In Erased Volume Two, Satoru is still—literally—reliving his past. When he saves Kayo from not only a serial killer, but her abusive mother as well, he gets closer to unraveling the mystery of his childhood.
Erased takes its title from the protagonist Satoru Fujinuma’s flashbacks, which throw him bodily into the past where he can, hopefully, improve the timeline by erasing violence, accidents, and even subtler trauma like regrets. Make no mistake, Satoru’s form of total recall may be uncontrollable, but it is otherwise 100% superior to other kinds of perfect memory, as he can manipulate his lived past like a lucid dreamer and even retains the afterimage of the prior reality after he overwrites it. Conflating two of Nietzche’s philosophical ideas, he is the Overman transcending the eternal return of his life, to revise it according to his will.
You may find unusual my avoidance of the words ‘time travel’ when discussing Erased, but I believe it is more correct to refer to eidetic memory and lucid dreaming when talking about Satoru’s gift, as his form of time travel is an inward journey, through which he travels to a point in his personal history that his memory has mapped, must fully remember the particulars of a childhood that has nearly faded, and change the series of events into one that satisfies his personal code, not as a young boy, but as the twenty-something manga artist that has fallen into history with future knowledge.
Also, Satoru’s gift is hence less wish fulfillment than its flip side, the obliviation of regrets, although he must relive these cruel days, reconstructing not only his own memory, but saving a life in the process. Satoru relives his childhood cautiously, for while he has certain foreknowledge that a serial killer will slay his classmate, his memories of the events are fuzzy, and his actions are guided at first merely by moments of recognition until he has recollected the murder’s timeline. At no time is this a leisurely stroll down memory lane, but a girding for war, including the recruiting of some of his friends to the increasingly difficult job of protecting their classmate. For not only is the victim, Kayo, the target of a serial killer, but when Satoru befriends her, he discovers that the girl’s mother and boyfriend have been abusing her.
If creator Kei Sanbe has written Erased as a typical shonen manga, the emphasis would be on the time travel and the murder mystery, but the mangaka uses these only as devices in a story that is more about the reconstruction of Satoru’s memory, and ultimately, himself, in a therapeutic journey that has as its goal less the saving of two lives than the healing of a young man’s timeline. And this is why the tale segues at this point to the confrontation of Kayo’s abusive mother, for Erased is not a pedestrian game of Clue, concerned simply with the revelation of whose name is in the envelope under the board; Erased is less murder mystery than a tale of redemption. And Satoru’s method of redemption is extremely thorough, following every loose thread to their frayed ends so that he can make things truly whole. Even Kayo’s mother is rescued, as Satoru has set a chain of events that ends with Kayo’s grandmother coming to plead with her daughter for forgiveness.
Not only is Erased must-read manga, but Yen’s hardcover presentation is outstanding, with thick paper stock well-suited to prevent Sanbe’s copious blacks from bleeding into the next page, as well as what may be my favorite manga cover this year. Choosing to portray a tender moment between Kayo and Satoru, rather than a suspenseful scene, Sanbe nonetheless depicts it eerily from above so that the scene of the two kids about to crack open their noodles is not only poignant but also pregnant with apprehension.
Erased Volume 2 arrived on shelves June 20th, 2017, and if you find it sold out, you can find a list of online booksellers through this link to Yen Press.
Yen Press sent the review copy.
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