01-16-2016, 01:39 AM | #1 |
時の彼方へ
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Boku dake ga Inai Machi
"Struggling manga author Satoru Fujinuma has a supernatural ability of being forced to prevent deaths and catastrophes by being sent back in time before the incident occurred, repeating time until it is prevented. One day, he gets involved in an incident that has him framed as a murderer. Desperate to save the victim, he sends himself back in time only to find himself as a grade-schooler one month before fellow classmate Kayo Hinazuki went missing. Satoru now embarks on a new quest: to save Kayo and solve the mystery behind her disappearance." - MyAnimeList official anime website (日本語) Wikipedia (English) Wikipedia (日本語) Title: 僕だけがいない町 Romaji: Boku dake ga Inai Machi Talon Translation: A Town In Which Only I Do Not Exist Official English Title: Erased |
01-16-2016, 01:40 AM | #2 |
時の彼方へ
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01-16-2016, 01:41 AM | #3 |
時の彼方へ
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01-16-2016, 01:42 AM | #4 |
時の彼方へ
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This is the only Winter 2016 anime I am watching this season, but I am quite confident just from the two episodes I've seen so far that this is the single best anime of the season, bar none, and is an absolute must-see for anyone who enjoyed any of the following: Steins;Gate, Ano Hana, Kyou no 5-2, Aku no Hana, Death Parade.
The story premise from the first five minutes of Episode 01 -- "guy is pulled into the past every time someone nearby dies; guy has to find the problem and fix it" -- is hardly original. But what makes Boku dake ga Inai Machi so thrilling is, it doesn't just stop with Satoru's lifeguard duty. A particular murder sees Satoru sent back to the year 1988. Japan was very different in 1988, and so's Satoru: he's in the 5th grade, vs. the 29 years of age he had when last we saw him in 2006. So the story suddenly becomes one part Quantum Leap, one part Kyou no 5-2, one part Ano Hana as Satoru tries to save the life of a classmate, Hinazuki Kayo, who was found dead in the snow that same year. Will Satoru be able to change the future? Or will he only wind up making things worse and having to go back in time again to try a second attempt at making things right? Now the story suddenly becomes Steins;Gate and it's like OOOOOOOOH, MAN! All aboard the hype train. The animation is very good. So is the direction. The soundtrack works well, creating atmosphere without distracting in most instances. The voice acting is very enjoyable. It's all good. I'll save more episode-specific discussion for subsequent posts. For now, all I can say is: if you aren't watching Boku dake ga Inai Machi already, you really should be.
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01-17-2016, 10:42 PM | #5 | |
Dragon's Tears
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Watched the first two eps. Looks intriguing. The beginning did feel slightly rushed, but apparently that's because the first episode covered six chapters to get to the big hook. According to manga-readers the story cut/changed some things to make it fit, based on which I'll clarify in response to this post:
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Spoiler: show I've seen a lot of speculation going around already as to who the culprit is. Suspects include: Spoiler: show On that note, some have also wondered if Kenya and Kayo Spoiler: show I will however throw out the Kagerou Days theory (which someone else actually thought of as well) that Spoiler: show Another suspicion I have is that the person we saw coming out of the apartment Spoiler: show Anyway, looking forward to continuing and hopefully discussing this. It's been a while since we've had a good mystery on our hands, and this looks like it's potentially shaping up to be a tearjerker as well. Spoiler: show
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01-18-2016, 12:03 AM | #6 |
時の彼方へ
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Yay, our first reply! You got me to turn on the computer at this late hour and write up my "lots of little thoughts" I've hinted at in several posts thus far. I'll go ahead and do that first, and then circle around to reply to some of the things you noted which I had never heard of nor considered before.