Boku Dake ga Inai Machi / ERASED Episode 12 (Finale) – Hoping to Believe, Believe in Hope.

This show hasn’t always been even. The episodes in the present time in particular were somewhat lacking, in tension when the tension was paramount, and in small and comfortable moments when the show veered more in that direction (in the second half), which made sense, since Kayo was stuck in the past. Thankfully, last episode was pretty small and comfortable and good, and this episode? This episode was great. It didn’t give me the same amount of smiles and tears as episode 8 did (Kayo’s highlight episode, and being brought into the Fujinoma household), but it was at least that level of great. Can’t think of a better episode of the show, and it’s always nice to end on a very positive note, isn’t it?

My write-ups for BokuMachi have always focused on the themes of the show, and this episode, as befits a finale, not made use of them all, but also tied them all neatly together, so let’s look at some of them.

Boku Dake ga Inai Machi / ERASED Episode 6 – Trust Revolution

This week’s episode was very much a continuation of last week’s episode, in terms of themes. You can read some thematic discussion I did on last week’s episode here. But if we boil it all down, it’s all about trust.

Ever since the first episode, I pointed out how part of what stopped Satoru from being able to grow up, to advance with his life, was the wound opened in him when his friend Jun was found guilty for the series of murders, but it’s not the murders themselves, or even how the adults tried to wrap up the children under the cover of childhood and ignorance that kept him so imprisoned, but that authority figures would not believe him, both the institution as symbolized by the police, and the personal hurt, where his own mother did not believe him.

The case of Airi’s parents breaking up over stolen chocolate was a tad ridiculous, there’s no real doubt about it, but what it was all about was how lonely and betrayed her father felt when his own wife wouldn’t believe him. The stakes might have been tiny, but the pain over someone not believing you is real. And so he ran away, or was driven out, by his friends, and by his family, because if they don’t trust you, are they really your friends, are they really your family?