Format: Television Series

Review Covers: Erased (The Town Where Only I am Missing)

Episodes: 12

Genre: Mystery, Psychological, Seinen, Supernatural

Streaming: Animelab, Crunchyroll, Daisuke, Funimation, Wakanim

Licensed by: Aniplex of America

Languages Available (Watched in is Bolded): Japanese

The story begins in the year 2006 with Satorou a 29 year old struggling manga author, currently working as a pizza delivery boy for Oasi Pizza. Satoru regularly experiences a strange phenomenon he calls “Revival”.

Revival is an ability that Satorou was gifted/cursed/learned, I honestly don’t know, the show never explains how Satorou managed to experience this godlike phenomena. How revival works is that when an untimely death is about to occur, forces Satorou to go back in time, the reason why I say forces is Satorou has no control of the activation of Revival. Satorou needs to figure out who the victim is and how they’ll die. Revival Usually only takes him back in time from a couple of seconds to a couple of minutes at most. The exception being a certain event that kick-starts the series.

After being framed for murdering his mother who he suspects to be killed by the same person who was behind a serial kidnapping when he was a child. His revival ability forces him to go back 18 years to the year 1988, where he realises he needs to stop the serial killer kidnapper and save his future victims including his mother.

The first victim being Kayo a lonely girl in his class who is distanced from the rest of the class which was attributed due to her suffering from physical abuse and neglect at her home. The shows handling of the abuse, I feel mixed about, on one hand you have Kayo’s development, a girl who is reserved and cold to anyone who slowly becomes more trusting of other people, seeing this development is all by means delight when it comes to fruition. To Erased’s credit also, the series does manage to notice the little things involving child abuse; like Kayo lying about her injuries and this type of behaviour seen as taboo in small communities, even though it does overplay these tropes, overall I think Erased does handle the subject of child abuse in a respectable manner. Along with Kayo, the series manages to have assembled a reasonably strong supporting cast with characters such as, Satorou’s mum, Sachiko Fujinuma who is easily hands down the best character in Erased.

Sachiko, a reporter who retired soon after giving birth Satorou. Not because she couldn’t handle her job as reporter but found her true calling as a mother and what I just said sounds patronising as heck, but I say this is because she’s such a damn good mother. She her motherly love which is not just contempt to have Satorou, as several times throughout the series, whenever she sees a kid in a particular trouble she always manages to intervene, to help the kid out. When Satorou’s friends come under her roof, they all become her children and she’s is willing to care, love and protect them.

Another character that deserves mention is the teacher of Satorou’s class, Gaku Yashiro he continually is attentive towards the class, as well as settling disputes within the class and working alongside Satoru to assist Kayo in any way possible, he just comes across as a really likable character as well as a likable teacher. Even though Satorou’s group of childhood friends may not have much screen time, to the point you don’t even learn their names, Erased manages to capture the feel of closeness and support that they have for one another, any kid around 10 years old would love to be in that type of group. Even though Satorou’s group of friends didn’t have and really didn’t need much focus or development there was one person in the group in particular, which I was disappointed didn’t get decent focus and that is Hiromi, a feminine looking boy who is also a future victim of the serial killer.

What makes me say this, is that a large part of why Satorou acts the way he is because of Hiromi. As Satorou claims when he was growing up on the original timeline when Kayo and another girl named Aya went missing and found dead soon after, he would talk to his friends about them out of precaution, but when his friend Hiromi was kidnapped and found dead it affected him quite personally, to the point he not to acknowledged him as a friend and even wanted to forget about him, in all honesty in my opinion that’s an interesting character development but the show falls short for two reasons; one as an audience we don’t see this development via flashback or within the shows run and it would’ve been a good development to take place instead we we’re bluntly told in a monologue what happened between them and the second issue is that Satorou doesn’t reconcile this issue no awkwardness, no guilt, expresses barely any emotion towards Hiromi despite I don’t know, claiming that he denied Hiromi both their friendship and his existence.

