Erased, Live Action Movie

Spoilers: anime + live action

I watched the anime "Erased" a couple of months ago, and I got hold of the live action movie last night. I found it while looking up the actress Arimura Kasumi, because she starred in one of my fav movies. Anyway I recognized the actor who plays the main character as well- I forgot his name, but he played Light in the Death Note live action movie. So I had a lot of reasons to watch the live action for Erased, and I did that last night.

The movie was mostly okay, following the script religiously. The had a lot of child actors because most of the story happens with the main char and his primary school buddies- I thought they acted incredibly well for their age. It was a shame that a lot of the story had to be cut out- I heard that the anime was already abridged, and the movie was cut shorter from that. Towards the end of the movie I started wondering how it would resolve, and the ending was pretty much wtf.

So in the anime, the main character, Satoru, goes back in time to save his friends from a series of child-abduction/murder cases. Turns out his teacher was the culprit, and Satoru only finds out when it's too late, and his teacher traps him in a car and he goes into a frozen lake. Satoru gets saved, but goes into a coma, wakes up like, a decade? later. His teacher's still around, so Satoru traps him and his teacher gets convicted. Happy end.

In the live action... Satoru learns that his teacher is the murderer BEFORE he gets trapped. Like, he could've gone the safe route, enlisted the help of the adults (because he was in his childhood body at the time, being 11 yo or something), or just backed the fuck out. Instead, he GOES WITH HIS TEACHER into his car, even though he's an 11yo, and decides to confront him in the car. That was a total wtf moment for me. His teacher promptly throws him off a bridge in the middle of winter. I don't wanna sound like an arse, but Satoru had it coming. That was fucking retarded.

Then the scene skips to Satoru waking up in a hospital, but he wasn't waking from a coma like in the anime. He wakes up after a traffic accident, and his identity in the timeline is apparently a manga artist. That means the timeline is non-linear, which breaks all the premises the show has been working on. Like, wtf, he got thrown off a bridge? Who saved him? And if he woke up after, why didn't he report his psycho-murder teacher? He just lived as a manga artist? Then got his "memories" back after getting knocked by a truck? In the anime, his psycho murder teacher only left him alone because he was in a coma, and the teacher had this weird thing going on of "only you understood me and saw through my plans". He also tried to kill Satoru once he woke from the coma- which made a lot of sense.

Anyway, major plot holes.

So it deviated from the anime. Oh well. I thought it was weird, but it's an adaptation, so w/e, right? They show some scenes from the ending of the anime, and I was a bit panicked thinking, "wait what? This is where the anime ended. Is the movie going to end here? They hadn't resolved anything with the teacher yet??". Then uh, the plot goes out the window, He decides to confront his psycho-murder teacher ALONE, AGAIN, and I was like, "dude wtf is wrong with you". He'd already gone to his lawyer friend and his lawyer friend was running in with police reinforcement, so why doesn't he just stand back and let the cops do their thing? Instead he like, gets into a knife fight??? with the teacher, and gets sliced in the neck while trying to stop his teacher from killing himself.

But why would you go in a knife fight when the psycho murder is trying to kill himself. It's not like you have your fingerprints on that knife. It'll look like a clear suicide, and no one's going to bother arguing otherwise. Worst comes to worst, you have a lawyer friend. Idk why he thought going into a fight would be a good idea.

Anyway my anatomy isn't real good, but that knife wound didn't look like it penetrated deep. The external juglar vein, maybe, but it'd be okay if he put pressure on the wound, and called an ambulance. But they have this classic movie-drama moment, where Satoru puts a hand on his neck (yay pressure?) but then delivers some shitty speech (I can't even remember what he said), and after he finishes talking THEN his lawyer friend and the cops rush over. They got there before the speech started. They couldn't have run over sooner? I won't question why Satoru decided to give a speech with blood gushing out of his neck, though--- he's done so many questionable things, it's probably more in character for him to act this way, at this point.

Then we cut forward to another scene, "2016". Yay for the future. Except it shows everyone at tombstone, and uh... it's Satoru's grave.

Wait what. He died? He died from what looked like a shitty superficial neck laceration? Woah okay, assuming it was deep and his carotid artery got hit--- well, NOW I have to question how he gave his fucking speech after he got knifed in the neck. But what the fuck, they just killed the main character for no fucking reason! We had a happy ending, but they had to kill him? For what? Most fucking, pointless death, ever. It wasn't even heroic, the way he died. He wasn't saving any one, he just decides to run up to the psycho murderer and get into a brawl. And dies.

???????

I know the Japanese title translates to "The town where only I am not here", and in the anime this referred to how he went into a coma for near a decade, but he saved his friends by doing so. So it's like, he wasn't around the town, but his friends grew up happily. But in the live action, he was already in a future timeline, none of his friends were in danger, and he just dies to fit the title??? Like, everyone else had reached their "happy ending" status, and he just... dies AFTER that?

Anyway the live action was a huge fucking disappointment. The end. Watch the anime.