Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2019-04-19 09:16 am
rionaleonhart) wrote2019-04-19 09:16 am
Entry tags:
I'm Talking About You, Satoru.
After I first watched ERASED, back in 2016, I said I wasn't sure I'd ever watch it again. I really enjoyed it, but it was so intense I wasn't sure I'd be able to handle a rewatch.
I'm glad I came back to it. It is very intense, but it's also very good. And it's only twelve episodes, so it kicks you in the gut with DRAMA and EMOTIONS and then politely leaves to let you patch yourself up, rather than continually kicking you in the gut.
If I had to recommend an anime series to someone who'd never seen one before, I think ERASED would probably be the one I'd choose, with the caveat that it deals heavily with child abuse.
I got slightly emotional when Hinazuki started crying over her breakfast, because she wasn't used to meals that had any sort of love put into them.
It's been about three years since I first saw this anime, but there were moments that stayed so vividly in my mind. Getting Hinazuki safely through the day she originally died, and then realising she's not safe after all. That FUCKING CAR SCENE in episode ten, and how badly it freaked me out when Satoru wasn't in the opening sequence for the next episode.
On the rewatch, my breathing changed during that car ride, knowing what was coming next, when I noticed that Yashiro was wearing gloves. That entire episode really, really scares me.
I actually had a fic idea, the first time I watched this anime. Things played out a little too perfectly on the roof in the final episode; had Satoru been through this sequence multiple times, on account of Revival? But a time-loop fic in which Satoru slowly realises this serial child abductor has been obsessed with him since he was eleven (and then starts trying to goad him into admitting it so he can corner him - 'Oh, you were never tempted? You had a kid right there in your car, you were getting awfully close - oh, but I forgot, you're only interested in young girls, nothing weird—') might be a bit fucked up even for me.
I think ERASED has my favourite opening sequence of all time. Not just because of the part where the protagonist is clutching his head and writhing in emotional agony under a bridge, although that is very good.
I've been thinking fondly recently about Higurashi and how much I love watching Keiichi slowly losing his mind with terror. So I ordered the two-volume manga of the first arc (Onikakushi, called the Abducted by Demons arc in the manga).
I think this is the first time I've read a manga that's an adaptation, so I didn't entirely know what to expect. Fullmetal Alchemist, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Death Note, DN Angel, Full Moon o Sagashite, they were all manga to begin with. But Higurashi started out as a visual novel. Would the manga adaptation be good? Would it feel too compressed?
My reservations turned out to be unfounded. I enjoyed the Higurashi manga a lot! Even if it suffers slightly from going TITS TITS TITS too much before getting down to the business of psychologically pulling its characters apart. (The manga changes the early scene where Mion and Keiichi are playing 'hey, Keiichi, show me your dick' chicken to be about Mion's breasts instead! Outrageous.)
When the manga does start ripping Keiichi to shreds, it does it very effectively, although of course I can't say how it would have impacted me if I'd read the manga before the visual novel. In some ways the visual novel portrays the horror more effectively by having less to work with visually and more to work with in terms of sound, and by having more time to really dig into Keiichi's mind, but it was still really cool to see the characters having more expressions. And to see Keiichi's face!
(Keiichi's increasingly petrified, sleep-deprived, conflicted face. These poor kids.)
Reading the manga when I've played up to Tsumihoroboshi, and therefore have slightly more of an idea of what's going on, absolutely ripped me apart. Everything is agonising!
I got slightly tearful at Keiichi regaining awareness to the gutwrenching realisation that he killed his friends with his own hands, and that he still can't help loving them even if they're part of a conspiracy to murder him.
I posted this panel in the comments to my last entry, but I'm also going to reproduce it here so I can gaze fondly upon it at my leisure:
(I sent this picture to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
th_esaurus, and she responded with 'riona you keep finding these things so specific to your needs. your teenage murder agony needs.')
A detail the manga kept that made me take notice: Keiichi fakes a cold to get out of school, and his mother sends him to the doctor (whom we'll later get to know as Dr Irie), who gives him some medicine and a shot. This medication can't be solely responsible for Keiichi's paranoid breakdown, because it's already started by this point - we've already had the 'well, Keiichi-kun, aren't you keeping things from us?' and 'holy fuck, was Rena silently listening in on my phone conversation for an hour?' scenes, and he's pretending to be ill because he's scared of seeing Rena - but it's such a seemingly unnecessary detail that its inclusion in the manga makes me wonder whether there's more to it.
This has prodded me into beginning a replay of Higurashi. I'm doing some sprite editing this time around, though, because a few of the Steam sprites bother me; I wasn't a fan of Rena's embarrassed/anxious expression, for example, so I've changed it from this to this. I was going 'I wish I could play a version with a few of the sprites altered' and then 'wait, I have access to the game files! I have the power to do this!'
I'm glad I came back to it. It is very intense, but it's also very good. And it's only twelve episodes, so it kicks you in the gut with DRAMA and EMOTIONS and then politely leaves to let you patch yourself up, rather than continually kicking you in the gut.
If I had to recommend an anime series to someone who'd never seen one before, I think ERASED would probably be the one I'd choose, with the caveat that it deals heavily with child abuse.
