I'm Talking About You, Satoru.
After I first watched ERASED, back in 2016, I said I wasn't sure I'd ever watch it again. I really enjoyed it, but it was so intense I wasn't sure I'd be able to handle a rewatch.
I'm glad I came back to it. It is very intense, but it's also very good. And it's only twelve episodes, so it kicks you in the gut with DRAMA and EMOTIONS and then politely leaves to let you patch yourself up, rather than continually kicking you in the gut.
If I had to recommend an anime series to someone who'd never seen one before, I think ERASED would probably be the one I'd choose, with the caveat that it deals heavily with child abuse.
I got slightly emotional when Hinazuki started crying over her breakfast, because she wasn't used to meals that had any sort of love put into them.
It's been about three years since I first saw this anime, but there were moments that stayed so vividly in my mind. Getting Hinazuki safely through the day she originally died, and then realising she's not safe after all. That FUCKING CAR SCENE in episode ten, and how badly it freaked me out when Satoru wasn't in the opening sequence for the next episode.
On the rewatch, my breathing changed during that car ride, knowing what was coming next, when I noticed that Yashiro was wearing gloves. That entire episode really, really scares me.
I actually had a fic idea, the first time I watched this anime. Things played out a little too perfectly on the roof in the final episode; had Satoru been through this sequence multiple times, on account of Revival? But a time-loop fic in which Satoru slowly realises this serial child abductor has been obsessed with him since he was eleven (and then starts trying to goad him into admitting it so he can corner him - 'Oh, you were never tempted? You had a kid right there in your car, you were getting awfully close - oh, but I forgot, you're only interested in young girls, nothing weird-') might be a bit fucked up even for me.
I think ERASED has my favourite opening sequence of all time. Not just because of the part where the protagonist is clutching his head and writhing in emotional agony under a bridge, although that is very good.
I've been thinking fondly recently about Higurashi and how much I love watching Keiichi slowly losing his mind with terror. So I ordered the two-volume manga of the first arc (Onikakushi, called the Abducted by Demons arc in the manga).
I think this is the first time I've read a manga that's an adaptation, so I didn't entirely know what to expect. Fullmetal Alchemist, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Death Note, DN Angel, Full Moon o Sagashite, they were all manga to begin with. But Higurashi started out as a visual novel. Would the manga adaptation be good? Would it feel too compressed?
My reservations turned out to be unfounded. I enjoyed the Higurashi manga a lot! Even if it suffers slightly from going TITS TITS TITS too much before getting down to the business of psychologically pulling its characters apart. (The manga changes the early scene where Mion and Keiichi are playing 'hey, Keiichi, show me your dick' chicken to be about Mion's breasts instead! Outrageous.)
When the manga does start ripping Keiichi to shreds, it does it very effectively, although of course I can't say how it would have impacted me if I'd read the manga before the visual novel. In some ways the visual novel portrays the horror more effectively by having less to work with visually and more to work with in terms of sound, and by having more time to really dig into Keiichi's mind, but it was still really cool to see the characters having more expressions. And to see Keiichi's face!
(Keiichi's increasingly petrified, sleep-deprived, conflicted face. These poor kids.)
Reading the manga when I've played up to Tsumihoroboshi, and therefore have slightly more of an idea of what's going on, absolutely ripped me apart. Everything is agonising!
I got slightly tearful at Keiichi regaining awareness to the gutwrenching realisation that he killed his friends with his own hands, and that he still can't help loving them even if they're part of a conspiracy to murder him.
I posted this panel in the comments to my last entry, but I'm also going to reproduce it here so I can gaze fondly upon it at my leisure:
(I sent this picture to th_esaurus, and she responded with 'riona you keep finding these things so specific to your needs. your teenage murder agony needs.')
A detail the manga kept that made me take notice: Keiichi fakes a cold to get out of school, and his mother sends him to the doctor (whom we'll later get to know as Dr Irie), who gives him some medicine and a shot. This medication can't be solely responsible for Keiichi's paranoid breakdown, because it's already started by this point - we've already had the 'well, Keiichi-kun, aren't you keeping things from us?' and 'holy fuck, was Rena silently listening in on my phone conversation for an hour?' scenes, and he's pretending to be ill because he's scared of seeing Rena - but it's such a seemingly unnecessary detail that its inclusion in the manga makes me wonder whether there's more to it.
This has prodded me into beginning a replay of Higurashi. I'm doing some sprite editing this time around, though, because a few of the Steam sprites bother me; I wasn't a fan of Rena's embarrassed/anxious expression, for example, so I've changed it from this to this. I was going 'I wish I could play a version with a few of the sprites altered' and then 'wait, I have access to the game files! I have the power to do this!'
