. Now I’ve referred to her as a loli throughout this post but she’s really anything but your stereotypical hypersexualized Japanese bullshit. She exudes a real sense of vulnerability and world-weariness that really triggers the viewer’s protective instincts. Combined with the frankly quite brutal scenes of child abuse, you end up with a real vested interest in seeing her safe and happy by the end of the show. Add in her interactions with child Satoru and you’re practically shipping the two together (despite the fact that he’s actually mentally in his late 20’s). Also her catchphrase is seriously ADORABLE AF. Still, it’s hard to believe her VA is the same one that voiced Komachi from My Teen RomCom SNAFU aka GENUINE the anime. And with that, here’s Kayo:

Now, fast forward to post episode 11. Up until now the anime has stayed more or less true to the source material. Of course, given the anime’s only a single cour certain sacrifices had to be made. Streamlining of extraneous material and all that. But episode 11 is where the anime hit its first real stumbling block. Satoru wakes up from his slumber, and the fork diverges. Things are changed. The catalyst for his remembrance switches from one character to another, and more importantly, the backstory to the villain is almost completely erased (ahuehue). I’m going to pause here and say that if you’re an anime-only friend, to please go and read the manga right meow because the villain’s backstory is really quite well done, and gives some great insight into why he became such a twisted individual. But back to episode 11. The most important plot point that was gleaned from this episode by the collective minds of the Internet hivemind was…the NTR.

Wait, what?

Now I’d already read this bit in the manga so I wasn’t blindsided by it. Now, about NTR. NTR is one of those weird Japanese fetishes that’s sort of like cuckolding but not. Basically a (usually meek) guy/cuck will meet a girl (usually too hot for him), they start going out, then Mr. Steal Yo Girl rolls along and he, well, steals yo girl with his gigantic schlong and great sex drive. And the original guy has to somehow be aware that he’s being cheated on because uhhh that’s a part of the fetish or something. But how does that tie in to TTPG? Well it’s because Kayo had the audacity, THE AUDACITY, to not wait 15 years for Satoru to wake up from his coma and had a kid with somebody else. Despite, y’know, their mental age difference. Or the fact that Airi’s the better girl (ahuehue). But no, just because they held hands a few times means they were destined to be together. Some good did come of it though, such as this hilarious video based on a poem Kayo wrote:

To put salt in the wound, they ended episode 11 on a cliffhanger. Now though the manga had just recently finished and is completely scanlated, by this point I was so thoroughly invested in the anime that I wanted to see that through first. So I spent that past week agonizing about how they were gonna end things, terrified out of my mind. “But why,” you may ask, “the show’s been mostly uniformly excellent up until now, what’s the worst that could happen?” Well I’ll tell you hwat. I was terrified because Japan has a proven track record of FUCKING UP ENDINGS. Now I’m not just talking about ones where the creator came up with a really neat idea, managed to carry it for a bit, and then utterly shit the bed because he wrote himself into a corner (looking at you real hard, Gantz). Or ones where it started out as something neat (e.g. post-apocalyptic sci-fi) and ended up being something…not so neat (e.g. a philosophical examination of the human condition aka fuck you Hiroki Endo). I’m talking about stuff that is objectively great, but because of a weird Japanese cultural quirk that values JOURNEY before DESTINATION. Like Honey and Clover, where we follow poor Takemoto-kun as he spends 24+12 episodes learning about himself but ends up utterly alone. Or like Samurai Champloo, where Fuu spends 26 episodes looking for fuckin’ sunflowers and then decides to go her own way at the end. Or like…okay I gotta stop before I start hyperventilating. Anyway I was fully expecting Satoru to do something like sacrifice himself for his mom/the loli/what have you, or win the game and goes back to his boring and unfulfilling life.

Cue the day of. March 24th, 2016. I’m sitting in front of my computer, headphones on, knees weak, arms are heavy, vomit on his mom’s spaghetti, etc. Satoru progresses well, slaying the villain (expected) but not getting killed/reset in the process (less expected). Everyone’s happy, Satoru can finally go home to his mom, Kayo to her NTR, we’re treated to a nice montage of of the kids, now adults, having a getogether. Satoru’s shown as a successful mangaka through his experience of saving lolis. All is well, mostly. At this point there’s about 5 minutes left and I’m selfishly thinking “oh, I guess it’s too much to ask for that he also gets the girl” but wait there’s more and Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” is now playing in my head as Satoru’s walking around in the snow and he stops under the tunnel where he met up with Airi and what the shit there’s a blue butterfly flying around we Life is Strange now or what and then we see a figure in the distance and oh fuck is it the Sopranos and AWWW SHIT MOTHER FUCKER BITCH IS THAT WHO I THINK IT IS?!?

Goddamn Japan I can finally forgive you for Pearl Harbor now.

Now, why did I just spend 2000+ words talking up this show? While great, it definitely had its flaws, the short length and condensed material being chief among them. So what exactly made it so special? I think what really endeared Boku dake ga Inai Machi to me, aside from the supremely adorable girls, is the GENUINE (thanks 8man) nature of Satoru. He is willing to risk his own life for the happiness of those he cares about, with the courage to keep fighting and not give up even when the chips are down. He grows from someone who was more shy and just let things happen, into someone who takes that first step. And through taking that first step,you’ll find tomodachis that will help you on your way through the Power of Friendship. And then when you find those friends, you sink your talons into them and don’t let go because they’re probably gonna grow up to be hotties. So basically, the opposite of this:

TTPG also manages to be the rare breed of dramatic show that manages to be engrossing and captivating without veering into the territory of melodrama. So many shows in recent years have been about slice-of-life moe or just cute girls doing cute things. Hell, all the saccharin Kyoto Animation shows that I watch are pretty much exclusively CGDCT (that Haruhi journey is a whole ‘nother story). So sometimes, all we really need is a show like TTPG, one that manages to entertain while imparting some life lessons. And most of all, letting you feel good at the end of it all.