Posted by OP2 Sequence
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OP2: 「Re;Re」 by ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION
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「未来」 (Mirai)
“Future”
We fastforward 15 years after our last episode to see that Satoru has been in a coma this entire time! Sachiko has been taking care of him like the good mother that she is (I think it’s already agreed upon that she wins mother of the year by the way) and tending to his body as he lays in unconscious. When Satoru wakes up, he doesn’t have the shock effect that I think most doctors would expect from someone that doesn’t recognize his own face. He has a deeper voice, longer limbs and he’s an adult! Except with the mind of an 11-year-old… except he doesn’t because of his “special case”. Satoru is experiencing this inbetween deja-vu effect where he was familiar with everything going on around him but doesn’t know how he got there. It’s not enough to make him freak out, but I think his family, doctor and friends were more concerned at how well he was taking everything – given that he was an 11-year-old moments ago. You’ve got to give him a lot of credit for maintaining his composure even though he’s probably so confused and lost on the inside. Not being able to walk is also frustrating.
Now on to the biggest discussion point of this episode (for me at least)…
Yashiro Gaku… or should I say, Nishizono. His backstory is revealed in the beginning of the episode and very quickly might I add. He details a bit of why he changed his name later on, but none of that matters now that we know who he is. It’s the beginning that really intrigued me because this is the epiphany moment that I’ve been waiting for with Gaku’s motive. Why does he do what he does? In a nutshell, the anime explains it with the Spider’s Thread story and Gaku’s relationship with the hamster, Spice and how it translates to humans. I thought that this was going to be tale of how Gaku was a psychopath even as a kid, and I think there are early signs of it, however I wish there was more to it than that. From what I can tell, Gaku likes the satisfaction of killing – watching his victims fall and that rush or adredeline of capturing them and succeeding in his hunt. He does it carefully though and his acts aren’t careless so in a head to head wits battle against Satoru, he as the upper hand. He’s charismatic (even towards children), he establishes trust between himself and his victims and he kills cute pets… which are all signs of a psychopath, although not exclusively so. Which is why I would’ve liked to see more of his obsession and how it developed so strongly. I get that the anime probably ran out of time so we’re just going to have to accept that bad people do bad things but psychopathical serial killers, usually have a “good” reason for doing so. I did dig into this a bit more and without any major spoilers here, if people do want to hear more about Gaku’s past, chapter 32 of the manga details that very well. There’s a lot that’s missing from the anime which I wish they’ve included.
The biggest surprise this week was not the 15 year jump but actually seeing everyone grownup! And Kayo has a baby?! With Hiromi?! What is this…? How did that happen? I can imagine all the ships sinking as everyone realizes that in this future, Kayo doesn’t end up with Satoru but his friend instead. Not that I can blame her – people move on and things happen while you’ve been unconscious for 15 years so I don’t blame Kayo or Hiromi for what happened. The audience just has no context which makes you raise an eyebrow or two. Their reunion was bittersweet in my mind, just because I was really hoping for romance to spark between the two of them (when they got older). On top of that, Satoru doesn’t have a clue what’s been going on and he sees everyone progressing life without him while he’s just… stuck in 1988. I’m happy for Kayo though – she’s finally found the true meaning of a family and home and now she’s has a child of her own whom will grow up very happy I’m sure.
By the end of the episode, Satoru regains his memory and given that there’s only one episode left – that wasn’t a surprise. I wish there was a bit more context as to how and when, but I think the gloves and maybe hanging out with with Kumi all the time did the trick. I thought there was a relationship between Kumi and Gaku, or Kumi was Gaku’s next victim, but that didn’t seem to be the case after Satoru woke up. Now that Satoru has his memories back, unless Gaku attempts to murder Satoru again, he’s headed straight to jail. The proof will be hard to find (given that it’s 15 years later) but I think we’re headed to a happy ending regardless. Does Satoru still have his revival powers? Now that is the question… but I’d like to think not given all that’s happened. He’s saved his mother, he saved Kayo and Airi and now he just has to condem Gaku to prision.
Bottom Line – @RCCherrie: The intro from Gaku was super creepy… like he gets a high from dangling hope in front of people. An unexpected twist. I never thought Satoru would be in a COMA for the next 15 years! How did he manage to escape anyway? A change in the intro?! So late in the game but I thought it matched the English title well – #Erased #BokuMachi
or Kumi was Gaku’s next victim, but that didn’t seem to be the case after Satoru woke up.
