Anime by and large has been lacking ambition
lately. Possibly it’s just that I’ve been watching less of it, but there are
relatively few titles that people bring up as challenging or sophisticated
these days, in a world of fanservice and idol anime. But there’s still noitaminA,
the programming slot that usually at least attempts to do something a cut above
the average.
And so it was with Boku Dake ga Inai Machi, which takes a more serious seinen tone with its murder-mystery storyline
and brings together themes and modes of a variety of recent hits. Directed by
Itou Tomohiko, buoyed up by his successes with Sword Art Online but having rather more in common with his breakthrough
work with Hosoda Mamoru – in particular TheGirl Who Leapt Through Time, this series was also well-marketed. My own
interest was piqued by a large and attractive poster for the show in Shinjuku
station. It looked like a cute coming-of-age story and over this Christmas break,
I binge-watched the 12 episodes very quickly.
To be honest, it’s not what I hoped it would
be. It aims for the cleverness and paranoia of Monster with the mind games of Death Note and the cute, smart kids in peril of Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 and some of the glib, vaguely Murakami-esque
detached observations of Bakemonogatari.
While there are some superbly-done parts of Boku
Dake ga Inai Machi, ultimately I don’t think it hangs together nearly well
enough, nor are all the extraneous parts necessary.
In a convoluted time-travelling plot, our
hero Fujinuma Satoru has a magical power. When something terrible is going to
happen, he inadvertently goes back in time a few minutes so that he can put it
right, saving lives and avoiding disasters. This is presented in a very direct
echo of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
using film effects. When a far more dramatic crime erupts, he is sent back much
further, to his elementary school – where the events that led to the recent
crime were set in motion. This is an interesting, if not particularly original,
set-up – Satoru is a 29-year-old in a 10-year-old’s body and must investigate a
set of child abductions to save himself and his loved ones in the future.
However, this whole section didn’t ring true
at all. Satoru doesn’t have much personality beyond an endearing tendency to
speak his thoughts out loud and then get embarrassed, and there’s no
exploration whatsoever of the strangeness and hilarity that must come from a
29-year-old, with the mind of a 29-year-old, going back into his 10/11-year-old
body. Indeed, the kids around him, with only a couple of exceptions, all speak in
the weirdest artificial diction, almost all of them preternaturally smart and basically
miniature adults.
The pacing of the series is all off-kilter
because the set-up is saving the first child who will be abducted. This not
only rings false when the danger to one of Satoru’s closest friends who will be
the second victim is barely even raised, but creates an awkward set of
overlapping arcs where even if the problem is solved we then lose the sense of
triumph and get an uncomfortable jolt of then moving to the next stage of the
plan because the murderer hasn’t been dealt with. The romantic undertones are
half-baked because the script calls for a cute budding love story but also occasional
reminders that this is a 29-year-old mind starting a romance with a 10-year-old
girl. And ultimately there’s only so much satisfaction that can be derived from
a crime detective story where ‘How can you predict what’s going to happen?’ can
only be answered with ‘Because of my magical time-travelling powers.’ The idea
of eyes flashing red with fury or malevolence doesn’t work either, and there’s
no attempt at sophistication when giving the bad guy motives.
There are things I certainly much admired
here. The show does an amazing job of examining mother-child relationships,
with some of the warmest moments are simple family affairs. There’s at least an
original, if unlikely, ending arc to finish things off and further complicate
the timeline. I enjoyed the dynamics of Satoru’s gang of schoolmates and wanted
to see them developed more. And I did enjoy how the series was drawn and
animated, which was very reminiscent of A1’s big-screen debut, Welcome to the Space Show. But I have to
say, I hoped for much more, and feel that the same things have been done much
better elsewhere.
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