BY JOHN CARTER JR
Spoiler Alert for the Erased anime (based on the English Dub)
Sachiko Fujinuma, 52, is found dead by her son Satoru, 29, in his apartment and is quickly accused of being the culprit behind her untimely demise. Suddenly he is flung 18 years into the past. Satoru has a power that he has dubbed “Revival.” The seemingly involuntary power pulls Satoru back in time right before something terrible happens, with always just enough time to stop the catastrophe from happening. Traveling back in time was not abnormal for the now-young Satoru; however, it was the span of time that was alarming. He had never traveled back in time that far before.
Satoru had always been haunted by a series of kidnappings and murders that happened where he grew up (in Tomakomai, in the Hokkaido Prefecture, Japan) when he was a kid, thinking that if he had gotten to know the kids (namely a girl name Kayo Hinazuki) he could have prevented their deaths. Now fate has presented itself to Satoru as the kidnapping of his peers is mysteriously related to the death of his mother nearly twenty years in the future. Will Satoru overcome his regret, and change the destinies of his Mother and the other victims, or will he succumb to the despair of time’s inevitable passing?
Based on the 2012 to 2016 manga series, The Erased anime adaptation was released on Fuji TV in 2016. The Franchise would go on to produce live-action film and television adaptations as well as a spin-off manga. The show demonstrates themes of regret, the despair one develops from the lack of fulfillment, and self-imposed guilty consciousnesses. The audience is first shown this in Satoru’s original timeline, in which he struggles to become an established manga artist at the end of his twenties working as a delivery driver. He is, however, motivated to resolve any problem that revival presents himself with. To Satoru, those life-threatening instances become important because he is being forced to confront the fact something is off and he is getting a second chance to undo a catastrophe.
The series seems to frame the power of revival as being fueled by regret. With its origin being Kayo Hinazuki’s death and its last straw being the death of his mother. Satoru is traumatized by the many deaths that have plagued his life and those of his peers. He holds himself, even as a child, responsible. It would then imply that every time revival occurred, his motivation to undo negative events was to subdue the cognitive dissonance of guilt and to avoid regret. He never wanted to feel the pain of feeling powerless again or the guilt of being a bystander to injustice.
Revival also seemed to be present in Satoru’s life long enough to teach him how to deal with those feelings of powerlessness and regret. While at first it could be argued that the power seemed to enable Satoru’s negative world view with the penultimate and final revival, it seemed more accurate to say that the gift was trying to show him another perspective. That he never was powerless to begin with, that he has some control over his future, and that he is not solely responsible for achieving justice.
The winter setting of the majority of the past portion of the anime gives a feeling of both nostalgic comfort and mysterious looming fear. Like visible breath on a cold winter day that quickly vanishes into the next, so do the clues concerning who the kidnapper begins to vanish into misdirections. It is up to Satoru, his mother, and company to capture these breaths of evidence to determine who the villain is. Satoru will need others, including the victims, to help correct the tragedies of the past, everything is not and never was on his shoulders alone, but they did need him to bring them all together. This lesson teaches us that it is true that everyone in a given community can be and is important to different aspects of its function and survival. No one person is more important than another for any inherent reason.
The story culminates in many changes to the past including a confrontation with Kayo’s mother, stopping the kidnappings before they could happen, and Satoru determining who the killer is before returning to the future. This ultimately changed the future and allowed Satoru’s mother to live. However, these actions didn’t go unseen as the mastermind villain Gaku Yashiro, Satoru’s homeroom teacher, is revealed to be the kidnapper. He determines that it is Satoru who is foiling all of his plans and makes an effort to put an end to him by drowning him in a lake while he is attempting to frame Jun Shiratori’s father.
The reveal of the killer is not only one of the most chilling scenes in television, it is also perfectly framed, colored, and voiced. David W Collins, who plays Gaku Yashiro, perfectly plays the killer teacher both calmly and excitedly. His demeanor shifts from the doting father-like figure to a cold, calculated and disgruntled yet eerily calm predator. The setting, the “Ubiquitous” car, is perfect in its cold liminal way.
Liminal space, or the space between, can be used as both a way to increase feelings of safety and security and yet on the other end can prolong and amplify the feelings of dread or anxiety. Take, for example, a safe room in the Resident Evil two remake. The safe rooms can elicit a cathartic feeling that can help a player recuperate after a grueling battle with zombies. While on the other hand, the ride up a tall roller coaster can elicit feelings of excited anxiety and regret.
In examining the killer reveal scene, we can see how liminal space is Erased so effectively. In this scene, they are driving away from the ice rink after Jun Shiratori’s father and Will eventually ends up at the lake. The drive and the road was taken to get to their destination is the liminal space. During this first part of the drive, the seams of the persona Yashiro was wearing begin to fray and become loose with the school teacher talking about his own personal philosophy.
“There’s no difference between a good deed and a bad one, They both have a similar goal to satisfy a need within a person” – Gaku Yashiro
As they drive through a tunnel, the persona completely vanishes as Yashiro makes an evil grin claiming that he had something even better to satiate his need and that the harder he worked to achieve his goal made the outcome even more satisfying. Gaku Yashiro is revealed to be the villain behind the kidnappings and subsequent killings. However, in this timeline, his plans are foiled by an unexpected hero. At least, Satoru thought he was as the teacher began suspecting him and honed in on his actions the night he gave Mrs. Fujinuma and Satoru a ride home. This section of the liminal space, the tunnel, is where the fear built up hits its climax. The lights on Yashiro’s grimacing face, the lack of candy and laxatives in their stead, the seatbelt click, in the beginning, were all used to set up an environment of fear.
After Satoru survives the drowning, he wakes up back in the future. It turns out that both his mother and Yashiro himself have been attending to him all this time. This represented what Yashiro mentioned before about needs and the void within himself. Satoru filled the void in Yashiro. He wasn’t the only one who had a void filled. Satoru himself goes on to speak his truth to his former teacher. In the scene on the rooftop, Satoru says:
“A little while after I was born my dad took off, so I have no idea what he looks like but that day at Kayo’s you were the dad I never had and always wanted at that moment you filled the void in me.” – Satoru Fujinuma
Yashiro’s regret is attempting to kill the one person who made him feel whole and he attempts to manage this regret by dedicating his life to taking care of Satoru. Eventually, Yashiro is caught in a trap set by Satoru and his classmates, by faking a jump off the top of a building. Satoru finally has overcome his regret and his pain while still learning from him, through the support of his close network of friends and family he is finally able to move forward never experiencing revival again.
Erased at its core, is about how we self-impose and deal with the guilt of our regrets, it is about the darkness in the world that allows us to be filled by that feeling of sole responsibility, and it is about how we need people around us to get through our dark thoughts. Gaku Yashiro’s insidious nature was that he could be a father, teacher, neighbor, and murderer when he saw fit. He couldn’t imagine from the get go that the goal that satisfied his need more than killing was found in one of the roles he took on. Being a father to a boy without one. However, with the boy becoming a man and being able to see past the lies and dedication. He saw a sad lonely monster and he wasn’t scared to live for himself anymore.
I give Erased 10/10 snowflakes for its excellent twists and turns, its amazing duet scenes between Yashiro and Satoru, and its commentary on regret, loneliness, and togetherness.