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“oh! i just remembered this guy is a kidnapper/murdered. I should let him know I know his secret once we’re all alone on the roof and I’m stuck in a wheelchair lol.”
You’re assuming that he has just remembered now. I’m not so sure that is a valid assumption.
In the manga version Satoru uses a child as a means to lure out the killer. That part of the manga always felt very wrong to me and un-superhero like. I suspect instead in the anime version Satoru is using himself as the lure. That to me is much more inline with the ideals Satoru followed.
I’m really behind the idea that he’s got a great trick or two up his sleeve. It’s just his delivery of the last line that didn’t sell the excitement of the cliffhanger to me.
Felt like he’d caught the villain’s condition of overstating everything.
i think that was why he was so determined to double up on his rehab, so he’d be ready.
I didn’t really like the ending of the manga as it felt so far-fetched, but imo the anime is doing a nice job.
He wants him to finish the job after getting NTR’d
Gaku probably does not know the progress Satoru made walking. Wouldn’t be surprised that he makes a sprint somewhere.
Fellow crew onboard the SS SatoruxKayo, it was an honour serving together with you. 🙁
And I hoped so strongly they corrected that stupidity when they let her disappear after she was saved. :/
By the way, wtf is with that finale? They haxed half the story but not what they had to cut out for the sake of all of our good fellows: Kayo’s best WTF moment was still there!
After reading so much comments on the net, I blame the anime production staff for luring us to SS SatoruxKayo. Satoru didn’t get NTR’ed, we did.
Well, I did read the manga to see why everyone was so upset with this episode, and I can see why.
In the end of it, the anime did deviate. But it’s not all bad I think. Perhaps this is a chance for the anime to do something different in my opinion. Perhaps its own special ending, an anime original ending. Only I already read on ANN that the anime would adapt the manga’s true ending. In which case, I think it would’ve been better if the anime just stayed true to the manga. Anyway, that is no reason for me to suddenly dislike the anime. It has been great so far and now I’ll look forward to the final episode.
Earlier on, I deduced that if Satoru pulls off a successful revival where absolutely no one dies, he will be the one to pay the ultimate price. That more than rings true here. Satoru’s life was, ironically, ERASED. He lost so many opportunities with which he could live his life and interact with his loved ones, because his time was stolen from him. For the price he paid, it’s only appropriate and fitting that Kayo ended up the way she did. And it’s not just Kayo. Like I said, his time was stolen from him as a price for his revival. And yet, he doesn’t feel upset about it. He most likely didn’t know there was a price to pay in the form of fate being a cruel b****, but that doesn’t bring him down at all. Maybe he felt something for Kayo, maybe he didn’t. Either way, the moment he say her, the fruit of his heroism came true, and that’s all he would care about. If not him, then it is WE the viewers who should be upset about it. Upset for what his life could’ve been otherwise, but neither he nor us will ever get to see that. But in time, we will realize that we cannot have everything we want, and that we too should be satisfied. It’s all very bittersweet. And I think that’s the way it should be.
One more episode. The finale should be really great. This anime deserves it.
No spoilers here because I haven’t a clue what happened in the manga version and anyhow people seem to think the anime may take a different turn at the end. With that in mind…
Why do you say Yashiro/Nishinosono is headed straight for jail? It is not clear to me that in the timeline of Ep. 11 we have any evidence that he actually killed anyone. If the ability to see spider-threads-of-fate is real (and why not, in a story where the viewpoint character also has a related supernatural ability?) then it may be that Yashiro’s obsessive motivation was not to see his victims’ deaths but to see how they were rescued from death by the hand of fate. That’s equally creepy, but may not have left a trail of bodies. That motivation fits in with his apparent role in keeping Satoru alive in a hospital bed rather than sneaking in some night to kill him. He saw that Satoru was acting as the hand of fate in rescuing his earlier victims, that Satoru himself had a spider thread, and was obsessed to see what/who would come along to save Satoru.
The only part I found surprising about Hiromi X Kayo was that in this timeline Hiromi was not obviously rescued from anything, not abuse, not murder, and not even a lack of friends, since he was already in Satoru’s schoolroom clique before anything happened. So he wouldn’t have had a shared history of victimhood or rescue to specifically motivate him to find Kayo after she moved away. Maybe Kayo came back years later looking for Satoru and found Hiromi instead?