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ There are a lot of little things I want to comment on. The post will probably get pretty long, but many of the individual points will be pretty shallow, only a couple of sentences long. Forgive me! ^_^; (I guess for my own reading aid, and yours too if it helps, I'll go ahead and mark off separate ideas with a bold blue asterisk *.) For the most part, I think I'll have spoilers hidden inside of spoiler tags, but I guess r~e~a~d~e~r----b~e~w~a~r~e~~~! that there might be spoilers for Eps 01 and 02 out in plain sight in this post. Don't read this post until you're through Episode 02, okay? * I think the animation is really pretty good. Without getting bogged down by technical details, I'd say it's probably somewhere between 80/100 and 90/100 (going by current standards). * I think the voice acting is really great. Kayo, 2006 Satoru, 1988 Satoru, Satoru's mother, and Kenya are all up there for me. I've probably mentioned this before but it bears repeating. Any newcomers we may have, I think we should pay close attention to them in the future! * Episode 02 gave me some Ano Hana vibes in more than one way. One of the ways in particular was ... Spoiler: show I could be barking up the wrong tree, but we will see. Another aspect of the Ano Hana-ness was ... Spoiler: show * I've previously mentioned the background music. But did you know that it was done by none other than Yuki Kajiura!? :o What a pleasant surprise. I especially love the song that plays during the ending scene of Episode 02. * Let's talk about the OP. There are two things that really stand out to me with the OP, and frankly I'm not going to bother spoiler tagging either one of these because it's in the OP, man. ^^; First, Kayo's limited appearance. I was looking for Kayo the entire time I first watched this, and was very surprised when she didn't turn up until near the very end. And that's the only time she turns up! And she has to share the screen with both Airi and Satoru's mother! What's up with that? It has to be a conscious decision by the director. A decision to show us scene after scene from 1988 but to omit Kayo from just about every single one of them. Is it an artistic message, "Kayo was never a big part of Satoru's original 1988 life"? Is it some other sort of artistic message? Is it not even a message, but something else entirely? No idea. Second, the opposite with Kenya: his surprisingly Spoiler: show * What about Asian Kung-Fu Generation? Yes, the band most famous to me and many other anime watchers for providing the second OP of Naruto and the fourth OP of FMA has returned, from what feels like a 10-year hiatus to me ('cause I don't follow their work), to provide the OP for this series. It's pretty crazy to hear their unforgettable vocals again. That stated, I'm not too crazy about the song itself. It's fine. I enjoy it okay. I'm not rushin' out to buy the CD or anything. Not itchin' to put the MP3 on my iPhone. But it's alright. * ED is kind of forgettable, both visually and aurally. We'll see if those feelings change over time. * There's a subtext here that Satoru wants to be a hero. We get it from the red mask he cherishes (Ep02) and the brief, brief flashback we have of the protagonist from that franchise when he's doing his first Revival we get to see (Ep01). I don't get the "supertext" from the young man / boy that he wants to be a hero, but the poster art (that I used for the OP pic up top) definitely doesn't give off any other impression. Wondering if that will factor in at all. * I'm really curious to learn when Satoru's Revival powers started and why, if they started either before or right when Kayo died, they didn't trigger back in 1988 in response to her death. * Playing off of that last point, I feel like there has to be a reason he's saving Kayo's life now, from 2006 back to 1988, rather than having saved it back then to begin with. I mean, a cosmic reason it's happening this way. I can work with the idea that he didn't have Revival powers until after it was too late for Kayo, but I'm saying that there has to be some reason that the Universe rendered him powerless as a 10-year old boy in 1988 yet then decided to let him try for it once he was 29 years old in 2006. Like ... cosmically, he's clearly been sent back to 1988 to fix things, so like ... why in this order? Why not when he was 10? Is it because who/what he is up against, an ordinary 10-year old boy couldn't handle? We'll have to wait and see. * I have never in my life heard someone say "Shita kke!" when saying good-bye. Not sure whether it's dialectal, slang, or possibly both. Either way it's really cool and refreshing. I enjoy learning new things about Japanese, and I feel kinda powered up if this is authentic '80s slang from Hokkaido. I'm assuming the "shita" part is a corruption of 明日 ashita, "tomorrow," as in また明日 mata ashita "See you tomorrow!". Not quite sure about the kke part though. * The 5th grade homeroom teacher feels like a red herring to me. Spoiler: show But I dunno. The anime homepage clearly treats the guy like he's an important character to the story, and IIRC he's one of the mug shot people in the OP credits too. So like ... yeah, we obviously have to keep our eyes on him. * The anime is really bringing the manga to life ... but we'll talk more about that another time. :')
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01-18-2016, 12:28 AM | #7 | |
時の彼方へ
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Quote:
Spoiler: show Alright! That should be most everything. Until next time!
