What Erased Could Have Been

So, before I start off this article I'd like to say that I love the series of Erased for what it is. I waited week after week eager to see each episode and watched it with full attention. This is my response to the declining ratings after the last two episodes have come out. I have two theories on why the ratings took a small plunge; the reveal of the killer, and the change of pace for the last two episodes. Now, the reveal of the killer was a shock for many people, and not that kind of shock where you didn't expect it, but it was more shocking that it was EXACTLY who many people expected! Maybe we watched too much Scooby-Doo growing up, but I don't believe anyone expected for the "mystery" of the show to be so simple, and that hit a lot of people hard.

At the start of Erased, we experience Satoru's ability of "revival" to go back in time and change the past so a tragedy does not take place. I feel like that in itself gives a good mystery, it makes you look around along with Satoru to see what's wrong, what needs to be changed. Although revival was used multiple times, it feels like that was put on the back-burner. The story was focused on the weak "mystery" when it already had a strong plot point to play off of; I would have loved to see more of revival, with smaller things, possibly even using that mechanic to make the mystery even stronger!

Another route I'd loved to see the anime to go is much simpler, but it was in my opinion the strongest element of the story: Relationships. From the point where Satoru jumps back in time, we see his relationships with his mother, his friends, Kayo, his teacher, and Kayo's mom. Satoru is tough, in his body he has a young adult mind and he's not nervous to speak his mind, he's able to hang out with his friends without a mask (unless you consider being his normal adult self in a child's body a mask). A good story could have been centered around Kayo's abuse and her rescue from her mom, and Kayo's transformation after making friends and not being so sheltered. Although they did go into this in the anime, I feel like a fleshed out version could have been a good revival story, possibly being the cause of Satoru getting sent back after remembering himself not helping her. Overall, although I liked the story of Erased, I believe the show did not need to rely on the weak mystery to keep going. Erased had many strong plot points and elements that made me love the story, and I only wish it would have kept going on those instead of diluting the quality with it's weak mystery.

Notes:

#Erased