僕だけがいない街 S1

A rollercoaster of emotions

Content Warning: Child abuse, Domestic Violence

Synopsis

Fujinuma Satoru is wrongly accused of killing her mother and is sent 18 years back, right before a string of possibly related child abductions and murders took place in his local Hokkaidō town. This may be his chance to change the course of fate and save the victims from this mysterious perpetrator.

Impressions

I picked up this anime without giving it much thought and wow was I surprised. It really kept me on the edge of my seat all throughout. The artwork and sound composition provided a really immersive experience that tugged my emotions at all the right moments. So many emotions. I laughed, I cried and everything in between.

The characters were all also rather engaging, without any stupid or annoying characters in the cast. I felt so invested in them that I worried/wondered what's going to happen to everyone and I even managed to remember the names of everyone — extremely rare occurrence for me, or perhaps I'm just getting better at remembering Japanese names, I don't know...

Naturally, I think, what left the biggest impression on me was the story of Hinazuki's abuse and how hard young Satoru tried to save her, again and again. Honestly, it is terrifying to think that a mother could possibly beat and waterboard her own 10 year old daughter. It sends me shivers down my spine.

Getting the explanation of the title and seeing the happy ending after going through tragedy after tragedy in all the various timelines was very satisfying.

I'll end this section on a “word of advice”: do not give too much thought into the whole time-traveling aspect. If you're looking for a detailed exploration of the theme and its possible paradoxes, look elsewhere. Here, it is just a plot device to replay past events a little differently, so if you start to question it too much, it will ruin your enjoyment.

Language

The dialogue is mostly between 小学生 and family members in 北海道 so expect lots of 北海道弁. (my impromptu 北海道弁講座 on Twitch finally paid off!) Even if you don't know a thing about 北海道弁, it is quite easy to get a hold of. It doesn't stray as far away from 標準語 as 関西弁 does, so no need to fret!

Nonetheless, due to the dialectal speech, I cannot recommend this to beginners but if we make abstraction of that, the difficulty level is not very high, nor very low. I could get by without any subtitles (whereas I'd feel totally lost if I had no Japanese subtitles on shows like 進撃の巨人 or 呪術廻戦 to give a frame of reference). Although, there were still many parts that I had to replay many times before I finally understood what they meant.

それじゃ、したっけ！