Anime/Manga Boku Dake ga Inai Machi

[derozio]

Series obviously doesn't live upto the expectations set up by he initial episodes. Initial episodes made this look like the next blockbuster top animu. But naah.

I'll be honest though - I prefer the anime's ending to the manga's. The final confrontation in the manga just didn't work as organically as it did in the anime, I feel. Attack on Kumi felt better too and the fact that Kumi had an unnecessarily more central role in the last few chapters in the manga felt off - her relatively smaller role in the anime just ends up working for the better. I'm kinda miffed they got rid of one Airi scene that I loved but I'm okay with how things finally panned out.

Anime somehow managed to end the series with a lot more closure than I remember the manga ever doing. It mostly ends in a very similar way but the anime's montage of all the characters as adults during the ED song sequence works better, I feel.

Overall, I'm definitely aware of how the story was weak. And the unexplained Revival still really grinds my gears. But I can't say I didn't enjoy it. And the production values were, in general, pretty damn nice too. I was thinking of giving it a 6 or 7 (at max) because of all the positives (high production values, my excellent initial episodes) but then the finale surpassed my expectations so I feel like giving it an 8.

It is mostly a 6/10 show, though. The story and the relatively weak characters really bring the overall package down. Everything else was pretty damn nice - the visuals, the OST, the OP + ED, the pacing (yeah, I didn't think it was rushed) and the direction were all pretty damn great. But let down by a series that just didn't have a solid story.

 

[Netto Azure]

I just wish they didn't remove Yashiro's backstory lol.

Otherwise, twas a fun ride.

 

[Winter]

I give this anime a 7/10. Great start, may have faltered a bit post-climactically but the ending was organic. The only issues are the lack of tension between the protagonist and villain and Yashiro felt very flat. Overall the show suffered from mediocrity which pulled against the outstanding production values.

I probably would not read the manga since the anime ending is supposedly better. And I'm not that piqued into finding out Yashiro's backstory. Pity.

 

[Satoshi Ookami]

Well... that was predictable...
A1 failed pretty big in delivering in the second half...

I guess I will read manga.

 

[Taemin]

Late, but yes, lack of Yashiro's backstory made it lacking and the last episode felt really random. It was like playing a game where there's a bad end, neutral end, good end, and then a random weird romance end that came out of left field and sorta creeps you out.

I mean, I loved that entire series, but you could really tell that rushed parts towards the end, and left things out. I'm a bit torn. Still one of the better series this season, but also I feel like as far as end game goes, I'd like the last few chapters of the manga better than the last episode of the anime. Hopefully it'll feel less... weird. I've read some things about it since the anime ended, and I'm pretty tempted to go to read it.

 

[Evyl]

Ending didn't feel satisfying, it just didn't live up to the hype. I don't feel like over analysing it either, since a lot of people have said to read the manga since the ending was better. Pretty good anime, though. Some parts in 4-8 where a bit boring, but overall pretty great.

 

[Kenchiin]

I just did a quick manga read and noticed how much content they left out. Really sad.

I mean, yes, the story itself had an unsatisfying ending, but what they did with the anime is even worse lol

 

[J]

I'm really glad that this series got an adaptation to stimulate discussion, since I've been itching to find someone to discuss with since I started following it in early '13. It's also nice to see the original work's existence being recognized by the mainstream.

Personally, I liked this manga a lot, as a whole. I've not finished the anime, but I'll probably get around to it some time soon.

Spoiler:

The series throughout carried very prominent shades of an existentialist-nihilist conflict, and in my opinion it is this conflict that sets Bokumachi apart from the rest of the mundane whodunit-thrillers. It would be quite proper to nominate the story's Arc Words to be the words that Satoru and the resident (straw?) nihilist Yashiro Gaku adopt as their philosophy: that to '"fill in" the missing things is what life is all about.' (その足りない「何か」を埋めていくのが「人生」だと僕は考える, Volume 05, p.96) An early application of this is in how Satoru refutes Hinadzuki's alienated, withdrawn perspective by choosing to confront the absurdity of social interaction face-on, declaring to her that "[he] would take the initiative to come to like others (俺のほうがみんなの事を好きになろうって思ったんだ, Volume 02, p.59)," that in performing the act, the pretense becomes reality. Fully acknowledging the farcicality of putting on a smiling facade and "pretending to be himself," Satoru goes forward to make friends anyways, in accordance with Yashiro's principle. Another example of that principle in practice is when Satoru rationalizes his single-minded desire for justice by (unintentionally) parroting Yashiro's own words back at him. The contrast, of course, is with Yashiro himself, and his intensely nihilistic position-- the perfect sociopath. Both Yashiro and Satoru have been faced with absurdity at some point in their lives, but Yashiro diverges from Satoru's path in that beneath the former's smiling facade, the demon persists, and continues to mock others from behind that mask. At the end of the final confrontation with Yashiro, there is a Not So Different moment when Yashiro, unmasked, is shown to bear an uncanny resemblance to Satoru, (age 28).

