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「終幕」 (Shuumaku)
“Closure”
I’ll talk about this week’s episode in two parts – the first time being about Kayo’s mother and the other being about the aftermath. The episode started off with Kayo going back home and her mother reacting very strongly towards Sachiko’s presence. Her violent behavior is spotted by the Child Services and they pretty much take custody of Kayo and claim that Kayo’s mother is unfit to be her guardian. Obviously. I’ve been waiting for this moment since the beginning and to finally see her held accountable for her actions was satisfying. It didn’t go the way I expected, but it was nonetheless, a well-deserved ending for Kayo. She didn’t end up at an orphanage, but instead ended up with her grandmother who wanted to make amends. I think that’s the best case scenario for her situation since she can still be close to family, but not with family that abuses her. Even though Satoru won’t be able to see Kayo again, she seems happy with the way she left things off and she even thanked Satoru for that. I hope she doesn’t get the short end of the stick and somehow ends up dead again in this timeline. This looks like the best alternative Satoru could’ve taken and I’m happy it worked out.
Kayo’s mother unraveled very quickly this episode. I want to note that while I feel sympathy towards her, in no way do I empathize or agree with her tactics of dealing with her issues. I simply think her actions were a product of her circumstances in the past few years and although it’s not right, at least it’s explainable. I knew she must have motivation or deeply rooted psychological issues for hitting Kayo and I was right – similar to how I think the murderer/killer out there has a reason for why he does what he does. The flashbacks were evident (as well as Kayo’s grandmother’s testament) that Kayo’s mother was abused by her ex-husband and she took it out on poor Kayo. I don’t know the reasoning behind the abuse, but Kayo’s mother suffered a great deal to put up with the injuries over the years. I’m also suspecting that the man was Kayo’s father – which makes it more difficult for Kayo to witness. This explains why Kayo has never spoken up about her mother’s abuse and instead, protects her because she knows why her mother is this way. Children are a lot more observant than adults may give them credit for and this is an example of that. Kayo clearly notices that her mother is being hurt and she tries to protect her, both physically and literally when she doesn’t report child abuse. That doesn’t mean that hitting others is right – two wrongs never make a right – and in no way am I saying that it justifies any party’s actions in this family, but just seeing Kayo’s mother past makes me pity her (and Kayo’s grandmother). It makes me feel content with the context given for her issues; however it only makes me realize what a great daughter Kayo really is. That girl deserves so much better. I hope Kayo’s mother gets the help that she needs now because she needs counselling and assistance getting back on her feet.
The second part of this episode was about the aftermath of the situation and Satoru trying to figure out how to prevent the next two victims from being murdered as well. The funny thing that I mentioned last episode is, Satoru is venturing into new territories beyond what his future indicated. By saving Kayo, he’s already altered what would/could be and the murderer/killer may already be switching his plans to go after someone entirely different. The fact that the murderer was already planning to go after Aya after Kayo disappeared demonstrates just how much of a difference Satoru can make. Now that Kayo has officially been “saved”, the murderer has already changed his plans again and emptied out his bag from the deserted bus and will likely go after some other kid. The question is, who? Is it still Aya or Hiromi? I don’t think so… I think the killer has his eyes set on someone else… maybe someone else in the class or maybe even Satoru for upsetting his plans?
Going to spoiler tag this just in case people don’t like to read theories and potential spoilers:
Show Spoiler ▼
Bottom Line – @RCCherrie: Finally! Satoru has a win! So proud of him =) Hope this doesn’t come back to haunt him. Now the question is, who’s next? Aya? Hiromi? Another classmate? Or maybe even Satoru himself? #BokuMachi
There shouldn’t be any other victims as it would change the future effectively. So the victims should revolve only to Satoru, the criminal, and the two victims Aya and Hiromi. Anyway, i suspect Satoru’s father is his teacher.
