YMMV / ERASED

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Looking at Satoru's behavior, one could argue he's going through a sort of identity crisis as a side effect of being put in his 11-year-old body. For one thing, he, the emotionally numb Satoru, is almost creepily good at imitating the way his child self talks, and indeed seems to actually be a much more emotional person overall. The fact that he constantly has to remind himself that he's a grown man when finding himself attracted to Kayo also points towards some confusion and/or mild amnesia.
• Awesome Music: The opening theme song, Asian Kung-Fu Generation's "Re:Re:", really puts out a mixture of somber wonder and excitement at revealing the truth while showing tender childhood moments mixed with adult hardships.
• Base-Breaking Character: The serial killer Yashiro is pretty divisive. One camp appreciates him for being a genuinely frightening and devious villain. However, he also has his own fair share of detractors who point out his generic motive and predictability, and consider him to be one of the series' weaker points.
• Broken Base:
  • What genre ERASED exactly falls into is a huge topic of debate among fans. People either label this as a mystery, thriller, or drama and turn down any arguments that it falls into the other two. Some see ERASED as a mystery since the story is about Satoru trying to find out who the killer from his childhood is, some lean more on thriller since the whole purpose of the story is to keep you in suspense and create an intense atmosphere. It doesn't help that a lot of the detractors claim that ERASED fell short as a mystery due to the killer being an Obvious Judas and fell short as a thriller since the cliffhangers only really worked if you read the manga during its serialization or watched the anime when it first aired. Those who see ERASED as a drama, however, claim that the mystery and thriller elements aren't relevant as the story is about Satoru reconnecting with his inner child and the mystery is mostly there be one of many conflicts for his character.
  • Should Kayo have stayed with Satoru? It is one of the most divisive topics in the fandom. Depending on the side, there will be fans who will argue that Kayo and Satoru was such a cute couple that they should have ended up together. Those who are against will say that Kayo is not a prize, Satoru was never in love with her, and that it wasn't realistic for her to wait for someone for 15 years, and she had to look for her own happiness. There is also a third party that doesn't care much about Satoru and Kayo's relationship, but they find it strange that the latter ended up with Hiromi, since they didn't interacted much.
• Complete Monster:
  • The Serial Killer, Gaku Yashiro, is the intelligent and gleefully sadistic murderer driving the plot forward with his killings. His cruel tendencies arising as a child who alleviated his boredom by drowning pets and luring young girls to his rapist older brother, the killer eventually murdered said older brother and gained a taste for killing, primarily of young children. As an adult carrying out his long-time fantasies of killing dozens of children and framing innocent people for the crimes, the killer flings his fiancée out of a window when she becomes suspicious of his crimes, and stabs Sachiko Fujinima to death when she realizes his true identity. When Sachiko's time-traveling son Satoru tries to thwart his crimes in the past, the killer tries to drown Satoru before murdering his way into a political position solely to allow himself easier access to potential victims. In his final confrontation with Satoru, the killer tries to drown the man's close friend Kumi while forcing Satoru to watch, before attempting to evade capture for his crimes by burning himself and Satoru alive, bragging even in defeat how he has done nothing morally wrong, merely indulged in a hobby he truly enjoyed.
  • The unnamed, manga-exclusive, and flashback-only older brother of the killer manages to stand out as horrific and monstrous despite only appearing in one chapter. A sociopathic bully, the brother regularly assaulted his own little sibling and other kids at his school. Showing his true monstrosity, the brother formed a partnership with the willing killer where, after the killer lured little girls to him, he would rape them, a process that went on for years and resulted in dozens of rapes. When the brother accidentally strangled one of his victims to death trying to keep her from calling for help, he tried to frame his younger brother for the crime, showing no regret or empathy for his victim. Though only a teenager, the brother made his mark as the most monstrous character in the story along with his brother.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Kenya, to the point where he received his own spinoff novel in the form of Another Record.
  • Sachiko for her badass Mama Bear moments.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Although Kayo ends up marrying Hiromi in the end, much of the fandom still prefers that she would have stayed with Satoru.
• Fandom Rivalry: With Ajin, KonoSuba, and Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu. Alongside ERASED, all three of these series were the ones being labeled as "anime of the season" by their respective viewers. However, while ERASED eventually fell victim to Hype Backlash, the other series ended up being sleeper hits with all of them getting second seasons. The most notable of the rivalries was with Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu. Many people who watched that along with ERASED were the most vocal about their dislike towards ERASED and how Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu was the true anime of the season.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Yashiro/Satoru appears to be the most popular ship on Pixiv.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The hilarious candy scene in episode 9 is made much less hilarious when you find out that the candy and the "dating tips" were used by the killer to abduct children.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Mitsuru Miyamoto's role as Yashiro is pretty hilarious if you take into account he is the Japanese voice of adult Simba: In Simba's case, he was framed for the murder of his father Mufasa by his uncle Scar, and he finaly gets rid of him at the end. On the other hand, and at least in the manga, Yashiro, while also framed for a crime by a relative of his (in this case his older brother), also became a Serial Killer.
• Hype Backlash: When a single series towers above the rest of its season, even gaining a 9+ rating and spot in the top 10 on MyAnimeList^note An anime rating and listing website which currently boasts nearly 200,000 active members after only four episodes, this will obviously be the result. Over the years, however, this series became divisive thanks to the hype.