There were murders that took place BEFORE the point where Satoru jumped back in time to. In particular there was the one where the child was drugged and asphyxiated by a charcoal burner and the father blamed.
True, although according to the notebook of that reporter guy, the earlier murders took place in another town. Was there any mention that Yashiro sensei had been a teacher at another school before coming Satoru’s?
The reason why this show has been doing marevolessly is because it’s doing its own thing with a complex yet straight forward narrative it isn’t doing what everyone except it to do in the shallow sense. That’s been the problem with anime over the last decade we as an audience expect certain plot points and character relationships to go the way WE want them to instead of what the source material intended them to be like hibike euphonium for example everyone expects kumiko x kusaka thing to be canon despite the fact that in the novel both of them like boys and reina outright said from her own mouth that she has a romantic crush on the teacher. Stories need to follow this shows’ example more on how to tell a good story without being a punching bag for “fans”.
They were doing so well adapting the source material and now they’re just slaughtering it to cram everything in…
The post-coma story covered thirteen chapters of the manga, that’s more than a quarter of the story, and now they’re going to cram an new resolution into one sixth of the anime?
Just looking at what they’ve “covered” so far they totally neutered Gaku’s back story, there was WAY more interesting stuff than just the hamsters, they skipped over Airi’s reintroduction to the story and it looks like the entire story with Kumi is getting junked.
I don’t remember the last time a show left me so incomprehensibly frustrated.
I love this show and all these twists are fantastic, but God damn I’d be lying if I said I’m content.
Kayo in the arms…OF HIS FRIEND?
He was in a coma and robbed 15 good years of life?!?!?!
This mf’ing teacher is back to make life that much more stressful?!?!?!?!
–
I’ve never seen a shipping fandom so mercilessly and brutally shut down in my entire anime watching career. So frustrated..but such a good series.
Yes, I admit it. Seeing Kayo with Hiro’s kid pissed me off a lot. I really enjoyed this show so far, but this was no easy watch. 😀 This is purely speaking as the person following the show. Satoru looks like he’s genuinely happy for her.
Realistically speaking nobody is to blame and she should be allowed to move on, live her life and be happy. But it’s tough to swallow as a viewer, considering how the anime had all these (more or less) romantic interactions between Satoru and her.
It was creepy, since his mind was that of an adult, but I was obviously thinking about them getting together as adults later on. Guess I can forget about that.
Last hope for Satoru getting rewarded is to end up with the pizza delivery girl (forgot her name), but it’s not surprising that she’s nowhere to be seen. They haven’t met yet!
Sad.
Guess I’ll check out said manga chapter 32, because I still fail to understand how the teacher turned out the way he did. And was he the person that rescued Satoru?
So many questions…
Ah, good to see another ship sunk. The more anime does it, the more shippers will hopefully realise they’re going about watching shows like these the wrong way.
Non-shippers will have hopefully picked up on the beautiful fact that Satoru’s efforts have let two survivors of the killer find happiness together. They might also consider the theme of loneliness developing despite the fact that you’re doing the right thing. From the beginning, Satoru had been saving people through small revivals that led to him being cut off from them, from his normal life, in hospitals and other predicaments. Part of his condition in episode 11, that he speaks of as being the result of what he wanted to do, was not being close to a girl at his age, even after ‘fixing’ his past. He had to move on from Kayo in order to save the other victims, and because of his coma he’s never met Airi now. Notice how his mother, candidate for greatest woman in anime, is also still unmarried. Look at how Yuuki, trying to give kids a good time, gets shunned by the world and thought to be a paedophile, eventually locked up. Thnik about how Airi gets shunned when she tries to stick up for Satoru.
Satoru always wanted to be a superhero, but this hero doesn’t get the girl at the end. We know that’s not always how it works in life. Selfish monsters like Yashiro try to fill the gaps in their hearts in terrible ways, but never feel satisfied. Satoru looks like he should still have a gap in his, but he’s complete despite having not achieved what we’d usually term as ‘success’ for his narrative. In Boku Machi, protecting those you love, which in this case means making sure they’re not alone, can leave you alone in the end. But people are fulfilled in life because of the love they give, not because of the love they receive.
Aside from that theme I’ve loved throughout the series, the plot has completely lost me now. No excitement for the finale. But the show retains a great sense of theme as a whole, and that’s a big plus for me with so many shows having gripping plots but no memorable big picture to remember them for.