The second character that felt also shafted, was Yuuki. Introduced via flashback in episode one, in the original timeline a young man suffering from a stutter and somewhat struggling with adult life. Always hanging around kids and giving them advice as he feels children don’t often judge him as much as others around his age. However Yuuki ends up in prison framed for the serial kidnapping murders. Yet the only interactions he has with Satorou, is Satorou checking up on him like a parole officer, he doesn’t exist to advance the plot or flesh out either characters but to be a chore for Satorou and a disposable pawn for the serial killer who only moved the pawn once and that was before the series even begun. I get that not all fictional characters can have a ten thousand word essay of characterisation of development and motivations but when your main character in a fictional work, says that a certain person left an impact (in this case Yuuki and Hiromi), and the story fails to reciprocate this fact by giving these character next to no screen time, because clearly they don’t matter in the story, so stop pretending they do matter by making a certain character say they do.

Talking about important characters who say unimportant characters are important, it’s time to talk about Satorou; who I think is by far the one of the most frustrating characters in “Erased”. For starters let’s start how he meet him, we’re introduced to him via a meeting with his supervisor?, Employer?, Senpai? Manga author, who criticizes that he’s not been open in his works which also shut out his readers. OK, I’ll admit I’m not the biggest fan of the emotionally distant cold type of character but that’s why character development exists, right? Soon after, on his part time employee he experiences Revival and narrates about this ability, I kid you not in the most unenthusiastic way possible. Talks about this time travel, phenomena like it’s a damn chore. True he points out that he gets into Revival he gets into danger himself, fine then don’t be grateful, hate it for all I care, be scared, be annoyed, be frustrated. Anything but a slight inconvenience, to be fair at least he’s consistent with his enthusiasm because you could get him hit him with a car and he’ll talk about it, like it was also a slight inconvenience.

To be fair when the revival forces him to go back 18 years to his 10 year old self, he’s a lot more tolerable but I couldn’t like him for a while as I always heard this little thought nagging at the back of my head reminding me this 10 year old was only a mask to fit in, as I don’t know him acting like a 29 year old with in a class of 10 year old’s would stick out like a sore thumb so anything what young Satorou did was the doing of his unimpressionable older self, which made young Satorou feel fake.

Also no wonder he’s a failure of a writer as one of the perquisites of being one, is to be somewhat genre savvy. Barely attempts to deduct who the serial killer could be and would rather play babysitter with all the possible future victims. Never has a contingency plan in the event of actually coming across the serial killer, does he honestly think his presence as a ten-year old would deter a dangerous kidnapper.

I could understand if he was 10 years old mentally and by making these kind of mistakes. Coming to think about it, throughout the entire series I can’t seem to recall what a 29 year old minded Satorou could do that his younger self couldn’t. He’s not any more intelligent than his smartest 10 year old friend. Doesn’t particularly have any genre savviness to his name that would’ve been gained in the extra 18 years of experience, the only thing he has that his younger self doesn’t, was knowledge of the kidnappings but why couldn’t Satorou have the Revival when he was younger or before these events even occur see a fortune teller that tells him of these future crimes. It’s like the author had two separate stories, one about a young man trying to prove his innocence and the other a story about a child trying to save his friends from a serial killer but didn’t know how to start and finish these stories, so he decided to combine them into one plot.

Another thing I never got though was, why was time travelling even needed in the story? Let me say, I really don’t have a problem with the concept of the Revival system, as much as how it’s used throughout the story. Outside of the first episode which does explain the applications of Revival; able to predict causes of death allowing him to prevent it, Satorou has no control over it and Satorou sees a butterfly before the revival initiates. After the first episode though all of this is thrown out the window for the rest of the series and is only used as a traversal method to reach Satorou’s past.

Which is a shame because the Revival system did bring its fair share of suspense when it was introduced. As the weight of something bad is about to happen and you only get one chance to piece together what’s about to happen and stop it before its occurrence. Maybe this is because there is might be an unspoken rule about the inability to have a revival within a revival as for the majority of the series Satorou is within a revival, yet it’s barely worth taking note as most rules about the revival are simply broken throughout the series, for example; even though he claims he can’t control Revival and it only happens in set conditions, yet later he begs to the schizophrenic butterfly and by doing this somehow allows him to activate Revival. The Revival really only exists to serve as plot contrivances to get the Satorou out of a rock and hard place.