The reason Akemi (Kayo’s mom) abused her was because she resembled Kayo’s father in some way. There was a quick moment in Akemi’s thoughts when she went to the kitchen, all bandaged and bruised, and she saw Kayo with brown eyes, and a larger silhouette behind her of another person with the same brown eyes (And brown hair I’d imagine). Then she clenched her fist and pummeled her.
At that point, I’d imagine it was much more than just hatred and anger. She was mentally unstable and wanted to unleash hell on her ex-husband, and unfortunately, Kayo was the victim for having a similar appearance.
I wanted her ass to be whipped, but that was before I saw all of that. In no way, shape or form do I condone what she did, nor her motives, but Kayo wasn’t the only one who needed to be rescued, Akemi was too. And I feel so so sorry for them both, because I could tell from the flashes of Akemi’s abuse that she loved Kayo at one point, before she hit her, all damaged, she had her hand on Kayo’s cheek, as if comforting her, despite her troubles.
There was no one to help her. If she was THAT damaged, I wouldn’t have left her with Kayo. She needed time to heal physically AND mentally, but that never happened. She was basically abandoned with Kayo in the broken state she was in. And her mom realized this, hence her apology and regret. Now Akemi cries and as Satoru pointed out, it’s most likely self pity, because now, SHE is the bad guy when SHE was once a victim herself, but nobody is gonna care. Selfish and kinda disturbing, but again, understandable.
And it’s even sadder, when Kayo can’t even look at her mom. She has no remorse (obviously understandable) and doesn’t care for her tears.
It’s a sad situation for the family as a whole. It makes me hope that if Satoru pulls this off, that there is some closure between them in his original present time. Not that they have to come back to love each other, but there is mutual understanding and tak baby steps to rekindling their relationship. Because at the end of the day, they’re both victims of abuse by someone they love(d), and the blame is shouldered by more than one in the situation. But Kayo is blameless in this matter.
Now that’s the mark of a good show, realistic characters who you dislike or hate, but you also feel bad for because they’re not one note bad guys/gals, they’re real people who have depth and histories that turned them into the people you see now.
Satoru saved Kayo but a new victim is going to be born, is it going to be Satoru’s desk mate? (forgot her name since she bullied Kayo)
I think one of the things that makes this show so great is despite all the time travel stuff, all the characters and their interactions are completelly plausible, all the problems of Kayo’s family are portrayed in a pretty realistic way, i’m no expert but the drunk-beating father, the way the mother reacts and the trauma to a raised hand in Kayo sounds like something that could happen in real life.
My only concern is that i liked so far this show so much, that i’m worried about if the end will live up to my expectations, and japanese are not famous about making good ends…
Just please, don’t suck.
I’m also glad that, despite the sympathy that was made for Akemi, it didn’t go out of its way to absolve her of what she did to Kayo either with the way Satoru thinks on how her tears were more out of self-pity than realizing her wrongs towards Kayo and how Kayo probably sees it too.
Sadly, it’s one of those very realistic cases where the abused ends up becoming the abuser.
…….and just to get out of the bit of doom and gloom, a couple completely unrelated comments!
https://randomc.net/image/Boku%20Dake%20ga%20Inai%20Machi/Boku%20Dake%20ga%20Inai%20Machi%20-%2009%20-%20Large%2029.jpg
Loved this part. Seeing a grown man (after a bit of red herring tenseness) stuffing his face with several lollipops and candies to substitute smoking, lol.
https://randomc.net/image/Boku%20Dake%20ga%20Inai%20Machi/Boku%20Dake%20ga%20Inai%20Machi%20-%2009%20-%20Large%2032.jpg
https://randomc.net/image/Boku%20Dake%20ga%20Inai%20Machi/Boku%20Dake%20ga%20Inai%20Machi%20-%2009%20-%20Large%2033.jpg
…Satoru x Hiromi ships incoming? (Yes I know Hiromi is a boy, lol) XD
I like Kayo and all, but Hiromi is best waifu. (Since future girl is sort of ineligible at the moment, and like a decade younger than him anyway).
