JVAnimeReviews

JV's Anime Of The Season: Winter 2016

Winner 2016 JV Anime Award: Best Seasonal Anime

Winner 2016 JV Anime Award: Best Female Character (Sachiko Fujinuma)

Winner 2016 JV Anime Award: Best Ending Song (Sore wa Chiisana Hikari no Youna)

WARNING: MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD! (Look for the spoiler tags)

Positive

*Now let’s start with the first of many positive points being the animation. Now the animation of the anime in general was as good as I expect it to be from A1 but there’s something else I want to tackle. And that’s the fact that there was a difference in screen width between scenes that take place in the past and in the present. All the scenes that take place in the past are animated in a smaller screen than scenes from the present where the anime uses widescreen. At first I found this to be a bit of a bother until I figured out what the meaning was of this difference. The use of the smaller screen width gives the impression that we’re looking at a recording from the past, like it’s a movie. This is also linked with the opening sequence were we see young and older Satoru getting into a cinema and watch a movie. That was very cleverly done by A1, bravo.

For a video review, check out my Youtube channel. Link on my profile page.

Another thing I want to mention about the opening sequence and this isn’t really a spoiler so don’t be alarmed was that we can see the killer in the intro sequence. Now before you all go shouting “Spoiler!” in the comments, it’s impossible to see it unless you know the exact moment when the killer appears. I learned this a few episodes before the end and even if I tried I still couldn’t see it. The killer appears like halve a second so you won’t even notice it.

*The connection between the smaller screen width and the past is also found in the opening song of ERASED. This anime didn’t use a new song but instead a song that was released in 2004 being Re;Re; from Asian Kung-Fu Generation. Just like the screen width this was again a reference to the past which is so important in this anime.

From the OP I can move to the ending song: Sore wa Chiisana na Hikari no Yo na. The best ending song of this season, I loved it every single episode. Btw if you want to hear an excellent piano cover of this song, I will put a link here to Theishter’s video. He made an amazing cover of this great song. I will also put a link to his channel in the description box so you can go check him out.

*So I’ve talked about the animation and the music, let’s than move to the characters because ERASED had some amazing characters, some in the positive sense other in the negative. Let’s start with the main character Satoru. If he was a real person, he could only be described a hero. He always puts others before him and is willing to sacrifice everything to make sure that nothing will happen to those others even when that has serious repercussions for him. How he kept on fighting to save his mother, to save Hinazuki, his relentlessness to make the good win over the evil no matter what just made me have enormous amounts of respect for him.

Next character I want to discuss is Satoru’s mother Sachiko. What an amazing mother was she. She is the best mother figure I’ve seen till today in anime. Not only does she support Satoru in what he tries to accomplish, she also helps him and takes action when it’s necessary. Like when the entire bullshit around Hinazuki and her mother comes out, she steps up and does something about it. That’s not something you see often in anime where a “side character” comes and makes the story move forward. Extend that to real life, how many people would act like Sachiko, let me tell you not a lot. Now aside from her being an interactive character in stead of just screen filling, like Satoru she cares so much about others and shows so much empathy towards others. That is not only towards her own son but also to Hinazuki. Which brings me to, to me, one of the best scenes of the entire anime. That scene after Sachiko took in Hinazuki to get her away from her mother and Hinazuki wakes up to see breakfast standing ready. A breakfast that was made with love in stead of just some change or a piece of toast. OMG the feels were so real in that scene, I barely kept it dry there. To see Hinazuki, who had forgotten what it feels like to be loved, getting that sparkle in her eyes again by witnessing what a lot of us take for granted made my hearth brake and dance at the same time. That was another confirmation of the awesome mother that Sachiko was.

On the other end of the spectrum we however had Hinazuki’s mother. What a fucking, irritating and completely apathetic bitch was she. Wow I hate her so much, it had been since Makoto from School Days that I ever hated a character so much. That thing I don’t even call a human being anymore, she didn’t deserved to live. People like that don’t deserve to life in my eyes! And when we get like her sad backstory, I didn’t give one single fuck about that. There’s nothing in the entire world that can justify her actions, nothing! During that scene I felt the same way that Hinazuki felt there: “I don’t give a fuck, you got what was coming for you, you bitch!”

*Okay, let’s calm down and proceed to the next positive point being the cliffhangers in this anime. I’m surprised that I didn’t have a heart-attack at one of these cliffhangers. There were multiple episodes where the tension was building to such high levels that my hearth almost beated out of my chest and that the anime would say “Nope, not today. You can wait another week to see how it continues.” But that’s what made me look forward to thursday every single week. Every week I was counting down the days till the next episode because this anime had me glued to my screen of anticipation. With ERASED I felt the same I felt with Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso last year, I couldn’t wait till the next episode and that’s what makes a good anime in my eyes.

