ERASED
ERASED was that anime that was in everyone's mouth when it was released back in 2016. As I came to know years later, the series grew a divided opinion between those who followed each new episode and those who became disappointed in the anime mid-season.
Nevertheless, I'm not easily influenced by what people say about a series and didn't know anyone who followed Erased when I watched it the first time. Luckily, after watching it again to refresh my memory about this anime, let's begin with the review!
PLOT
Erased follows the story of Satoru Fujinuma who is a 29-year-old aspiring manga artist with the ability to travel backward in time to prevent terrible things from happening. After the murder of a loved one, he is launched back further in time than he has ever gone to prevent the tragedy from taking place." – IMBD.
The premise of ERASED draws your attention, and if it is not enough, the first episodes will have you placing high expectations on the series for the ambitious way they wrote their script.
The story unfolds in two timelines, one in the present and the other in the past. Of course, after the incident that made Satoru travel 18 years earlier when he was in elementary school, we have a small first arc of past events. Satoru’s main objective is to prevent the murder of his classmate Kayo to save his mother in the future.
This "arc" was undoubtedly the best-worked arc presented by the series, enchanting me in a way that made me put Boku Dake at the top of my expectations of the season. Good directing and entertaining situations are shown in these episodes. Simultaneously, Satoru has the most interesting relationship with himself (which I will explain a little later), and excellent suspense, worthy of a thriller, is portrayed in the series.
DEVELOPMENT
However, problems do arise later in the plot due to excess drama. One of the series's weakest points was undoubtedly the introduction of industrial amounts of drama and the constant habit of underlining the same symbolism repeatedly in several scenes so that the viewer would notice vital clues. This is seen from the beginning of the series, where many already knew the identity of the murderer.
The indication was apparent around episodes two or three for the simple fact that they highlighted him in a way that would not go unnoticed. It was as if they were shouting this at the viewer. Because of this, the quality of the script drops significantly, and events now seem forced.
The chance factor is an ally of the protagonist at all times, and some characters, regardless of their motivations, move as if they were dolls destined only for their use in the episode with Satoru and then to leave the scene.
All this created a lousy run of episodes that I did not like because of how rushed they were. Some episodes were not very well executed and overused a cliffhanger ending, hoping you would see the next episode. (I understand the usefulness of cliffhangers, but it loses its purpose when using it episode after episode resulting in zero impact. They use it only to "thrill" the audience with the pretense of it being surprising).
Let’s be clear, Erased is not a terrible series that lacks good development. It has a better script and story than most other anime. But by raising their standards very high with their first few episodes, they gave a certain sense of dissatisfaction to the viewer later on.
What's more, its strong point and what distinguishes it from MANY other series from the same studio is intelligent execution. Still, in the end, it found itself in trouble for having miscalculated the adaptation of a manga of forty-something chapters with about thirty pages each in twelve episodes (anime). It seemed to be not enough source material to adapt the series. In the final episodes, Erased had to accelerate the pace to cover all its original material, which it achieves. Still, in a somewhat incomplete and trimmed way, its only objective was to reach its conclusion.
CHARACTERS
SATORU
As the protagonist, he is not the most interesting, outstanding, or intelligent of the main characters. Still, the development that he has throughout the series is quite juicy to get a friendly personality out of him. Seeing him think with the mind of a twenty-nine-year-old while he was in his boyhood state and sometimes letting himself be carried away by his childhood and making the same mistakes he made in the past was quite enjoyable.
I did not like that throughout the series, it began to change positively, but with this complex and dream of being a "hero," that at some point ended up taking it very seriously, which they ended reinforcing at the end of the series. His behavior, although at first, was a reasonably accurate balance between his adult and child mentalities, changed. At times, I was surprised to see that Satoru was one of the few characters who behaved like a child of his age (this had its positive and negative moments depending on the situation) despite being his actual age inside. How do I explain the idea of behaving like a child of his age? I will explain it next.
SATORU'S CHILDHOOD FRIENDS
You see, children become very recurring characters in the series by being part of the trip to the past. For reasons that I do not find clear, most of these do not act like children. Of this group, I especially highlight Kenya and Kayo. The first had a reasoning capacity much greater than that of an individual of his age (sometimes I even believed that he was the most intelligent in the series, with that I say it all) that passed the absurdity line.
I respected Kayo for her character at the beginning of the series. Many children in their family situation indeed tend to be very quiet, reserved, and even asocial in their environment. What is not justified is the dialogue that they gave the girl with topics such as "we are all liars." A girl her age is simply not going to have such philosophical thoughts as that, much less at such a young age.
THE ANIME VILLAIN
He is another victim of the excessive use of drama in the series. Emphasizing the symbolism very obviously every time it appeared, I do not exactly blame the anime since the manga also has this clear error. However, I still think that if they had the freedom to change a considerable number of events to the Erased adaptation, the development, and handling of this character could have been much better, especially when closing his story.
ANIMATION
On the technical side, Erased undoubtedly deserves good recognition. Character design is standard. But what I like about the artistic aspect of the series is the mixture of colors, creating a good atmosphere of mystery with well-worked backgrounds, and a more than decent level of detail. Although the camera work was good, sometimes it appeared a bit lost; it maintains excellent quality.
That added to the effort they put into creating certain scenes makes for a pleasant series to watch. Something that I did not like was the exaggerations (as I already mentioned), such as the color red shone as the "color of evil" (the eyes of the murderer, Kayo's blows, violent scenes). But other applications such as placing the settings of the timeline passed in film format and once they went back in time to normal were little things that I noticed and liked.
FINAL THOUGHTS
It's honestly not one of the first anime that comes to mind when someone asks me for recommendations for a thriller or suspense anime. It was painted as a series that would remain as a classic anime of its genre, but in the end, what I can say is it is an entertaining anime to watch. I recommend it not because it is a masterpiece. It is a series that touches on interesting topics, and as many have errors, it ends up being what I consider an anime to pass the time.
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ERASED English Trailer.
