(L+CR) Boku Dake ga Inai Machi - ERASED [Manga comparisons forbidden]

[Myssa Rei]

Spoilers

Spoiler for Interview with the director

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[RDNexus]

"Death of the Author"?

Spoilers

Spoiler for Extra information not from the anime itself

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[Harbinger]

My gosh -_-

I make it clear that I am an anime-viewer only (with the intention of checking the original materials after), but I get PM with original material "spoiler" >_>

If you're displeased about the direction of the anime, that's your choice. Stop writing your stuff about "they didn't do this, they didn't do that". Us anime-only viewer can't discuss those things at all. It then boils down to people who know what happens discussing with each other. It's outright "spoilers" for people who wish to check the original material after.

[thundrakkon]

Just a reminder:

Quote

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

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So please be careful of what is said. There is only one more episode to go, so please be patient. I'm sure there will be plenty of discussion after that.

[Kenu]

Originally Posted by orion

Well...the anime did build up those Kayo shipper's hopes and crushed them in 1 segment.

But...I'm an Airi shipper.

Airi shippers have to wait for a time skip to see our girl.

What if... Yashiro x Airi in new time line.

[com_gwp]

Originally Posted by Last Sinner

Exactly...

A 10 year old kid who has known nothing but hell all her life is finally freed from it.

You expect her to put another 15 years of her life on hold on the feather hope Satoru will re-awaken? Spend 25 years total in a shell of a life?

The best way Kayo could have honored Satoru's sacrifice was to make sure her life was well spent and that she was happy. Which she did.

But clearly....shipping is far more important to a lot of people, it seems.

Kayo would not have had the mental state or the life experience required to make such a commitment. Very few people could. To utterly dedicate your life to someone who is in a coma for years on end and who may never wake up is a very big thing to ask. Some people would be driven to the brink of insanity/ruin by it. There are other animes that have shown that.

Sachiko, however, did have the strength of will, the means to do so (which heavily compromised her life, surely) and a mind-blowing degree of self-sacrifice and dedication. She is pretty much the best mother I have ever seen in anime. And yet she barely gets a mention here or any other place online. In a medium where parents are either milquetoast or cringeworthy for a clear majority of them, one parent utterly rises to the challenge and shows what a woman of an age that is virtually non-existent in anime can do. But hey, I guess she can't be shipped or turned into figures, so people don't want to care.

Originally Posted by xrick

Guys, please, enough with those shippings and delusions when we are talking of little kids with a lot of life ahead of them.

Has the whining gone overboard? It most certainly had (though not as overblown as the Yashiro reveal) and as you've said, the real unsung hero in all this is still Sachiko, who is the most unselfish and incredible person in the show to have done what she did.

But the words, "Are you fucking kidding me", flashed across my mind for a good few seconds at the Kayo scene.

I completely understand the logic given the direction the plot took; Nor does it take anyway from anything that Satoru has continuously endeavoured for. Boku Machi was sublime, and above all these genre cliches from the get-go.

At the same time, I think that it is a bit unfair to criticise the (admittedly also unfair) expectations of the anime-only viewers when the anime spent most of it's time building such a deep, intimate connection between two particular characters and....well, turn out such a conclusion.

[Hero of the day]

I myself got spoiled regarding Kayo marrying another dude and proceeded caution when I marathoned this series up to the latest episode. It just was so hard not to ship them both, the pairing is just too cute. The moments they shared, the hand holding, the blushing; they had the same freakin birthday for God's sake they're perfect for each other. I'll admit Im still bitter despite already knowing the outcome while I like the idea of the people Satoru saved getting together and having a children named 'Future' it could have been with a different girl you know. Sachiko together with Kayo nursing back Satoru back to health would have been a sight to see.

All in all Im just glad Yuuki didnt get into trouble. A super good friend to have.

[Last Sinner]

Fair enough. They did have sweet moments, for sure. And I guess Hiromi being the father is a bit of a bitter pill to swallow. Kayo did get a lot of screen-time and was probably the conduit for most of the best moments in this show. If people are upset due to that, then I guess I kind of understand.

Spoiler for spoiler if you haven't seen/read/played Rumbling Hearts:

However, waiting for someone to come out of a coma can be a nightmare of an ordeal and afterwards can be worse. Kimi ga Nozomu Eien (Rumbling Hearts) explored how that can go for everyone involved. While an intriguing watch, it was sometimes too painful to see those characters go through what they did.

My #1 interest in this title always has been Satoru as a character. I was never in it for potential romances.

[Anh_Minh]

Originally Posted by xrick

You guys and your shippings... Dear goodness...

Shipping between a 28 years old and a 10 years old. Just putting that out there.

[Peanutbutter]

Just had this thought all of a sudden between Yashiro and Satoru:

Spoiler for Ep 10:

Yashiro mentioned in the car that he does things sometimes, to fill holes in his heart. Of course, those things refer to killing little girls.