Now, before I indulge myself further in my logorrhoea, there's a point I'd like to address by all means-- I assume that most people are displeased because there was no Hinadzuki End, and that the vaguely-hinted-at Airi End was unsatisfactory (Kumi-chan true heroine ^O^). But in my opinion, it is only proper that KayoxSatoru was not the ending, and that such a development would, indeed, have subtracted from the value of the story as a whole. I do not intend to forward a retrospective apologist view: you see, in my view of this story, Satoru embodies the classical hero archetype-- the pure hero who delivers justice unwaveringly and expects nothing in return, only the peace and safety of his loved ones. This is a very prominent theme throughout, recurring as a little reminder on the side, time and time again, in the form of Satoru's idol, the Super Sentai ranger Wonder Guy: in a flashback, as a plastic toy mask, or on a record album cover. Wonder Guy's backstory has him concealing his identity to fight against demons to protect the world and his family. His solitary crusade against evil causes him to become emotionally distant from that very family he is fighting to protect. In spite of that, he still fights on, even if his place in the world he is fighting for is lost as a result.

Suppose then, that Satoru defeated Yashiro in 1988, that he transcended time and fate to defeat a great enemy, that he saved his friends from death, that he, ever the dashing knight-in-shining-armour, married his sweetheart, the damsel in distress whom he had rescued from the clutches of her abusive parents, and then they all lived happily ever after. Certainly, that would have provided the catharsis that most readers desired, but that would have made the whole message of the story flop on its head-- The message that seeing justice through in itself is the reward! Certainly, Satoru lost his chances at reclaiming the fulfilling childhood that was so rudely disrupted before, and his life prospects are mostly in tatters by the end of the story, and his One True Heroine Kayo Hinadzuki married the other guy whom he saved. But Satoru stoically-- gladly, in fact-- accepts the hand fate dealt him as the price he paid to protect "the town from which he alone is absent," as his pride and joy, even if it is others who cash in on his efforts. Modern audiences will probably find this "sucker-hero" position to be very repugnant, but I quite like it.

The anime soundly trumps the manga in art and character design-- for example, in the manga, Osamu is pretty much indistinguishable from the generic background character. The lines in the anime are a lot softer, and the faces a lot rounder. This helps make both Airi and Kayo look a lot more girlish than in the manga, and a lot cuter, too. Tsuchiya Tao's performance as shouta-Satoru was a bit stiff in some of the more serious lines, but pretty good as a whole-- especially considering that she's not technically a proper voice actress. A Gold Star goes to Yuuki Aoi's performance as Hinadzuki, her warm, hoarse-ish voice a perfect fit for her role. The fact that Yashiro's backstory was deleted from the anime, however, undercuts the whole existentialist v.s. nihilist view that I extolled on above. This is an unpardonable exclusion. In my opinion, this series is best enjoyed as a companion to the manga.

 

[Satoshi Ookami]

A Gold Star goes to Yuuki Aoi's performance as Hinadzuki, her warm, hoarse-ish voice a perfect fit for her role.

This guy freaking knows! :D

 

[Etherion]

Ok. Ok. After a couple of recommendations by some Youtubers (like SourceFed, MatPat and MuchingOrange) I finally started watching Erased, they described it as a time-travelling mystery which got me hooked right away. And so, I started watching it and little did I know that Erased will soon become one of MY MOST favorite anime EVER. Like, EVER.

Spoiler:

The first episode.... Oh man! It got me HOOOKED! It's filled with this eerie tone and packed with a ton of mysteries! His revival. His mom's death. And then it ended with him travelling back in time into his childhood to save Kayo.

A few episodes later, the mission was still to befriend the loner girl and finding the killer. Satoru bit more than he could chew in this one, when he found out that Kayo belonged too an abusive family. And I got too tell you, during this part, Erased pulled my heartstrings...

I cried..... several times....

I just tear up when unfortunate things happened to unfortunate people like Kayo :'(
Ok, ok. That sums up the first half of the anime. On too the second half...

...it was ok, but....

...i'm gonna stop there it was OOOKAAY.

The teacher, being revealed too as the killer, i dont know if the majority could say this. It was kinda... OBVIOUS too me, though I never fully understood his intentions, the teacher had this underlying tone too me that he could kill..

and then Satoru solved the mystery, got drowned, woke up with amnesia and 15 years later found out that HIROMI was wed to KAYO...........

.......WAT?!?!

I thought Hiromi was a freaking girl... and HE turns out that he was not and married Kayo?!?!?!

UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

I havent finished watching the finale, but on a serious note, Erased easily became my favorite anime :3

9/10

 

[Kenchiin]

Ok. Ok.

I recommend you watching Steins Gate.

 

[Evyl]

9/10

I know I would have agreed with you, but really? Erased was predictable, inconsistent and no one had any real character. I didn't like it, after sitting on it for a while. It looked nice for the first two episodes, then the foreshadowing and everything dropped significantly, and it was evident characters like Kenya were two dimensional.

 

[Satoshi Ookami]

were two dimensional.

Technically, all of them are xD

 

[Evyl]

Technically, all of them are xD

Ugh. I really wish there was a dislike button...