I'm glad I came back to it. It is very intense, but it's also very good. And it's only twelve episodes, so it kicks you in the gut with DRAMA and EMOTIONS and then politely leaves to let you patch yourself up, rather than continually kicking you in the gut.
If I had to recommend an anime series to someone who'd never seen one before, I think ERASED would probably be the one I'd choose, with the caveat that it deals heavily with child abuse.
I got slightly emotional when Hinazuki started crying over her breakfast, because she wasn't used to meals that had any sort of love put into them.
It's been about three years since I first saw this anime, but there were moments that stayed so vividly in my mind. Getting Hinazuki safely through the day she originally died, and then realising she's not safe after all. That FUCKING CAR SCENE in episode ten, and how badly it freaked me out when Satoru wasn't in the opening sequence for the next episode.
On the rewatch, my breathing changed during that car ride, knowing what was coming next, when I noticed that Yashiro was wearing gloves. That entire episode really, really scares me.
I actually had a fic idea, the first time I watched this anime. Things played out a little too perfectly on the roof in the final episode; had Satoru been through this sequence multiple times, on account of Revival? But a time-loop fic in which Satoru slowly realises this serial child abductor has been obsessed with him since he was eleven (and then starts trying to goad him into admitting it so he can corner him - 'Oh, you were never tempted? You had a kid right there in your car, you were getting awfully close - oh, but I forgot, you're only interested in young girls, nothing weird-') might be a bit fucked up even for me.
I think ERASED has my favourite opening sequence of all time. Not just because of the part where the protagonist is clutching his head and writhing in emotional agony under a bridge, although that is very good.
I've been thinking fondly recently about Higurashi and how much I love watching Keiichi slowly losing his mind with terror. So I ordered the two-volume manga of the first arc (Onikakushi, called the Abducted by Demons arc in the manga).
I think this is the first time I've read a manga that's an adaptation, so I didn't entirely know what to expect. Fullmetal Alchemist, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Death Note, DN Angel, Full Moon o Sagashite, they were all manga to begin with. But Higurashi started out as a visual novel. Would the manga adaptation be good? Would it feel too compressed?
My reservations turned out to be unfounded. I enjoyed the Higurashi manga a lot! Even if it suffers slightly from going TITS TITS TITS too much before getting down to the business of psychologically pulling its characters apart. (The manga changes the early scene where Mion and Keiichi are playing 'hey, Keiichi, show me your dick' chicken to be about Mion's breasts instead! Outrageous.)
When the manga does start ripping Keiichi to shreds, it does it very effectively, although of course I can't say how it would have impacted me if I'd read the manga before the visual novel. In some ways the visual novel portrays the horror more effectively by having less to work with visually and more to work with in terms of sound, and by having more time to really dig into Keiichi's mind, but it was still really cool to see the characters having more expressions. And to see Keiichi's face!
(Keiichi's increasingly petrified, sleep-deprived, conflicted face. These poor kids.)
Reading the manga when I've played up to Tsumihoroboshi, and therefore have slightly more of an idea of what's going on, absolutely ripped me apart. Everything is agonising!
I got slightly tearful at Keiichi regaining awareness to the gutwrenching realisation that he killed his friends with his own hands, and that he still can't help loving them even if they're part of a conspiracy to murder him.
I posted this panel in the comments to my last entry, but I'm also going to reproduce it here so I can gaze fondly upon it at my leisure:
(I sent this picture to th_esaurus, and she responded with 'riona you keep finding these things so specific to your needs. your teenage murder agony needs.')
A detail the manga kept that made me take notice: Keiichi fakes a cold to get out of school, and his mother sends him to the doctor (whom we'll later get to know as Dr Irie), who gives him some medicine and a shot. This medication can't be solely responsible for Keiichi's paranoid breakdown, because it's already started by this point - we've already had the 'well, Keiichi-kun, aren't you keeping things from us?' and 'holy fuck, was Rena silently listening in on my phone conversation for an hour?' scenes, and he's pretending to be ill because he's scared of seeing Rena - but it's such a seemingly unnecessary detail that its inclusion in the manga makes me wonder whether there's more to it.
This has prodded me into beginning a replay of Higurashi. I'm doing some sprite editing this time around, though, because a few of the Steam sprites bother me; I wasn't a fan of Rena's embarrassed/anxious expression, for example, so I've changed it from this to this. I was going 'I wish I could play a version with a few of the sprites altered' and then 'wait, I have access to the game files! I have the power to do this!'
