After waking up from a 15 year coma, Satoru is now a young man coping with a world that is very different from his childhood in the 1980s.
Or at least, that’s what should be happening.
Instead, Satoru realizes that he has an eloquence and a vocabulary far beyond his fifth-grade education, and the technology of the 21st century feels as intuitive to use as if he had grown up along it all along. So, when an unknown passer-by teenage girl saves Satoru and another patient from a whole slew of trouble there’s no way he could have known who that was but he does — that’s Airi and she’s from the first time he lived through his life. Suddenly Satoru remembers everything, from how he’s lived through 2003 two times and the fifth grade three times to how he has the unexplained and uncontrollable ability “revival” which forces him back in time to save the life of a child. And, he remembers the adult who locked him in a sinking car to kill him in 1988 and Satoru is sure that they will be facing off again.
For me, the ending to the Erased anime adaptation was a weak spot in an otherwise strong show. It was clear that the story was being rushed and that the series would’ve benefited from a few more episodes (but not enough for another entire season) and the villain felt really cartoony next to all of the much more fleshed out main cast. I had wondered how different this anime ending was compared to the original manga and the answer is quite different. The eventual ending place is the same but nearly everything that happens after Satoru wakes up from his coma towards the end of the third omnibus is completely different.
Beginning with Airi’s reappearance (a great moment that I don’t understand why the anime changed to Satoru’s old teacher Gaku Yashiro instead) Satoru goes through the process of remembering his “revival” ability and who put him in this coma in the first place. We don’t know what the fate was for Satoru’s living classmates in his original timeline but, in this timeline at least, his friend Kenya is now working as a private detective alongside the detective who helped Satoru out in the original timeline (aka, his mother’s old coworker). The two of them had suspected Yashiro for years as the serial killer that most people didn’t even realize was out there. While Hinazuki and their other friends weren’t murdered thanks to Satoru’s interventions, Yashiro did continue to murder and frame others during Satoru’s coma, even getting married which changed his last name. This is why Satoru didn’t recognize the name of the local city councilman, Manabu Nishizono, who Airi thought was suspicious and possibly related to the murder of Satoru’s mother, way back in the early part of Erased.
Satoru, Kenya, and everyone else involved in the case suspects that Yashio will strike again and this time he will probably try to either frame Satoru or kill him outright to finish off what a freezing river in Hokkaido couldn’t do. They work out very quickly that his next victim is an elementary school girl who Satoru has gotten to know during his stay in the hospital. This leads to Kumi and Satoru creating a rather elaborate scheme to expose Yashio/Nishizono. I found that it was a very satisfying ending and I felt like Satoru got some emotional catharsis that wasn’t present in the anime’s speedier and less involved version.
Erased has been a delight to read and the only reason why I can think of for people to try the anime over the manga is that the art still remains a bit clunky at the end. I do think that it’s a little strange that Kei Sanbe had been drawing manga for 12 years by the start of Erased and while the art does improve over the series, it’s still just awkward a lot of the time, a lot more than I would expect someone who had been working on a professionally published series. I am curious if the art will be much, if any, different in new title just licensed by Yen Press at Anime Expo, Yume de Mita Ano Ko no Tame ni (no official English title yet) which is currently on-going. But I do not expect the “interquel” volume of Erased coming out this fall to appear any different.
Even with that quibble, I would recommend Erased and specifically the original manga to all fans of murder mysteries. While most of the victims are children I never felt like the story crossed a line involving grotesque descriptions or images of their deaths (Sanbe wisely relies on the event of their deaths itself to provide the emotional punch), although some people who are especially sensitive to this topic might need to look elsewhere for a satisfying murder mystery. Considering that this was the series that introduced many English-speaking fans to Kei Sanbe, as I read the final pages and saw Satoru “returning” to his life as a manga-ka, this time to greater acclaim, I wondered how much of himself Sanbe put into Satoru. Whatever the answer may be there, I am very much interested in reading Sanbe’s next, darker sounding work and hopefully Yen Press will be releasing it before too long!