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01-18-2016, 03:03 AM | #8 | |||||
Dragon's Tears
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I was confused as to whether Hiromi was a girl or boy at first, but I'm inclined to think it's the latter given children tend to stick with the same gender at that age. If there were more than one girl in the group I'd consider the multi-romance angle but right now I think we're just dealing with Kayo (and possibly the high school coworker) as the main "love interest". ...*tries to check Hiromi's gender* >immediately gets spoiled GDI Wikipedia. I can confirm that he is, in fact a boy though. XP Quote:
Can't say I'm too impressed with the OP/ED either. The intro's all right, although I honestly skipped the latter immediately after the first few notes - even though I feel I should probably watch it at least once in case it contains clues. XP (On that note, someone posted a screencap showing that if you freeze when Satoru is on the roof in the OP, you can see the shooter reflected in his broken glasses.) Quote:
Quote:
In response to your reply: Spoiler: show
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01-18-2016, 06:49 AM | #9 |
Just keep swimming x2
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I'm also watching this as well. The two episodes so far are really great. I don't have that much to comment, but I'm pretty excited! Haven't watched anything in awhile so I hope this is a good anime that will "break the ice" for me.
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01-18-2016, 12:43 PM | #10 | |
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Quote:
Spoilers from Volume 1 Spoiler: show Spoilers from Volume 2 (first three chapters) Spoiler: show
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01-20-2016, 10:02 PM | #11 |
我が名は勇者王!
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I watched the first episode. I think I'll watch the second after I eat and get booze'd up!
... I have a few complaints. I didn't watch it as closely as Talon did, since I don't think this show is as complex a mystery as say, Dangan Ronpa. So there wasn't a lot of impetus for me to mentally challenge the plot. But Talon's observation just wants me to see immediate resolution: the murderer caught, humiliated, tortured and killed. Unless it happens like in Episode 02 I will end up frustrated for most of the series. Episode 01 commentary - Spoiler: show
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01-21-2016, 02:39 AM | #12 |
我が名は勇者王!
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Episode 02
THIS WAS A LOT BETTER! I am honestly excited now. Really, we could have just started with this one and skipped the lamer aspects of the time travel. There was a lot of juicy character development and some humourful scenes. It made me want to rewatch it again, which is my gold standard for evaluating a show's quality. When's the next one?
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あなたの勇気が切り開く未来
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01-21-2016, 09:47 AM | #13 | |
時の彼方へ
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Yay!
Quote:
As for wanting to re-watch 02, I know the feeling! I watched it twice in a row (separated only by maybe five minutes' pause) back when I first saw it, and I think I might've watched it a third time (not sure). I know I have held myself back from watching it any more since then because I don't want to run it into the ground and have it lose its emotional impact. But man. Man. Entire episode is great, and the final scene of the episode is just HRNGGGGGGGGGGH in all the right ways. (Adorable! Romantic! Dramatic! Exciting!) It airs on Thursdays. I believe CrunchyRoll releases new episodes around noon Eastern time (in about two to three hours). CrunchyRoll rippers like HorribleSubs probably have it out within the hour of its CR release.
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01-21-2016, 10:27 AM | #14 | ||
我が名は勇者王!
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I guess to a certain extent Satoru's "social ineptitude" might be applicable, but his conversation with Hinazuki seems pretty basic and age-suitable for 10 year olds to be stressing over. I needed to reign this consideration in before dropping any comparisons with The Catcher in the Rye...because we're not quite there, yet. It also brings out Satoru's personality quite well. Him constantly saving people using Revival may have made him more mature and better able to handle his mission in the past and not be upset at seeing the murder in the first episode. Compared to the emotional meltdown of a certain mad scientist, that's quite refreshing. Quote:
Oh goodie gumdrops!
