A brief comment on Erased

I just finished watching Erased, the anime, which has been shilled to me by my friend since last year. Now that I've gotten around it, I guess I'm just going to lay out here some of my initial thoughts after finishing the series.

In general, it is a good anime. It's the standard 24-minute, 12 episode series that has been going on the anime land since 2014, I think. And despite that stupidly short run the anime managed to pack a lot of set-up without ruining the pacing of the events. It didn't feel fast nor did it feel slow. I know it's minor detail but it seems that it is rare to find an anime series that does it right. I haven't been watching any anime series recently but on the ones that I have watched years ago, oftentimes it's either the anime somehow lags behind or that events go so fast that it's hard to get attached to the events and the characters. Erased did it well, I'm not saying they did it perfectly but they did it well.

Along those lines, I think the story is engaging and interesting. It reminded me of some of the series that I've grown fond of and I think the main reason I got interested on it was because it touched on themes that I've already been interested before. In the fear of spoiling you, I'm not going to talk anything about it here aside from one thing: if you're a fan of stories that fuck with time, then you'll like it.

I'm not particularly picky about art style, but it being done by A1-Pictures shows and it's some of the most stunning pieces of art that I've seen done. That is depsite the series being set with snow in the environment on I'd say atleast 80% of the time they've made vistas interesting without it being distracting.

The only gripe that I had with the series is with how it ended, not entirely everything of it, but certian aspects of it. I found it quite disappointing that the main lead somehow took a certain role that I felt shouldn't have been. But thinking about it right now, I guess with how the things were set-up initially in the series, that everything must run into itself back. At the moment, that's the only reasonable reason why I think the series ended with the way it is, but despite that blatant rationalization on my part I still found the ending a bit disappointing.

All in all, I think Erased is an above average series that really got my attention. The beautiful story, the interesting characters and the stunning art held everything tightly together and made for an anime series that in the end made me think about the things that I did, I do and why I do. Not to mention, the stupidly catchy opening song. I reckon I could listen to it in a loop and not be bored of it.