I’m excited for the finale. No reason not to. The show has been great so far.
So it’s on slightly different timeline after all.
I love the manga, but this Kayo NTR thing is one of the most head-scratching things in this story. The author was too eager to make Airi the main heroine and ended up making this part of his story look quite awkward. Kayo is a fail as a heroine, in the manga and also in the anime. I personally like Airi better as a character, but for the sake of the story I really believe Kayo should have been the main heroine, in both manga and anime.
And in the manga Airi shows up out of the blue and kicks the cameraman’s butt, well, that part looked awkward too, but the anime stuff swapped her with Yashiro/Nishizono, so Airi got snubbed and ended up as a loser here anyway.
I guess if we were going to be on a different timeline, they could have made Kayo end up with Satoru in the anime, but they didn’t.
Anyway this heroine thing is a minor hiccup and I still love the manga, and the anime too though.
I think the first clue to Satoru regaining his memory a lot earlier than believed is his sudden gung-ho attitude in rehabilitating himself, requesting twice as much time to do so and pushing himself as hard as he can every day. Don’t see any reason he would do so unless he did remember and was preparing for facing down Gaku given Gaku is now obviously the type to not leave his “hunt” unfinished and risk Satoru somehow being able to get him caught.
As for the Kayo thing, if anything, Hiromi is at least a believable choice for Kayo to end up with given their common “protected” relationship with Satoru, so it wouldn’t surprise me if some time after Satoru was in the hospital, they ended up contacting each other and started talking, which simply lead to another thing and so on. Now if she ended up with Kenya or his other friend…yeah, that would be odd.
Cherrie, the screen cap you tagged for “all the ships sinking” was perfect. I laughed really hard.
Kayo and Hiromi shouldn’t be even existing, but they are both saved thus its logical for both of them get married to prevent any changes to other people’s fate and lives. Imagine them married to a different people thus jeopardizing the outcome and some children would cease to exist due to that.
My suspicion….
Satoru regained his memories when he touch Kayo’s child.
Looking back over it, I completely agree. The baby stopped crying as soon as they touched (immediately after he asked himself, What was it that he’d done?), and Satoru was kind of sitting there with his face in his hands, Kayo asking if he was OK. And his asking about double rehab was the scene right after that, along with his drawing of Kayo. It all fits at that point. And there’s nothing wrong with Kayo having gotten married by that point.
I’m also thinking that Kumi is the next victim. Yashiro left that cell phone there, which is clearly planting evidence. Probably planned to make it look like Satoru committed suicide by jumping off the roof, and some sort of connection with Kumi’s death. Given Satoru spending so much time with Kumi, it fits the pattern of what was done to Yuuki.
In fact, a lot of the frames look like he was framing people that cared about the victims. I could see a lot of ways that could be elaborated on, but we probably won’t have time for that.
The main thing that I don’t have a clue on is who the person walking by in the sweater and cap when Satoru and Yashiro met outside Kumi’s room was supposed to be. The person had short hair, so it couldn’t be Satoru’s mom doing like Airi’s mom had done before. It didn’t fit the looks of anyone else in the series either…… except possibly Satoru himself. That would be an amusing twist: Yashiro reveals the plot against Kumi, but Satoru fixes it before it happens, but after the confrontation, Bill & Ted style.
That was supposed to be sweatshirt. Or maybe just ‘jacket’ would be better.
https://randomc.net/image/Boku%20Dake%20ga%20Inai%20Machi/Boku%20Dake%20ga%20Inai%20Machi%20-%2011%20-%2017.jpg
My reaction of this episode has been summed up by Satoru.
I think this is the common reaction to that shit.
Romance is overrated.
I’m kinda disappointed that they took Show Spoiler ▼
out of the picture, or at least it seems that way, since the story will seem lacking in that sense (or out of left field) if they wrap it up based on what we’ve seen
Which, in turn was the reason they sunk Kayo x Satorus ship in the first place. I thought they corrected it before removing Kayo before, so why take her back now just like in the manga? Was the point to leave Satoru completely alone at the end?
Looks like I was partly right.
I’m familiar with how the manga ends. And so far, I don’t see any issues, apart from Airi. Maybe it was indeed deemed too creepy that a near-30 year old dude is dating a highschooler who is not of age in most of the world? Who knows!