I couldn’t hope for a better ending for Kayo. She does deserve better, and if that means she leaves, then so be it. But, just like Satoru, I couldn’t help but to feel the show will be kinda empty without her. Still, she’s happy now, and that’s enough for me.
I checked out the manga up until where the anime stopped with this episode, and it looks like they’re only half way through the manga. So my guess is there is gonna be a second season, because there is no way in hell the murderer’s mystery will be solved in only 3 more episodes. It would be quite the show’s ruin to rush things, and given how the pacing was so satisfying so far, and the fact that the anime will adapt what would be the manga’s true ending instead of having an anime original ending, that’s highly unlikely to happen.
The mean girl will mostly likely be out of Satoru’s radar of potential victims, and so if the killer gets her, odds are Satoru will feel like he failed yet again, and this time he won’t be able to set things right with revival. You can only change so much with time travel without having some unseen consequences. If she gets killed, he will have to live with it, because even if he uses revival again to go back to save her, he’ll be risking Kayo’s safety.
As of this episode, I have no idea what direction this series will take. It will focus on the killer for sure, but how Satoru (with the help of Kenya and Hiromi) will go about solving the mystery while saving all the potential victims as well as protecting his loved ones is beyond me. Because in terms of time knowledge, this is uncharted territory, and Satoru has this one and only chance. If that isn’t more thrilling, I don’t what is. So as always, I can’t wait for the next episode.
I read somewhere else that they could skip some sub stories to make it work somehow. And I fear that’s what they’ll do. This isn’t the kind of show I expect to get a 2nd cour, unfortunately.
https://randomc.net/image/Boku%20Dake%20ga%20Inai%20Machi/Boku%20Dake%20ga%20Inai%20Machi%20-%2009%20-%2003.jpg
Badass mom is badass.
https://randomc.net/image/Boku%20Dake%20ga%20Inai%20Machi/Boku%20Dake%20ga%20Inai%20Machi%20-%2009%20-%2010.jpg
A bad guy is a victim too 🙁
https://randomc.net/image/Boku%20Dake%20ga%20Inai%20Machi/Boku%20Dake%20ga%20Inai%20Machi%20-%2009%20-%2027.jpg
“Hey, kids. You wanna free candies? Get into
the vanmy car.”I miss kayo already. It’s interesting how satoru doesn’t even suspect Gaku in he least. It’s also interesting that when satoru was tailing aya Gaku comes from that direction. I’d also like to refer back to episode Two, I think, where satoru and Kenya were taking and in that scene the car was purposely not shown. Hmmmmm
The idea that the ominously framed car glimpsed in ep2 matches Yashiro’s car occurred to me as well, but I checked, and they don’t match. I compared ep2 at 14:07 to ep9 at 07:50 and 08:18, and they don’t match: the ep2 car has shorter front overhang, no rear overhang, no (or at least different) wheel covers, a black sill below the door, and (probably) no rear door.
The car behind Sawata in ep5 at 03:18 is a closer to the ep2 car, but it still isn’t a match (visible sheet metal between the rear wheel and rear bumper.
On the manga to anime pacing:
Show Spoiler ▼
That’s exactly what I wanted to write. They can do it, but they will need to cut a lot of secondary scenes, which is actually bad :/
It really is bad, because (at least, in my opinion) all the scenes are really important for the story, particularly Show Spoiler ▼
I think that at the very least a few extra episodes are needed. Doesn’t even need to be a full two-cour, just maybe having four or five extra episodes added to the current twelve episode schedule. Either that, or we need a miracle in the form of the final three episodes being double-length ones. It would be a shame for this adaptation to end badly, it’s been wonderful so far.
Regarding your spoiler thoughts Cherrie:
Show Spoiler ▼
I am afraid with the pacing of Erased for the next three episodes. How will it settle the plot in that amount of time? Nonetheless, I like for what it is right now.
Not much episodes left. Probably not enough to cover all the source material.