*Combined with those cliffhangers was the first episode which made the entire anime community stand in awe. What a bombshell was that first episode, what a way to start your anime. You know, there are anime’s that, from the first episode you watch, you know that it will be good and ERASED was one of those. I had put this anime on number 1 on my To Watch list for the Winter 2016 season because I had really high expectations and after that mind-blowing first episode I knew that it wasn’t going to disappoint me.

Now comes the point where people who haven’t watched ERASED yet, which you should, to skip the next part and go straight to Negative. I’m going to discuss the story now and I will tell a few SPOILERS.

*The main point of the story I want to discuss were the unexpected plot twists of ERASED, starting with the identity of the killer. Honestly I did not expect it to be Yashiro, I didn’t. People were calling ERASED out saying that it was so clear who the killer was but to me it was just too obvious that it would be Yashiro. A-1 perfectly used the concept of hiding in plain sight. They delivered so many, way too obvious clues that Yashiro was the killer that it seemed unlikely that he was the killer. So when it then was revealed in episode 10 that Yashiro in fact was the killer all along, I was surprised. They fooled me into thinking that it was too obvious.

Then the next 2 unexpected twists come from episode 11 which I like to call the “Yoo, wtf-episode” because I said those same words a few times during that episode. Starting at the beginning where we see Sachiko, clearly turmoiled, trying to live her daily life. And by the way the previous episode ended I thought that Satoru was dead. It was so obvious, too obvious, that Satoru died and I was waiting for some deus ex magina moment to bring him back which would have been a negative point. But then the anime completely blew me of my feet by giving us that scene where we see Satoru lying in bed, living like a plant, revealing that he was in a coma of the past 15 years. That was the first “Yoo!” moment of that episode. This is why A-1 Pictures is one of my favorite animation studios, they always do things that I didn’t expect.

The next “Yoo” moment is the moment where the community still talks about till today and that was the reunion between Satoru and Hinazuki and where we learn that Hinazuki has a child with Hiromi of all people. And then the anime world went apeshit, everyone calling out Hinazuki that she NTR’ed Satoru and everyone just kept hating on her for the fact that she was now with Hiromi. Now, you know, from previous reviews, that I absolutely despise NTR. But here I must counter all the Hinazuki haters. See, to me this wasn’t NTR. 

I mean honestly what did you expect? Satoru was in a coma that they didn’t know if he was ever going to wake up from. Even if Hinazuki had feelings for Satoru, which we never get official confirmation on, did you really expect her to wait by his side the entire time so that they could live happily ever after? Life goes on and she moved on and this unexpected turn of events made Satoru’s character even more awesome. Because here, again, he wanted Hinazuki to be happy. She’s happy now but it costs him his own feelings. More prove of the awesome character that Satoru was.

*And then we have the ending. And also here I want to counter the people that “hated” on the ending because quite some people including fellow reviewers Chibi and BCG were disappointed by the ending. They found that the way how the whole story ended kind of lame. But again what did you expect? That Satoru was going to kill Yashiro? Satoru wasn’t the character to just kill him and ERASED wasn’t the anime to kill Yashiro and be done with it. So I definitely wasn’t disappointed by the end, it fitted the anime perfectly.

*So after that at the bridge scene I thought the anime was done and wrapped up. Until that butterfly appeared again and I was like “What?”. And then we see that female figure in the distance and I thought “Could it be? Could really be Airi?” because I had given up hope of her getting together with Satoru. And then it was Airi and I must say that I was literally dancing of joy during that scene. My God I was so happy to see Airi making a reappearance, it made me end this anime with an awesome feeling.

Negative

*Now I do have a few small remarks to make about ERASED. The first one being that I felt that both Airi and Kenya weren’t used to their fullest potential. Airi did have a big impact on the story midway through the anime but it could have been more. Same can be said about Kenya in the past. He could have had more impact on Satoru and on the development of the story line as a whole.

*And another point is that some things weren’t explained in the anime like what happened between episodes 10 and 11? That’s something that is explained in the manga and there are more things that were skipped in the final 2 episodes. They also went quite fast over the psyche of the killer and also that is explained in way more detail in the manga. Seems like another one for the ever growing To Read list.

Conclusion

So as a conclusion, I can only applaud A-1 Pictures for delivering another awesome anime. I thought they would have needed a moment after the success of Shigatsu last year to come up with another great anime but here they did it again. ERASED glued me to my screen every single week and that’s why I’m going to rate Boku dake ga Inai Maichi at a well deserved 4,5 stars. I think that this will be one of those anime’s that, when I rewatch it, I will discover more things that I now completely missed. ERASED was definitely my AOTS and I wonder what’s going to stop it from becoming my AOTY.