Also good lord the audience doth protest too much. What is it with this whole NTR thing? If anything, Satoru only “dated” Kayo to SAVE her. Why does it all have to be about getting the girl in the end? This is a fucking victory for Satoru. He made it, he changed the timeline. It wasn’t a complete victory but it still is pretty damn better than how we started.
So cutting out al of the last arc, together with Sensei’s reasons is fine to you?
This. I don’t get the NTR thing and all the fuss either.
Also, as I said above, I thus far I prefer the anime ending over the manga’s. Leaving out part of Yashiro’s story is fine for me.
Show Spoiler ▼
I feel it’s enough to tell about the hamsters and get the feeling how Yashiro enjoys making people struggle for their life before they die. For example, he could have killed Satoru or Kayo easily in some other way, but for Satoru he made it so that he would drown and Kayo from one previous timeline would slowly freeze to death.
So…what would happen to the kid he saved in the first episode? What would happen to all the people he saved in the past 15 years?
Good job noticing it. And add also all of the people our sensei killed in the meanwhile. I guess it didn’t really matter at last. 🙁
I’m looking at it/them as “training” for him to save the one girl he’d spent all oif his adult life thinking “I could have done something, if only I’d talked to her that evening!”
IF he still has his ability, survives Sensei-killer, and remembers who/where/what, he’s got ~3 years until boy in episode 1.
Looks like they are making a serious mess here. I’ll wait the next episode before I judge but… so far it looks like they are going to make it finish in some clichè way, destroying the final confrontation between Satoru and Gaku (which was really good imo).
By the way, I know looking at the ship sunk it’s bad, I was rooting for them too… But in the end, Satoru just wanted to save everyone and make them happy. He was genuinely happy to see Kayo with a family, so I can accept this outcome (I think it’s easier to grasp in the manga.)
I just hope they don’t end the anime in a retard way, but at this point I’m seriously concerned…
So Kayo moved on with her life. At least now she has a life she can move on with. From a child who seemed condemned by fate in so many ways, seeing her here, alive, is worth more than anything.
Now, someone kick the smirking bastard’s butt and figure out where 15 years of chaos-theory applied to temporal mechanics has left Airi.
Man I got the biggest chills when Kayo showed up. This is the best show.
As soon as that door started opening, I knew it was her. Hidden head confirmed it. Cut to him, tears of absolute joy streaming down his face was secondary confirmation.
I teared up, too.
Yeah, reading the manga I was irritated by the fact that Satoru and Kayo didn’t happen, but I was at least satisfied that Show Spoiler ▼
I love this show though, depending on how they do the final episode; it may drop significantly in quality as a whole though. I am genuinely wondering how they’re going to do a good anime original ending starting from that mediocre cliffhanger.
when Satoru’s expression began to change inside the elevator, I had this feeling that he was actually setting his own trap. So many details were obviously left out because of the abbreviated way that Ep. 11 was presented, but I think that he, Kenya & that reporter guy may have already set things in motion — by letting Yashiro believe he was still in “control”, before they actually make their move.
I mean, why else would Satoru make this statement about getting his memories back so confidently? In this way, the anime story line is also reflecting the events in the manga (where they set a bait to trap the killer, except that things didn’t turn out like they expected).
After watching an episode I’m always scrambling after to find out more about the anime, never mind that it’s information I’ve pored over again — going back to MAL, reading comment sections gingerly while trying not to find out too much from omnipotent manga readers — but if it’s anything I’m grateful for, it’s that I get to watch the anime as an entity and work in itself, without worrying overmuch about what it’s leaving out from the manga. As someone with fresh eyes, I think the brevity regarding Satoru’s sudden recollection worked — something I’ve generally really liked about this anime so far is its use of symbolism and motif, like the spider’s web in the corner of the elevator, and Yashiro’s finger-tapping.
Something that also just occurred to me is that the use of flashback to symbolise realisation (what I can think of as a more climactic eureka moment on the part of Satoru) might not work in the case of this particular time-tripping anime, and would more likely convolute or muddy an otherwise fairly spare, streamlined work that already has to contend with multiple timelines. But all in all I’m really, really enjoying this anime and I can’t wait to get to reading the manga… Once Friday’s episode comes out. I don’t think I’ve been this invested (and this anxious) about an anime since Shin Sekai Yori, though I’m definitely feeling less anxiety now with the end in sight, and the promise of resolution — the only question that remains for me, really, is how?