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Binge-Watching: ERASED, Episodes 7-9

And so we continue! In which I realize the fundamental flaw at the heart of this production and examine how it negatively affects the very good story it’s trying to tell.

Time is a Double Edged Sword

You know, one of the more interesting aspects about writing for this blog is that I can often glean more about my true opinion on a show from analyzing how I’m writing about than from just simply writing about it. There are times where I’ll pretty much just gush about everything, or type on for paragraphs because I’m picking up on so many interesting things the show’s doing. Sometimes I’ll rant for paragraphs about everything the show’s doing wrong. But the most interesting moments are when I sit down after watching a crop of episodes and the writing just doesn’t come. Or when I just barf up a couple of paragraphs quickly without too much thought into connecting my stream of ideas. It’s in those cases where I have to force myself to go back over the show and figure out what’s going on to make me so lackadaisical about my analytical process. Because if I’m having trouble forming coherent thoughts about an anime, it’s likely there’s some subtle flaw in the show’s mechanism that I haven’t picked up on, but is affecting my ability to effectively talk about it.

That was the case with Zankyou no Terror, where I struggled to write about it for the first few episodes until I realized the structural issues that made the experience feel so disjointed. And now, it’s happened again with ERASED. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying my last two posts on the show were strictly bad or anything, but I do feel like my heart wasn’t as into writing them as it has been writing about some other shows, even shows substantially worse than this one. Something about the whole experience wasn’t clicking quite right, and I couldn’t tell what. Now, with Kayo’s arc come to a close, I think I’ve figured it out: ERASED is a show that is crying for more episodes than it actually has.

See, with Kayo officially saved and out of harm’s way, Satoru’s attention now turns to the other two kids who the killer was targeting. And it becomes clear that this wasn’t just supposed to be a story about Satoru and Kayo making it through a dangerous world. This was supposed to be a story with multiple arcs, with new stories centering around saving each of the three kids before the killer was finally revealed. I haven’t read the original manga, but I get the sense that the story played out in something resembling that fashion. And there’s just no possible way to tell that kind of story in only twelve episodes, so the anime team compensated by putting the focus entirely on Kayo’s story, condensing it to fit comfortably within that time frame and trying to use what was supposed to be just the first arc of a story as the entirety of that story.

Granted, I’m bringing in some outside knowledge to this assertion, because I know that the killer is revealed in the next episode, but that just drives home my point; there’s no way to tell a story of the same depth and scale as Kayo’s in the remaining time for either of the other two kids. This is the first act of a story trying to pull its weight as its own self-contained narrative, and the disjointed feeling of that, while subtle, is noticeable enough that we’re coming up on the climax now and yet I don’t feel like we’ve really worked our way up to it yet. If ERASED was going to try and tell the same story of its manga counterpart, it needed more episodes to flesh everything out and tell the stories it wasn’t able to here. Because as it is, I can’t help but feel like the story as it stands is kind of incomplete.

Sacrifices of Necessity

Okay, talk about story structure and all that nonsense is all well and good, but what are the more tangible problems caused by this slimming down of the source material? Because while noticing the lack of proper progression is certainly a flaw, it’s not the most pressing, obvious handicap of this decision. To fit this story into the amount of episodes they had, it feels like they had to trim a lot out. Remember last time when I complained about Airi feeling like she was a character who existed only for Satoru’s sake, with no sense of inner life? Well, that’s a problem that wouldn’t be too hard to imagine coming from a place of needing to cut for time, stripping the character of all the details that fleshed her out into a more well-rounded person and leaving only her most basic storytelling functions. The same problem becomes noticeable with Satoru’s friend Kenya here; he’s just too on-top-of-things to be believable as anything else than a person who exists solely for Satoru to rely on and get help from. Actually, this problem extends to all of the kids, in some respect; their roles in the story are so bare-bones functional that they don’t really talk or act like believable kids, just more storytelling pieces to keep the plot rolling. As a result. Satoru doesn’t feel distinct from them, even though they’re all still 11 and he’s actually 29.

But the biggest problem comes in episode 9, where, right at the climax of what should be the most emotional scene in the entire show, we have to screech to a halt and have an exposition dump about why Kayo’s mom is so abusive so we can understand why she breaks down immediately afterwards and gives in to Child Services. None of this information was even hinted as beforehand; for all we knew, Kayo’s mom was just an asshole. There wasn’t enough room for it amidst the already truncated story, so they had to shove it in right at the last possible moment, and as a result, a scene that should’ve had me bawling in catharsis gets bogged down by needing to explain itself at the same time it needs to make us cry because the show couldn’t slot it in at a more convenient time. The structure of what worked in the manga is still there, but it feels like the meat was all sucked off the bones until only the skeleton remained. ERASED is let down by a squashed production, and I can’t help but feel disappointed by that. Because it’s clear there was a story worth telling here, and both new viewers and fans of the manga deserved to see it in all its glory.

Kayo’s Salvation

But speaking of that good story, let’s talk about that, because while the issues of the production are pretty much impossible to ignore at this point, they aren’t enough to fully sink the ship yet. Kayo’s story of being saved from her abusive mother, while definitely weakened by these issues, is still full of really powerful stuff. Kayo finally getting the gloves to Satoru for his birthday present? Good stuff. That one moment where Kayo flinches before Satoru’s mother patted her, like she expected to be hit? I felt for her so fucking much there. The show’s excellent direction is still in full effect as well, as Kayo’s time spent with Satoru and his family is bathed in warm, welcoming atmosphere. And Satoru’s mom continues to be the fucking best, keeping an eye on her son’s goal and casually preparing to help him once it came time for her to step in. Incidentally, Satoru’s mom is another character who feels like she mostly exists for Satoru’s sake, but it isn’t distracting here because 1) She still feels like she has a personality outside of her desire to help her son and 2) It’s more justified in her case on account of her not just being a close friend, like Airi and Kenya, but his mother who’s been raising him for a decade by herself.

But the real show-stopper was the moment when Kayo comes down to breakfast and sees the meal Satoru’s mom laid out for her, a symbol of love and family, and we get flashbacks of all the times her own mom would just leave her with whatever to eat, and fuck me if I didn’t find myself tearing up right alongside her. That was absolutely evil, but only because it worked so well. See, this is why I complained so heavily about the flaws in the production earlier: because the story fucking works, and it deserves a level of storytelling that’s just as talented. Maybe this will be the rare case where I actually track down the original manga, because I’ve never wanted to like a story for what it should be as much as this one.

Odds and Ends

-”Superheroes always get the short end of the stick.” Those freaking Nichijou eyes asdjhakjsdaksd

-”Are you stupid?” “Yeah.” DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS COMEBACK

-Okay, the teacher’s eyes fading into the streetlights was a nice touch. Good subtle foreshadowing there.

-”Stay here tonight.” “So gutsy!” askjdhaskjd

-”Was I really that obvious?” Yes. Yes you were.

-”I bought them beforehand.” Best Mom.

-”Am I in the way here?” BEST. MOM.

-Man, if I didn’t know the teacher was actually the killer, his candy obsession would be downright charming.

-”Give me one too.” BEST. MOM.

One more session to go! Let’s see how the ending affects my final opinion on the show, shall we?