It might make more sense if we are on a little different timeline than the original manga.
Read the manga. Not worried about pacing, totally believe it’s possible to wrap up in 3 eps as faithfully have they have till now.
That’s interesting. I myself am fairly worried about the pacing from now on. What is it in particular that makes you think there won’t be a problem??
I very rarely say this but this is one of the very few times I feel that the anime adaptation is superior to the manga original.
The mangaka didn’t need a full volume for the rest of the story so after an upcoming sequence of events, the story gets spread very very thin. There is a lot of “let’s talk about this yet again” and “lil reminder about this” parts and a tremendous amount of visual filler (static scenes, flashbacks, etc). This stuff may have been useful (and less tedious) for readers over a longer time frame but the anime doesn’t need it. I believe this anime team will tighten up the story nicely without losing the actual events which occur.
But don’t be surprised if we are to see some tweaks of the story.
Aw, it wasn’t the poor woman’s fault, it was the husband’s.
Man, such a cop out to sympathize with the mom. Or are we going to see the tragic pasts of the boyfriend abuser, the manager’s and the killer’s?
I don’t think it was a copout, it was to show that everyone is a victim, and that even the most vile person didn’t start out like that. The mother is important to flesh out, because that was the person most responsible for the abuse to Kayo.
It would be a copout, and an exploitative one, just to let us continue hating the mother without a second thought.
Nah. Like Bamboo Blade Cat said, it was to give her actions more of an explanation and in effect also give the character more depth. She was this woman who beat her own child just because she could, but here we learn the reasons why. It was pretty realistic. If someone wanted to, I’m sure the viewer could choose to feel sympathy towards her, as she was once a victim, but the show wasn’t FORCING us to feel for her. If you noticed, Satoru and Kayo(she even turned her head) didn’t feel any sympathy for her; only the grandmother did, understandably so.
https://randomc.net/image/Boku%20Dake%20ga%20Inai%20Machi/Boku%20Dake%20ga%20Inai%20Machi%20-%2009%20-%20Large%2008.jpg
Anybody else laughed at this scene? Or is it just me? 😀
https://randomc.net/image/Boku%20Dake%20ga%20Inai%20Machi/Boku%20Dake%20ga%20Inai%20Machi%20-%2009%20-%20Large%2010.jpg
Seeing Akemi getting what she has been doing to Kayo is quite satisfying. Long overdo. However, it was her abuse that lead to her…well abuse of Kayo. I don’t complete sympathize for her. Her mother made the right choice by forcing her to divorce him. All that anger she had, she could have put up a fight with the husband, but instead took it with poor Kayo, which also protected her during her beating. Further adding my liking of Kayo.
https://randomc.net/image/Boku%20Dake%20ga%20Inai%20Machi/Boku%20Dake%20ga%20Inai%20Machi%20-%2009%20-%20Large%2011.jpg
Bam! One Man Punch: Serious series…Serious Punch! (Sorry, I couldn’t help myself)
https://randomc.net/image/Boku%20Dake%20ga%20Inai%20Machi/Boku%20Dake%20ga%20Inai%20Machi%20-%2009%20-%20Large%2027.jpg
By the way Cherrie, that is a plastic bag that was used to keep the candies, not a handkerchief.
https://randomc.net/image/Boku%20Dake%20ga%20Inai%20Machi/Boku%20Dake%20ga%20Inai%20Machi%20-%2009%20-%20Large%2015.jpg
I think Satoru just got himself a girlfriend in the future when he get back.
https://randomc.net/image/Boku%20Dake%20ga%20Inai%20Machi/Boku%20Dake%20ga%20Inai%20Machi%20-%2009%20-%20Large%2033.jpg
And maybe a boyfriend…whether he like it or not.
The show is throwing a huge Red Herring, in the form of the fact that the main point is to find out who the killer is, that is a red herring for
Show Spoiler ▼
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Ok, well: Show Spoiler ▼