When we look at Satoru, he's trying to save little girls, also to fill that emotional gap and regret in his heart.

So, in comparison, we have two characters with parallel thoughts, but in the opposite direction. This could be one way to view the entire series once it's all over.

Man, Friday can't come fast enough. And the next one's a Good Friday too. Will the meanings of Good Friday come into the ending too, I wonder.

[Gan_HOPE326]

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

Shipping between a 28 years old and a 10 years old. Just putting that out there.

Anime has a way of making those situations confusing as hell. Think of shipping Detective Conan and Ran, for example. Or even worse, Detective Conan and Ai ...

[Anh_Minh]

Conan and Ayumi is the only really creepy one. (Though it is really, really creepy.)

[Gan_HOPE326]

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

Conan and Ayumi is the only really creepy one. (Though it is really, really creepy.)

There are Conan X Ayumi shippers ?

Anyway, yeah, but my point is all these time-travelling, body-switching shenanigans get confusing after a while ... besides, while Satoru's conscience was technically 28 years old it was also made a point to show that in some ways being inside his child self was somehow 'attuning' it to that period of his life (he blushes when Kayo holds his hand, multiple times he finds himself surprised at his own reactions). So it's excusable for me frankly, I didn't see it as *that* creepy, because in many ways he DID regress to being a child (foreknowledge excluded). At least, while watching, you tend to forget about it, though rationally you're right.

On another hand, this reminds me of a discussion I once had with a guy who was convinced that the MC of Zvezda Plot was being OBVIOUSLY set up as a romantic interest to Lady Venera (that is, a ten year old or something little girl) and couldn't be convinced that was something that only HE managed to see because the show was obviously going into a completely different direction. The harem lies in the eye of the beholder more often than not .

[Myssa Rei]

Originally Posted by xrick

"Death of the Author"?

It's a Modernist form of critique where one ignores even the input of the creator when judging a work, and just criticizes a work in isolation; an example would be doing a critique of the Silmarillion, and ignoring a good chunk of Tolkien's own notes on the symbolism he put into it. This is an oversimplification of course, but I hope you get the gist of it.

Nabokov by the way hated it, as he tried to make it abundantly clear what the message was whenever he wrote something.

If you apply it to this case, then people who'd be gung-ho in judging Erased's adaptation in isolation will just ignore the Director's input too, and how he saw the production and story (in this case, human drama masked as a mystery-thriller).

[Gan_HOPE326]

Originally Posted by Myssa Rei

It's a Modernist form of critique where one ignores even the input of the creator when judging a work, and just criticizes a work in isolation; an example would be doing a critique of the Silmarillion, and ignoring a good chunk of Tolkien's own notes on the symbolism he put into it. Which is kind of how people seem to treat anime adaptations, to their detriment.

Nabokov by the way hated it, as he tried to make it abundantly clear what the message was whenever he wrote something.

If you apply it to this case, then people who'd be gung-ho in judging Erased's adaptation will just ignore the Director's input too, and how he saw the production and story (in this case, human drama masked as a mystery-thriller).

Well, with adaptations it makes more sense because they're somewhat collective works, so different wills can clash and looking for a unitary purpose might be a moot enterprise. For example the manga author might want to tell something, then the director and the writers misinterpret it or purposefully change it. In the end there is no single "author" to be spoken of. I can relate to the idea but sometimes it IS pushed into ridiculousness when the author explicitly says THIS MEANS X and you keep saying it actually means Y.

Like, yeah, it means if anything that the author was bad at conveying meaning, if everyone gets something different. But the rest is just you seeing patterns where there probably are none, not unlike some guy seeing the face of Jesus in a burnt toast.

[Triple_R]

Originally Posted by Myssa Rei

If you apply it to this case, then people who'd be gung-ho in judging Erased's adaptation in isolation will just ignore the Director's input too, and how he saw the production and story (in this case, human drama masked as a mystery-thriller).

"Human drama masked as a mystery-thriller" strikes me as an excellent nutshell answer to "What is Boku Dake?", at least at a genre classification level. It makes a lot of sense, so I don't see any good reason to ignore it.

[DemonneoPT]

Originally Posted by com_gwp

At the same time, I think that it is a bit unfair to criticise the (admittedly also unfair) expectations of the anime-only viewers when the anime spent most of it's time building such a deep, intimate connection between two particular characters and....well, turn out such a conclusion.

