If you were to go into Erased (Boku dake ga Inai Machi | 僕だけがいない街) completely blind about what to expect, your initial impressions may see you thinking that this is a story about someone who can jump back minutes in time to save people from deadly incidents. While this is certainly the approach a good part of Episode 1 takes, it quickly shifts into a darker murder mystery story, surrounding a string of child abductions and murders that had taken place many years ago.
Storyline / Character Development
Erased follows 29-year-old struggling manga artist Satoru Fujinuma, who works a gig at a local pizza shop and is typically average except for one thing – a unique ability dubbed revival. While unable to control when it activates, this ability allows him to jump several minutes back in time to prevent the death of someone – whether it is an immediate incident or something that will happen in the near future. While not always coming out of the incidents unscathed, he is committed to fixing the issues posed to him, and is proactive in doing so. But following a mysterious revival incident, he comes home to find his mother murdered, and the police close on his tail. The key to saving her is not five minutes away…. but during his childhood – and the deadly incidents everyone had tried to suppress. Now eleven years old again, Satoru works towards saving the lives of two girls and a boy who without intervention on his part, will be killed by the culprit.
A good portion of the ‘childhood’ timeline focuses on Satoru’s stoic and downtrodden classmate Kayo Hinazuki, the first victim of the kidnappings to come. Armed with the knowledge of her fate, he works towards saving her, while also trying to put an end to the abuse she endures at the hand of her mother. While she may initially be seen as a ‘plot device’ – as simply someone to save – she quickly ended up being one of my favourite characters. While she starts off the series as a quiet, depressed and occasionally sharp-tongued little girl, it is heart warming to see her open up to Satoru, and begin a more social, happier life.
As the protagonist, Satoru is also an interesting enough character to follow the viewpoint of. While he may need to have turned to (now fellow) elementary school students for advice a little to often, including his much wiser classmate Kenya who is very perceptive but in many ways underutilised in the story, he is an engaging character with enough personality and development to work.
Erased offers a moderately sized cast of secondary characters, from Satoru’s mother who has an uncanny ability to know what her son is up to, to his supportive teacher Yashiro who is often there to lend a hand. Other secondary characters are in the story and do have their own individual roles, but are not heavily explored in this anime adaptation. In particular, the focus is much more focused on Kayo, rather than Hiromi and Aya who are also potential victims but have their stories both concluded in a couple of episodes. While I appreciate the succinct storyline, I personally wouldn’t have minded a longer season with more focus on them.
The story in my opinion strikes a good balance between solving the mystery at hand and delivering a heartwarming and entertaining school-life experience. For an anime series of this length, Erased features a complex enough mystery that delivers a sense of urgency on the part of Satoru, while offering a web of possibilities that left several secondary characters as potential culprits – if not a third party. Despite this, they weren’t discreet enough when dropping clues about who the culprit may be, and despite not being 100% certain, I was not surprised when it was unveiled.
Characters jumping back and forth in time is not a unique plot device, with it having been used for decades across many creative mediums. Erased’s use of revival as a time travel method was better done than most, even if it only appears on a few occasions outside the first episode. Most notably was that this ability is a forced jump in time, providing Satoru with little warning and no information about the pending event – meaning that his failure could and most likely would lead to the death of someone. It takes the tale from “travel back in time to save someone” to “travel back in time or don’t save someone”.
Without spoiling too much, the main disappointment of Erased was how the creative team decided to conclude it. While not a terrible ending as it gets the job done and wraps things up at the very least, it did feel drawn-out, tacked-on and less-conceptualised than the rest of what I experienced. It’s a shame because the climax offered prior to it is very memorable.
Design / Music / Voice Acting
Featuring animation by A-1 Pictures, Erased is what I would consider to be one of their nicest animated works in quite some time. Granted, it may not be as flashy as some of the more iconic works including Sword Art Online, but having read a few volumes of the manga, they did a good job of adapting Kei Sanbe’s original work. The duller, snow-capped setting was well detailed; while I could not fault the character designs.
Erased features music helmed by Yuki Kajiura, whose work has previously featured in series including Sword Art Online, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, and Fate/Zero. I went in with high expectations, and discovered nothing less. Her compositions were fantastic, suiting every scene the series presented, from an intense scene to a light-hearted moment between friends. The opening and ending sequences were both memorable, with the opening theme Re:Re: by ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION starting each episode with intensity while Sore wa Chiisa na Hikari no yo na by Sayuri ended each episode with a nice, soothing melody. The animations for both matched the quality of the songs.
US anime publisher Aniplex of America commissioned an English dub for their North American release of Erased, with both Japanese and English audio also offered by Madman Entertainment in their Australian / New Zealand release. Having watched this show with both Japanese and English audio, I have no preference for one over the other, and recommend going with your preferences as both have great casts. Ben Diskin and Michelle Ruff voice Satoru as an adult and child respectively, and they proved to be great matches for the character. Other highlights were Stephanie Sheh as Kayo, Sara Cravens as Satoru’s mother and David W. Collins as Yashiro. Both the English and Japanese voice casts did the child characters well, and it did sound like there was kids talking, rather than adults doing kids.
Extra Content
Madman Entertainment released Erased across two volumes on either DVD or Blu-ray. Unlike the pricier US volumes which came with extra goodies such as soundtracks, booklets, and the like; the Australian release are all rather affordable standard edition collections. Despite costing only $29.95 (DVD) / $34.94 (Blu-ray) per volume, they offer some good on-disc content. This primarily consists of Episode Commentaries for a number of episodes across both volumes, in addition to some of the standard bonuses such as clean OP/ED sequences and trailer collections.
Final Words on Erased
Erased has proven to be a memorable time-travelling murder-mystery series which although not flashy compared to many other shows competing for attention in the market, offers high production values and a story which managed to engross me from the first couple of episodes. Even with the somewhat disappointing ending, it manages to get the balance between murder mystery and school-life just right, complemented by great character development and likable main characters. This is a show I can easily recommend to those looking for a series offering a low time commitment and good storytelling.
Acknowledgment: A review copy of Erased Vol. 01 was provided by Madman Entertainment for the purpose of this review. A copy of Vol. 02 was purchased by myself.
Images: All images have been sourced from Erased: Kei Sanbe/KADOKAWA/Bokumachi Animation Committee