To be fair I’m being pretty harsh towards Satorou and to be honest, I did begin to like his character and Erased a lot more in its second half despite having a near universal dislike for it. Not to say the second half didn’t have any problems because it does. I liked the second half more because it felt it brought more to the table.

What the first half deliver was Satorou’s and Kayo’s relationship and Kayo slowly no longer being reserved and opening up due to the aftermath of her constant abuse, the problem with this friendship was Satorou wearing the mask of his younger self first, which once again the tumour at the back of my head ached reminding this was all a lie. Although in its defence Satorou does get his fair share of character development, despite him wearing his mask, you begin to the mask cracking. Him beginning to catch himself out by saying things out loud that he never meant to say. At around the halfway point, the mask and Satorou merge completely and his actions and emotions feel absolutely genuine unlike before. In the second half also Satorou’s even explains the reasons of why he was acting as he did, when we first met him towards the audience wasn’t also until the second half of the series. Even though it didn’t do anything with it was still interesting regardless.

As thrillers need to have suspense to work and the first half of the series barely had any suspense. As Satorou makes it known to the viewers what’s about to happen, meaning everyone knows what’s going to happen and when literarlly the exact opposite of suspense, as you have to be continually doubting, insecure to be in suspense. It doesn’t even play with paranoia, as if the serial killer could be very well be watching and hiding in plain sight. It doesn’t even play this card when Satorou and Kayo are walking in the woods in the middle of the night.

While in the second half Revivals were hardly a thing, putting Satorou in unknown territory which means he can’t easily predict what’s about to happen and neither can the audience, which means I can doubt, be insecure and finally feel suspense and because of this Erased begins to find its feet of being a relatively decent thriller.

Then there is the Serial Killer who clearly wasn’t simply contempt with only kidnapping and murdering children but also wanted to kill the series as well. Despite the show’s attempts to make him a mysterious figure, fails as his true identity can be quite easy to deduce, providing you’re not blind and don’t have a seeing eye dog during your viewing, as it continually likes to show what the serial killer looks like, funnily enough that’s all the evidence we’re given for the murders, no circumstantial evidence, just a face to work off, which only one person fits that exact description. Which begs the question why couldn’t the serial killers identity be revealed to the audience at the start, plenty of well received shows do this Monster, Death Note, Psycho Pass but that would no longer be considered as a mystery would it. As the show holds onto this genre like Kayo’s abusive mum holds onto Kayo from the child services.

What bothers me more however is the serial killer’s identity as it contradicts the shows central theme and message of “trusting your friends” and the shows failure to reconstruct or adapt its own theme to make it relevant after bluntly contradicting itself, the equivalent would be if a Shounen protagonist killed an entire room of mooks, with no consequences nor regrets and from doing this act resolves the story completely and the protag makes a long speech about the virtues and importance of pacifism and killing is never the answer, despite that very same person murdered an entire room full of people not too long ago. Making the show’s theme and message “trusting in your friend” was not in accord of who the serial killer is, because of this undermined whatever point Erased wanted to share, making it a waste of time to even bother analysing.

Erased is a series that begins with a fair share of solid story elements but with a lot of these elements, fails to do anything that interesting or well with these elements. With an interesting time travel mechanic being used for nothing more than bridging two separate stories into one plot and ended up offering nothing else but plot contrivances. Showing some characters with a fair amount of potential and claiming to have a large to do with Satorou’s mentality but has no importance to the overall story, a menacing villain which requires the bending of space and time to defeat only to become incredibly underwhelming. A theme of trust which despite betraying this theme, still wants the audience to accept the theme with a straight face. Despite my overall unreasonableness towards the series, I still manage to enjoy it till the end, as it does offer enough to break itself out of mediocrity, a solid supporting cast, Kayo’s and Satorou’s character development, good visuals and some cheap thrills with a decent take on child abuse, and if those highpoints seem interesting to you, then Erased might be a show you may enjoy.

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