I do not understand. The only thing i saw was a little girl getting to know what hapiness is when she only had darkness until then. That scene where she gets to eat a proper breakfast and starts crying is the perfect example of it. That is cute. It was never about Satoru finding a girlfriend. There is no romance. The anime itself is not about romance. Satoru blushing was just a comic relief by showing his inexperience in handling girls..lol. People ship everything these days... it looks like they can't appreciate a story without having some sort of romance between the characters even if they are just little kids. Maybe that's why a lot of viewers do not care about Sachiko because there was no one to ship her with. Only Airi and Kayo... But hey, i'm probably biased here because i utterly despise shipping in non-romantic stories. I even though Kayo would actually die and Satoru would only be able to save his mother (the true reason why he used revival after all). I never cared about KayoxSatoru, however i do care about Kayo and wanted her to live so i was kinda happy seeing she survived and is a happy person. Satoru's coma was a nice twist too, especially for me, because a full happy ending is just boring. I'm sadistic i know xD

I completely agree with this guy:

Originally Posted by Last Sinner

But clearly....shipping is far more important to a lot of people, it seems.

Kayo would not have had the mental state or the life experience required to make such a commitment. Very few people could. To utterly dedicate your life to someone who is in a coma for years on end and who may never wake up is a very big thing to ask. Some people would be driven to the brink of insanity/ruin by it. There are other animes that have shown that.

Sachiko, however, did have the strength of will, the means to do so (which heavily compromised her life, surely) and a mind-blowing degree of self-sacrifice and dedication. She is pretty much the best mother I have ever seen in anime. And yet she barely gets a mention here or any other place online. In a medium where parents are either milquetoast or cringeworthy for a clear majority of them, one parent utterly rises to the challenge and shows what a woman of an age that is virtually non-existent in anime can do. But hey, I guess she can't be shipped or turned into figures, so people don't want to care.

[Kazu-kun]

Originally Posted by Myssa Rei

It's a Modernist form of critique where one ignores even the input of the creator when judging a work, and just criticizes a work in isolation; an example would be doing a critique of the Silmarillion, and ignoring a good chunk of Tolkien's own notes on the symbolism he put into it. This is an oversimplification of course, but I hope you get the gist of it.

Nabokov by the way hated it, as he tried to make it abundantly clear what the message was whenever he wrote something.

Well, if authors don't want to leave things to interpretation, they got to be more clear. They don't have any right to bitch if they aren't clear enough. To begin with, the very purpose of ambiguity in a narrative is to let the audience come up with their own conclusions. This has nothing to do with BokuMachi though.

If you apply it to this case, then people who'd be gung-ho in judging Erased's adaptation in isolation will just ignore the Director's input too, and how he saw the production and story (in this case, human drama masked as a mystery-thriller).

Sure but even if the director had his reasons, the fact is his choices messed up the narrative. Basically, he let his creative vision get in the way of putting out a proper narrative (proper in the sense of having good pacing and so on). There gotta be some balance in this sort of things.

I've seen it before. Writers or directors going too far to get their own personal messages across to the point they ended up messing up other elements of the story (pacing, characterization, etc). This doesn't mean they shouldn't do it. All I'm saying is that there gotta be some limits, some balance. You gotta know how far you can go before issues start cropping up.

[BPD Renegade]

Wow. Manga readers have been talking about how this show was going to tank in the late game, implying some sort of NTR with Kayo, so I was expecting some grievous slight to occur that would justifiably incite the rage of fans. It turns out Satoru was in a coma for 15 years, and the "NTR" happened during this time. Really, guys? I didn't realize some anime fans would be shallow enough to believe that being helped out by someone once, as huge a thing as it may have been, would cause a person to be indebted for life. So a boy (forget the fact that he's mentally 29) helps an eleven year-old girl out, and now she must dedicate her entire life to him, save her chastity and be the proper virgin for him to deflower because she owes him now, huh? Forget the fact that he may never wake up again. I suppose if it wasn't a 15 year coma and he'd been asleep for 50 years, it shouldn't matter, the same butt-hurt people believe she should still waste her entire life for him.

What's annoying is that I'm quite sure if Kayo were male, all of these feelings of outrage would be completely moot. Speaking of men, why is no one ragging on Hiromi at all? But I suppose that if the dude screws the woman it's always her fault. Chauvinism at its finest indeed.

I'm glad to see most people on here being rational and taking "Kayo's side" on this though. Seriously, this show has had tons of actually relevant weak points -- like, for one, the gaping plot holes -- so of all the things to go nuts about.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by Kazu-kun

Well, if authors don't want to leave things to interpretation, they got to be more clear. They don't have any right to bitch if they aren't clear enough. To begin with, the very purpose of ambiguity in a narrative is to let the audience come up with their own conclusions. This has nothing to do with BokuMachi though.

More often than not the ambiguity is just in the interpreter's head, as the author never meant that certain fact to be ambiguous at all. Sometimes people just go out their way into spreading their own distorted interpretations just because they like them more in spite of all the evidences on the contrary that are thrust on them.

When the phenomenon becomes big enough the author might end up being pestered with continuous requests of clarifications for things that shouldn't be questioned at all. So the author gives an official verdict, but that still doesn't settle the matter because "death of the author".