• Narm:
  • Sachiko's facial design can be a bit silly due to her lips and mouth.
  • The English title looks quite ridiculous when the official subtitle is planted right under the title logo every time the opening plays, as if one word could translate the full phrase.
  • While violence to children is no laughing matter, Kayo's mother is so one-dimensionally evil and seems to do nothing other than mistreating her daughter, that she often appears plain ridiculous.
  • Satoru's facial expressions when he echoes his thoughts.
  • Despite the story's usual subversion of tropes and realistic take on human behavior, the anime has a fondness for employing the comparatively childish Red Eyes, Take Warning whenever possible for any character who's acting suspicious, even when they're not being particularly malicious or the suspicious behavior is a Red Herring.
• Never Live It Down: Satoru and Kayo don't become a couple as the latter ends up marrying Hiromi instead.
• Nightmare Fuel: The Reveal in episode 10. Satoru is crushed when he realizes that he's in the car with the killer. And then said killer sends the car into a freezing lake that nearly kills him and takes away 15 years of his life.
• Obvious Judas: The story attempts to treat the The Reveal that Satoru's teacher Yashiro is Kayo's killer as a huge twist, despite Yashiro being literally the sole character who fits the very basic information one is given concerning the culprit.
• Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading: Although the relationship between Satoru and Kayo is that of good friends, much of the fandom can't help but think that there was a certain romantic tinge, to the point of when it was revealed that Kayo married another man, many saw this as one of the greatest examples of Did Not Get the Girl.
• The Scrappy: Akemi, Kayo's mother, is supposed to be hated for being an abusive mother, but many felt like her true problem is that she comes off as one-dimensional by abusing Kayo simply For the Evulz and then given a flimsy Freudian Excuse to justify her behavior.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: After Chapter 35, with the revelation of Kayo marrying Hiromi and the manga spending a large amount of time on Satoru and Airi's relationship, Satoru/Kayo fans started to take offense at the very concept of Satoru/Airi, often subjecting Airi to Die for Our Ship for those reasons.
• Squick:
  • The idea of the very much mentally still 29-year-old Satoru taking the 10-year-old Kayo on dates. It's usually done subtly and platonically enough for the audience not to think about the implications too hard other than an anime-original scene when he's listening to the sounds of Kayo having fun with his mom in the bath, and has to scold himself for his excitation, reminding himself that he's 29 years old.
  • Several fans are horrified and weirded out at the idea of Yashiro and Satoru together due to how much the pairing reeks of Mind Game Ship.
• Strangled by the Red String: Even those who didn't support Satoru and Kayo, find strange that Kayo ended up with Hiromi of all people, since he was the friend who interacted with her the least. Although they supposedly became closer over the course of 15 years, this supposed closeness occurred off-screen. Many fans believe that it would have made more sense for Kayo to have ended up with Kenya, who was her second closest friend.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The final two episodes of the anime adaptation, due to pacing issues and deviation from the source material, were not very well-liked even among those that were fans of the series.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Kayo's complete lack of involvement in the last part of the story, apart from her hospital visit. We never see how she reacted to learning the teacher who helped save her from her abusive mother tried to kill both her and Satoru. Kayo could easily have played a role in the plan to expose Yashiro, since she would have a major stake in bring him to justice for what happened to Satoru and it would have been fitting for Kayo to have a role in bringing the man who originally killed her to justice. She and Satoru also never get the chance to properly interact after he regains his memories.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Akemi, who is revealed to have suffered abuse at the hands of her ex-husband, which led to her abusive behavior. Not everybody thinks abuse justifies abuse. In-Universe, Satoru has nothing but contempt for her, so it's open to question how sympathethic she was meant to be.
• The Un-Twist: In the anime, there are so many deliberate hints towards Yashiro being the killer that they start to look like red herrings. The manga lacks most of these, but there still comes a point where he's the most obvious candidate. The only other plausible candidates were Yuuki, Yuuki's father, and Sawada, but they probably would have been more surprising than Yashiro.
• The Woobie:
  • Kayo, who is suffering from physical abuse at the mercy of her mother, is emotionally distant because of it and so spent most of her time alone before Satoru befriended her. You just want to give the poor little girl a big damn hug! To top things off, she met her end in the original timeline by being sadistically frozen to death by Yashiro inside a shed after being beaten by her mother and her mother's boyfriend. The poor kid lived a horrible life and met an awful end you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy.
  • Satoru. As a child, he was greatly affected by the loss of his former classmates Kayo and Hiromi, and as an adult, his mother was murdered, was wrongly accused of it, then went back in time to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, all the while feeling responsible for the lives of his loved ones. Furthermore, he has to suffer for it once the killer finds him and tries to drown him, putting him in a 15-year coma.
• Woolseyism: The English title ERASED condenses the poetic but rather unwieldy-to-translate original title of The Town Where Only I Am Missing. It also preserves the trick of employing a double meaning in regards to what it actually refers to: in the same way "the town where only I am missing" initially seems to refer to Kayo's poem about the pain of her abuse but actually refers to Satoru's absence for fifteen years in the new timeline, "erased" could refer to either Satoru's actions of "erasing" disastrous events in his revivals or the fact that Satoru was effectively "erased" from the lives of those around him for fifteen years.

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