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01-22-2016, 12:31 PM | #15 |
我が名は勇者王!
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The elephant in the room is that Episode 03 aired yesterday. Some people watched it, but since nobody's made an effort to talk I WILL:
(I'm kind of drunk atm so please be kind) Spoiler: show
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01-23-2016, 12:41 AM | #16 | |
Dragon's Tears
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Quote:
Spoiler: show On Hiromi- Spoiler: show That all being said... Spoiler: show On conspiracies- Spoiler: show On Revival's mechanics- Spoiler: show
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01-23-2016, 01:37 AM | #18 | |
Dragon's Tears
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Spoiler: show Bah, wish we'd gotten more to work with this week. When the ep ended I was immediately left thinking "That's it? D=". Definitely didn't feel like a half hour. =3= Also the OP is growing on me.
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01-23-2016, 02:08 AM | #19 |
我が名は勇者王!
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No more of that manga stuff, please. I did read it, but didn't process it very well because I wasn't properly cognizant. But now that I'm aware of that quote, I'm regretful, and given how far everyone has read, I would like to restrict access to that information.
I don't blame you, but I wasn't aware of just how detailed at was going to be. I could only evaluate it as something I would have avoided ex post facto. My reasoning is what tends to destroy a mutual interest anime like this is someone reading ahead. Most of the time, I'm the perp - I did it for Hunter x Hunter and Dangan Ronpa, which had tangible deflating effects on the topics. I'm not sure what happened - perhaps the mid-life crisis from a few months ago stimulate the change - but I have little desire to spoil myself on the alternate material. I'm perfectly fine taking my time on this one. That said, since it's water under the bridge atm, Spoiler: show
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01-23-2016, 12:52 PM | #20 | |
Dragon's Tears
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01-24-2016, 11:10 AM | #23 |
時の彼方へ
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I watched Episode 03 on Thursday. I teared up. But first, before I post my thoughts on that ...
One thing I've been meaning to discuss was Kayo's essay, introduced in Episode 02. Titled Watashi dake ga Inai Machi, it is clearly tied in to the title of the story we're watching. The fact that she uses watashi instead of boku leaves ambiguous whether the titular boku will end up being Satoru or Kayo (or someone else entirely). Below is a reproduction of the CR translation for easy access, along with the original manga text in Japanese for cross-sourcing: Spoiler: show First, we have the essay itself. I thought it was a good hybrid between an obvious SOS and the sort of elementary school essay kids are normally expected to write. You can tell a lot about Kayo from this essay. For instance, her essay is all about removing herself from the situation rather than forcing change upon others. (While we know she asks Satoru to kill someone for her, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out she means her mother, in the essay she doesn't wish harm upon anyone.) Another example is the vocabulary and syntax of her essay. You can tell a few small things about her level of education and her intelligence from the essay. I've already touched on her use of watashi, which returns here in the main body of the essay. If nothing else, I feel like this essay serves as a good forecast for a possible honeymoon or vacation in the event of a Good End that turns romantic for Satoru and Kayo. Second, we have the visuals that are shown during the reading of the essay. I didn't realize it at the time, as I watched Episode 02 before touching the manga, but A-1 Pictures transposes some of the content from Chapter 02 of the manga on over to the essay's reading in Episode 02. Most visually apparent is the evilly and/or crazily smiling mother, but there's also the issue of the trash bags. They're not animated to be super apparent, but their contents are there, the writing discernible to Japanese eyes that know how to read the Chinese characters. Given the limited time the anime has to work with -- only nine episodes to go! -- we might not end up revisiting Chapter 02's contents any more than this. But the fact remains that the clue is there for anime-only viewers to find. Alright! Next time I'll post my thoughts on Episode 03, and read all of your guys' as well.
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01-28-2016, 02:34 PM | #24 | |
時の彼方へ
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03 post is still on the way. I already have it written up notes-style on my phone, and have pictures prepared for the paragraphs and everything. All I have to do is write it formally. Haven't gotten to see 04 yet. Very excited though. Plan is to come home from work tonight, write up 03 post, and treat myself to 04 either before bed tonight or else tomorrow morning before work.
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