Boku Dake Ga Inai Machi / BokuMachi / Erased

It isn't NTR if there wasn't a relationship to begin with.

Also while in the manga it's heavily implied that Kayo DID try to wait, man, fifteen years is too long to do so for a girl who's got her whole life ahead of her now instead of, y'know, dead.

Kind of wonder how the anime will resolve Gaku and Satoru's final confrontation now. The manga had a HUGE set-up that lasted a few chapters so that Kenya and Satoru could even trap him.

Here is a post with everything the anime did different from the manga this week.

Yashiro's backstory makes more sense now – check out the Wikipedia page for the Macdonald triad:

MAL is full of butthurt manga readers as usual.

I don't think an adaptation needs to be 100% faithful; as long as it doesn't go completely off the rails and any changes make sense or are even an improvement over the original, I'm fine with it.

Thing is, it's not really improving the story.

Some key stuff has been changed.

Yeah, even putting aside everything shipping related, they cut out many good scenes from this portion of the manga. Everyone's reactions to what happened to Satoru, time passing, Kenya's letters to Satoru, Yuuki, Airi, a whole lot of stuff. They've really rushed it.

Granted, it's a volume or so of more emotional material rather than anything suspenseful, but they were important moments. I'm a sucker for friendships being cherished, so I'm a bit sad that stuff like Satoru thinking to himself that he's so proud of himself for having such good friends wasn't included.

But is any of that really important enough to put in a 12 episode anime? In fact, doesn't it tighten up the story not to include all the stuff from when he was in a coma and not there to experience it?

As an anime only viewer, this episode was done very well showing, not telling and I didn't miss anything of what's mentioned above. We got his friends visiting him in hospital fifteen years later, we got closure to what happened to Kayo and above all we once again got to see why Sachiko Fujinuma is anime's best mother.

"I see it as a human drama in the guise of a thriller"

Well, that explains why we got so much Kayo. Probably for the best.

This. People who want details can just read the manga, which does't have the anime's bullshit episode count limit.

&

The problem is that it changes the context of Satoru's final confrontation completely. In the anime, it comes down to Satoru doing it alone again, when it's been shown in the first revival he experienced that no, Satoru, doing it solo doesn't work.

The manga basically had Satoru and Kenya turn Gaku's elaborate plan to frame Satoru for Kumi's murder into a big trap for Gaku himself, and it took a lot of planning beforehand, with Satoru cooperating not only with Kenya, but with his mom as well.

I'm sort of amazed that they still managed to put in the "No Gaku, YOU have been played!" aspect for the TV finale. XD Though the lack of set-up that the manga's version of the entrapment had still made me chuckle, as it still felt like Satoru did it all on the fly.

Also Hah! Aya! Well, at least the anime filled in THAT little detail that the manga only alluded to.

This show is suffering from some severe Hype Backlash, its kinda amazing.

The issue is that the thriller elements kinda suck, and the Kayo storyline is clearly head-and-shoulders above the rest of the material.

Didn't the creator go on to say that its more of a story on human nature than a thriller?

Yikes. People didn't take kindly to it.

The director did. Which is why the Kayo stuff was focused on so much.

That talk Satoru had with Yashiro reminded me of something:

Anyway, I enjoyed this show. It did feel like it was cut short near the end but I consider that part to be the resolution already and the climax was already over so I didn't mind. I did burst out laughing at that last minute

edited 24th Mar '16 7:56:37 PM by MarquisDev

Overall, despite the pitfalls, I still think this was a pretty good series.

There are three ways the anime community may react to an anime. One: hate it because it (supposedly) sucks. (Insert your own examples here.) Two: recognize that it's stupid and love it anyway, or even enjoy it because of the stupidity. (Gurren Lagann, Monster Musume, etc.) Three: fall madly in love with it initially, go completely berserk over something in the story they didn't like and/or adaptation inconsistencies (the Bad Thing and exactly how bad it is may vary from person to person), and eventually decide it was pretty good overall.

One need look no further than the ANN episode reviews to determine which type this show is. Something about this fandom makes it love to criticize the heck out of things, often making a mountain out of a molehill, except when a show is deemed Just for Fun. And then you have people like me, who like to criticize the community itself. Nerds, amirite?

How clever, boy.

*Hides parragraphs of apologia in a dumpster somewhere*

So that was ERASED. the first 11 episodes were good, but the final one felt dumb. I don't read the manga, but I suspect something was changed for the sake of making the anime feel complete as a watching experience.

I don't think I can accurately judge how well Boku Dake Ga Inai Machi did until I've marathoned it, rather than watch it week by week, to see if the story still holds up then. For the moment, while it had its ups and downs, it was still one of the best three shows of the season for me, head and shoulders above last season's mystery shows. Whether it's number 2 or 3 depends on how well Grimgar does in its final episode.

If there is a hype backlash it's because it was sold as a thriller rather than a psychological drama and the thriller elements were lacking. From the start there was only one candidate for the serial killer and not having Satoru realise that was frustrating. Equally frustrating was his return to the present halfway through, that seemed to take too long and took away too much from Kayo's rescue and Satoru slowly learning to make and trust friends. But everything else was great and it's hard to see how it could've done things differently with the same number of episodes and still told the whole story.

Also of course, depressing as the NTR talk is regarding Kayo having been "stolen" from Satoru, it's even dumber when you consider this never was a story about that kind of love; rather this is a story about the bonds between a mother and her son. Sachiko Fujinuma is one of the greatest characters in anime.

For reference, here's a bit about BOTH the director and the mangaka discussing the issues with the manga and anime endings [1].

In a nutshell, we had a very Shirobako-esque situation, where by the 8th or 9th episode, the mangaka was still trying to figure out how to actually end the series, and what's more, the director himself hadn't read any of the chapters past chapter 35. So what happened was we had the anime staff and the author bouncing ideas off each other, until we got the end result at episodes 11-12 and chapter 44.

edited 26th Mar '16 1:00:25 PM by MyssaRei

AmaLee did a really good cover of the OP.