What was the ending of erased?

Boku Dake ga Iani Machi, also known as Erased was originally a manga series that was aired in form of a magazine from 2012 to 2016. There was also a live-action TV series, but the most notable adaptation came from an anime mini-series with twelve episodes. The concept of the manga/anime series was really cool – the story involves a 29-year-old man who has a unique power to prevent deaths and casualties by going back to the point before the incident happened.

Erased intrigued a lot of fans all over the world, and for that, in this article, we will offer our own view on how Erased anime ended, and provide you with a comparison to manga series ending.

The story follows a 29-year-old man called Satoru Fujinuma, a manga artist who also works part-time as a delivery man for a local pizza place. He is an introvert and a shy person who lacks communication skills. He is faking his behavior to other people so he doesn’t end up alone, and rude anti-social behavior gets him in trouble with other people as well.

When a series of kidnappings occurred, he tried to ignore them since he still felt guilty about the similar incident that happened to his friends and classmates. Meanwhile, his mother Sachiko Fujinuma was a news announcer who got killed after seeing a suspicious man kidnapping a child. She tried to warn Satoru of the possible killer and kidnapper to Satoru but was too late – she got stabbed by the same man.

Satoru experiences another “revival”, the first being him saving a young girl from getting hit by a truck. He finds his mother dead in their home and is falsely accused of her demise. Thankfully, the “revival” sends him 18 years in the past, when he was in elementary school. His mission is simple – he needs to save his classmate Kayo from kidnapping and consequent death.

Now, the story continues steadily after that, but the ending is something that confused some fans. At the end of the anime, Satoru is in the hospital, after Yashiro, the real killer, and his teacher tried to drown him. Satoru survived and saved all of his classmates, however, he lost all of his memories and spent 15 years in a coma. Yashiro, under another name, takes him to the roof and confronts him.

Yashiro does not know that Satoru’s memories came back and that he planned everything with his friends beforehand. Satoru mocks and provokes Yashiro telling him that the killer needs him and that he knows all of his future. Yashiro thinks he has an upper hand but Satori challenges him by trying to fling himself off the hospital roof.

Yashiro realized he does not have a reason to leave and wants to jump as well but realizes that Satori is alive and well in the hands of his friends. Gaku Yashiro, the serial killer, finally gets caught by authorities and ends up in prison. The anime ends with Satoru meeting Airi Katagiri, a woman who he originally met in 2006, and who was the only one who believed he did not kill his mother. Their meeting in 2003, after Satoru woke up from the coma, marked Satoru’s second chance to finally act out his feelings toward her.

So, yes, we can safely say the ending of Erased anime is happy indeed – not to mention the three originally murdered children are now alive thanks to Satori.

What Does Ending of Erased Anime Mean?

The ending of the Erased anime is simple – everybody deserves a second chance. Kayo, whose story in the manga was much more explored, gets killed by Yashiro, her school teacher. During her young life, she was abused by her mother and has fallen into a deep depression. Satoru saved her, befriended her, and gave her another chance in life.

The same goes for the other two classmates, Hiromi Sugita and Aya Nakanishi, who are also seen alive in 2003. Satoru’s mother is alive as well, and she gets to experience her mature son once more, who loves helping people. When it comes to Yashiro, in the manga, the killer was a sadistic murderer all the way back in his childhood. His abusive brother pursued him into killing and since then and after murdering his brother, Yashiro kills young girls and feeds his need and purpose to live.

The symbolism of the spider thread is also interesting – all of the victims of Yashiro had a spider thread attached to them, which was a callback to Akugatawa’s famous story that was told by Yashiro in the anime. An awful sinner gets a chance to do one act of kindness during his life of evil. He chooses to spare one spider, whose web is offered to the sinner to climb out of hell and have a chance of redemption.

When the sinner climbed out of hell, he severed the spider thread and with that destroyed the path of redemption. When Yashiro’s spider thread is severed at the end of the anime, the show wants to tell us that Yashiro does not have any redemption qualities and that Satoru finally showed him that he was only using poor innocent souls to try to climb out of metaphorical hell.

Satoru is Yashiro’s purpose to live because of the young boy, and later the man, who stopped him from something he loved the most – killing innocent girls. Yashiro is fascinated by Satoru because he is the one that stopped him from the satisfaction of “ruling” and control over other people. The killer’s life purpose is erased, with the death of Satoru, and Yashiro wants to die as well.

Another symbolism comes from the scene when Satoru seemingly kills himself – the original murdered children in 1988, Kenya, Hiromi, Kayo, and Satoru’s mother Sachiko, all are waiting for Satoru and in turn, save his life. The spider web finally snaps, and Yashiro is empty in the end. That prompts another meaningful quote – all is well in the end if you act well.

At the beginning of the anime/manga series, we see Satoru as the introverted and antisocial man who barely has any friends, and even if he has, he only pretends around them. One woman, Airi Katagiri ignores his dismissals and worms her way into Satoru’s heart, who never has a chance to say to her how he feels.

At the end of the anime, Satoru takes shelter against the heavy Japanese snow. A woman runs to his shelter to hide from the snow as well, and Satoru realizes it is Airi – a girl he loved in another timeline, who changed him for the good and supported him in the hardest times. Satoru never stopped believing.

Who Does Kayo Marry in Erased?

Even though a lot of fans rooted for Kayo and Satoru of being an endgame couple, that did not happen. After Kayo was saved by Satoru, she stayed in touch with her classmates Kenya and Hiromi. Kayo also moved away from her mother and stayed with her grandmother – she cut out her abusive mother for the rest of her life.

During Satoru’s coma, Kayo married her classmate and friend Hiromi, and they have a son together named Mirai, who has a strong resemblance to his father. Even during Satoru’s coma, she regularly visited him in the hospital.

Who Was the Girl At the End of Erased?

After Yishiro ended up in jail, Satoru and the rest of his family and friends could finally start living a normal life. Everyone gained another chance including Satoru, who is seen sketching manga under the bridge. He sees a blue butterfly fly next to him, and all of a sudden, a girl stumbles upon him. It is revealed to be Airi, who he met in his past life, under the same bridge.

They got another chance as well – they can finally act on their feelings and live how they always wanted to.

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  Dora is an avid sports fan who started taking interest in TV and movies while attending University of Osijek. Characters, storylines and cinematography is something she started analysing very intensely, which made her respect the art of TV and movies more.