Happy Monday BaddaBing BaddaBlog readers! My spring break is over and I am ready to make the last sprint to summer vacation. Or I could quite possibly be in denial. Either way, this is Manga (And Also Anime) Monday! The place where we examine all of the anime and manga goodness. Today’s topic is a series originally written and illustrated by Kei Sanbe and adapted into an anime by A-1 Pictures. This anime may also very well be the best anime to debut in the Spring 2016 season. Today’s topic will be a review of the incredible anime Erased.

The plot of Erased fits nicely in the science-fiction, murder mystery genre. The story focuses on Satoru Fujinuma, a twenty-nine year old pizza delivery boy and struggling manga artist. He is incredibly cold and distant to those around him, specifically his co-worker Airi who develops a romantic internist in him, due to a trauma Satoru suffered in his childhood. When he was eleven, three children Satoru’s age were murdered, two of which Satoru feels like he could have easily prevented if only he had had a better relationship with them. Satoru’s childhood friend Yuuki, who was a young adult when Satoru was eleven, was wrongly convicted of these murders and, at the beginning of the story, is on death row. Satoru believes that he has put these events behind him, but he must confront them again when he is framed for his mother’s murder while she is visiting him. The trauma of this experience activates an ability that Satoru has kept hidden from his friends and family, Revival. This ability sends Satoru back in time to when he was eleven so that he can attempt to prevent the murder of his classmates, save his death row friend, and apprehend the real killer.

Yeah, this anime can be a bit complicated. Buuuuuuuut, that’s not really uncommon for time travel stories. Thankfully Erased does keep things pretty simple in terms of time travel mechanics and does a great job of explaining how things work and character motivations to the audience. However, Erased does have its weak points. As with most time travel stories, the actions of the main character seem a bit strange. I somewhat frequently found myself questioning Satoru’s actions and methods. Also, while this series does have some incredible animation at times, the character models felt off and lackluster at times.

These criticisms by no means ruin the series, though. Erased may very well be one of the best anime to come out this season and it completely deserves this praise. This twelve episode anime packed a ton of content into each and every episode, causing me to constantly reevaluate my opinion of many of the characters. I also found the film reel motif used to represent Satoru’s memory to not only be incredibly well animated, but also fantastically representative of how the pop culture obsessed main character would imagine the concept of memory. Also, with out giving away much of the plot, I found the narration switch at the end of the series to be just brilliant! I have never seen anything like that in the time travel genre, and I was both stunned and delighted by the transition.

All in all, Erased is a marvelous anime that deserves your attention if even the slightest bit of this review caught your eye.

Thank you so much for reading this post. If you enjoyed it please give it a like and leave a comment down below if you have anything to add, any questions, or if you hold a different opinion of this anime than my own. I promise I will respond to you. If you want to stay up to date with this blog, you can subscribe via email in the upper right tab. Alternatively, you can stay informed by liking the official BaddaBing BaddaBlog Facebook Page, or you can follow me, @LucasDeRuyter, on Twitter. I hope you all have a great week, and be sure to visit 4B again on Wednesday for the next installment of Pop Culture Wednesday.

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