Category: Boku dake ga Inai Machi

When it comes to matters of time travel, it’s always a wonder to consider just what rules it follows. Time travel, much like alternate realities is one of the biggest can of worms to open when writing a story. Mainly because it demands the viewer keeps in mind a series of characters,settings and event which may not even take place in order in a timeline. The level of complexity jumps as you attempt to define time travel so in many ways it can be best to never try to explain it. Plenty of stories have used time travel and washed over the rules of it with ease. Groundhog day and Dr who both tend to use Time travel as a plot device rather than a focus and Boku dake ga Inai Machi looks to do the same. Time travel is not the focus of this story. The focus is the mystery regarding Satoru’s childhood. But this episode brings up an interesting dilemma, namely the level influence Satoru has over the past. As Satoru unintentionally repeats the past by letting someone else win the ice skating race it brings up the potential possibly that we are operating under Twelve Monkeys rules. Namely that you can attempt to change the past but in turn cause things to turn out exactly the same. In other words no matter how Satoru effects the past, it will not affect the outcome. A sad thought as he’s currently making a fairly miserable girl in a bad situation quite happy and it could be possible that she’s doomed to be killed.

This episode was a fairly emotional one with a fairly dark reveal of the level of abuse Kayo receives from her mother. I would like to call her mother’s character unrealistic and a exaggeration…I would, but frankly it’s likely there are these types of people in the world. I generally dislike characters who seem one dimensionally evil for the sake of tragedy but in this case I can’t deny her being effective. The difference between this and the likes of tragic family situation portrayed in Divine Gate is that Kayo mother is fairly believable. Kayo isn’t in the best situation and this episode does get you on her side. When she’s accused of stealing lunch money by a classmate, I am certain all of us would have reacted just like Satoru. Seeing him shout was still quite satisfying. But it wasn’t just sad feelings this episode as Satoru takes her to see a “Christmas tree” and well to see her genuinely smile truly can warm even the coldest of hearts. That scene was directed marvellously and if this anime can keep this up then it truly could become something special. So on the matter of the murderer, all signs so far point to Satoru’s teacher. The teacher is certainly suspicious and the end scene highlights this though I am hoping he’s a red herring as he’s a bit too obvious. It’s the look in his eyes that really tip me off, those eyes certainly hold something sinister. He holds a little too much interest in helping Satoru and I wonder why he waited so long before interfering with that girl’s attempt to frame Kayo. However what really interests me is his connection to Satoru’s friend, Kenya. Whose also rather on the strange side of being unusually helpful to Satoru. Admittedly I am just shooting blind here as the series has not quite given us a large range of suspects and I hope that it doesn’t make the same mistake as Subete and make the villain too obvious for the start.

While this adaption isn’t quite staying true to the source, it’s still managing to present a compelling tale. In that regard I am glad as I would like to see this tale be given the treatment it deserves. Presentation remains great and I rather like how events in the past are show in a widescreen format with black bars on the top and bottom. It gives a feeling like Satoru is likely experiencing, that we are seeing these events but we aren’t quite there. We are like the opening shows, a person in a cinema, a observer. Though considering that Satoru has control over his previous self it might be more accurate to consider him a person with a game controller. But there are points when he and his younger self sync together as shown by certain lines which his older and younger voice actors say simultaneously. This episode mainly dealt with Satoru getting closer to a troubled girl with a abusive mother as she seems to be the next victim to be targeted by the serial killer who will eventually kill his mother. Things are moving slow for now but I like the small details such as Satoru attempting to recall the details of the past. What’s more is that one of Satoru’s clever friends seems to know something’s up and looks to be trying to off offhandedly help Satoru in his goal. The big question to consider is that someone in this flashback is the killer Satoru is searching for so who can it be. Our killer in the future has red eyes, glasses and is male so if someone in the past is responsible it would likely be an adult.

If there was something that I truly have a problem with, it would be the soundtrack. It doesn’t take long to notice that our music composer here is Yuki Kajura and my issues with her remain. If you haven’t read anything I wrote about her before then let me give you the cliffs notes. I believe Yuki is a very talented music composer that unfortunately chains herself by sticking to one style and one style alone. When putting her on a anime soundtrack the question becomes whether the anime can adapt to Yuki’s style as opposed to Yuki adapting to the style best for the anime. That’s just not a good way to go about making soundtracks. There are people who claim all of Yuki’s music sounds the same and there is some small weight to that claim. I wouldn’t blame anyone for getting huge reminders of Fate/Zero’s soundtrack with the final minutes of the episode. In fact I even suspect that Yuki has lifted melody lines from that soundtrack for this, and this wouldn’t be the first time she’s done that. At the moment I feel she’s doing an adequate job but if she starts shoving dramatic choirs into this then I don’t think the glove will fit. Regardless I hope they continue to make this work as well as it’s going and hopefully don’t run into pacing issues.