Erased - The Live Adaptation of Popular Manga Series

As the second movie on my movie marathon day last Saturday, we chose to see this Japanese movie which only played in Cinemaxx (also CGV Blitz). The movie started at 6.45 PM which gave us only like 1/2 hour after the first movie. And since we were very hungry, we were almost too late to see the beginning of the movie as we had some dinner first. Luckily my wife and I were able to eat food very fast. LOL. Btw, the premise of the story about someone who could go back in time to change the future and save people seemed interesting, which made us decided to see this one. The movie itself was an adaptation of the popular manga series which unfortunately I have not read and could not tell whether the movie would be following the exact stories. But anyway, let's get on to the story, shall we?

Brief Story Line

The movie started in the year 2006 where Satoru (Tatsuya Fujiwara - Death Note, Rurouni Kenshin etc) was working as Pizza delivery guy in Oasi Pizza. He was also a part time Manga writer but not a real successful one. There was a girl working in the Pizza resturant who seemed to take interest on Satoru, named Airi Katagiri (Kasumi Arimura - Strobe Edge, Flying Colors etc). It was explained through the earlier scenes that Satoru was able to return back time a few minutes to stop something bad from happening. The time would repeat itself again and again until he was able to find out what he was supposed to do. He called this action as "revival/rerun". After he managed to save the day, Airi who saw the incident that took place was quite amazed and a little bit curious of how Satoru was able to do it.

Meanwhile, Satoru's mother Sachiko (Yuriko Ishida - the voice of San in Princess Mononoke) came to visit Satoru and stayed for a while to accompany Satoru. Sachiko was a single mother who used to work as reporter in newspaper. One day when both of them went shopping, there seemed to be another incident starting to happen. However, before Satoru was able to save the day, the repeated time already stopped. He was actually confused of how this would happen but he could not find out what.

Finally there was a huge incident that Satoru could not able to save as there was no "revival" before it happened and he was feeling very upset and sad. He did however went back through time but only after that incident happened. He went so far back to 1988 when he was still in elementary school (the younger Satoru was played nicely by Tsubasa Nakagawa). He finally realized that he was supposed to stop an old incident that happened in the past to avoid the big incident from happening in 2006.

During his return to his childhood period, he met again with his old school friends, particularly Kenya and also met with his favorite teacher Mr. Yashiro. Young Satoru who now had the mind of adult Satoru believed that he should save Kayo (played by young Rio Suzuki whom my wife seem to like very much) as she was being brutally abused by her mother and possibly her step father.

So could Satoru saved the incidents from happening in 1988 to make sure he changed the future in 2006? What would happen to the adult Satoru in 2006 and also his relationship with Airi? You would be able to find out all of them after you complete watching this interesting mysterious thriller.

End of Brief Story Line

Well this movie was different than the usual mystery thriller movie. It had the element of little bit time travel and mystery which would make you guessing. Some of you would probably be able to guess the real villain but I actually quite enjoy the story till the revealing of the bad person. However, I did not enjoy the ending scene and after reading a bit about this manga information in the internet, I think it did not have the same ending. Probably the manga ending is more satisfying for me.

Meanwhile the movie itself had some fun moments particularly involving Satoru and Airi's "relationship". It also was very interesting to see the young Satoru's relationship with Kayo. There were also some touching moments involving Satoru and his mother and Kayo's sad background. In the end, this movie would put the emphasis of Satoru's idealism to be a hero and save the day by changing the history. The future also kept on changing every time there was some changes done by Satoru and we were quite well informed on the way the story unfolded. Somehow the director was able to make the time travel not over complicated and easily understood.

Overall I felt quite entertained watching this movie as it delivered something different than the usual time travel and mystery drama. I also enjoyed the nice characterization by the young actors and actress portraying the kids in 1988. So if you are looking for a different type of entertainment, then I think you would enjoy this movie as both my wife and I did. You can probably share your views to me as well on the ending and we can see if my opinion is the same as yours. But if you feel that this type of movie is too weird or if you do not enjoy watching Japanese movie (especially adapted from manga series), then probably this one is not for you.

Happy watching!

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Note:

As I highlighted above, this movie was adapted from a popular manga series having the title Boku Dake ga Inai Machi (translated as: The Town Without Me) which was written and illustrated by Kei Sanbe. For those who love manga, I think this would be quite a familiar movie as it was said to be one of the world's best selling. It was also made into 12 episodes anime series which was shown in Japan, US, even Southeast Asia where it's available via live streaming. Perhaps I need to start seeing that just to compare with this 2 hours live adaptation movie.