I got slightly emotional when Hinazuki started crying over her breakfast, because she wasn't used to meals that had any sort of love put into them.
It's been about three years since I first saw this anime, but there were moments that stayed so vividly in my mind. Getting Hinazuki safely through the day she originally died, and then realising she's not safe after all. That FUCKING CAR SCENE in episode ten, and how badly it freaked me out when Satoru wasn't in the opening sequence for the next episode.
On the rewatch, my breathing changed during that car ride, knowing what was coming next, when I noticed that Yashiro was wearing gloves. That entire episode really, really scares me.
I actually had a fic idea, the first time I watched this anime. Things played out a little too perfectly on the roof in the final episode; had Satoru been through this sequence multiple times, on account of Revival? But a time-loop fic in which Satoru slowly realises this serial child abductor has been obsessed with him since he was eleven (and then starts trying to goad him into admitting it so he can corner him - 'Oh, you were never tempted? You had a kid right there in your car, you were getting awfully close - oh, but I forgot, you're only interested in young girls, nothing weird—') might be a bit fucked up even for me.
I think ERASED has my favourite opening sequence of all time. Not just because of the part where the protagonist is clutching his head and writhing in emotional agony under a bridge, although that is very good.
I've been thinking fondly recently about Higurashi and how much I love watching Keiichi slowly losing his mind with terror. So I ordered the two-volume manga of the first arc (Onikakushi, called the Abducted by Demons arc in the manga).
I think this is the first time I've read a manga that's an adaptation, so I didn't entirely know what to expect. Fullmetal Alchemist, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Death Note, DN Angel, Full Moon o Sagashite, they were all manga to begin with. But Higurashi started out as a visual novel. Would the manga adaptation be good? Would it feel too compressed?
My reservations turned out to be unfounded. I enjoyed the Higurashi manga a lot! Even if it suffers slightly from going TITS TITS TITS too much before getting down to the business of psychologically pulling its characters apart. (The manga changes the early scene where Mion and Keiichi are playing 'hey, Keiichi, show me your dick' chicken to be about Mion's breasts instead! Outrageous.)
When the manga does start ripping Keiichi to shreds, it does it very effectively, although of course I can't say how it would have impacted me if I'd read the manga before the visual novel. In some ways the visual novel portrays the horror more effectively by having less to work with visually and more to work with in terms of sound, and by having more time to really dig into Keiichi's mind, but it was still really cool to see the characters having more expressions. And to see Keiichi's face!
(Keiichi's increasingly petrified, sleep-deprived, conflicted face. These poor kids.)
Reading the manga when I've played up to Tsumihoroboshi, and therefore have slightly more of an idea of what's going on, absolutely ripped me apart. Everything is agonising!
I got slightly tearful at Keiichi regaining awareness to the gutwrenching realisation that he killed his friends with his own hands, and that he still can't help loving them even if they're part of a conspiracy to murder him.
I posted this panel in the comments to my last entry, but I'm also going to reproduce it here so I can gaze fondly upon it at my leisure:
(I sent this picture to
th_esaurus, and she responded with 'riona you keep finding these things so specific to your needs. your teenage murder agony needs.')A detail the manga kept that made me take notice: Keiichi fakes a cold to get out of school, and his mother sends him to the doctor (whom we'll later get to know as Dr Irie), who gives him some medicine and a shot. This medication can't be solely responsible for Keiichi's paranoid breakdown, because it's already started by this point - we've already had the 'well, Keiichi-kun, aren't you keeping things from us?' and 'holy fuck, was Rena silently listening in on my phone conversation for an hour?' scenes, and he's pretending to be ill because he's scared of seeing Rena - but it's such a seemingly unnecessary detail that its inclusion in the manga makes me wonder whether there's more to it.
This has prodded me into beginning a replay of Higurashi. I'm doing some sprite editing this time around, though, because a few of the Steam sprites bother me; I wasn't a fan of Rena's embarrassed/anxious expression, for example, so I've changed it from this to this. I was going 'I wish I could play a version with a few of the sprites altered' and then 'wait, I have access to the game files! I have the power to do this!'
no subject
It probably says a lot about me that this immediately made me want to watch it. (I also cultivated a taste for intensely spicy food based on many foreigners trying to warn me about what they assumed would be too spicy for a white girl.)
I've been thinking fondly recently about Higurashi and how much I love watching Keiichi slowly losing his mind with terror. So I ordered the two-volume manga of the first arc (Onikakushi, called the Abducted by Demons arc in the manga).
Ooh, there's a manga? I can probably actually read that! (I'm terrible at video games and still not great with visual novels.)
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The Abducted by Demons arc is only two volumes, so you could experience the entire fucked-up first Higurashi instalment with relatively little investment of time and money! I'd love to hear your thoughts if you do check it out.
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Yeah, I looked on Amazon, and it was not much. (I bought two volumes, I'll let you know what I think after I read them.)
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...I do see what you mean about the boobs, though.
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And then Rena asks him whether he ate all the ohagi, and it's such a horrible jolt for him: he's not being allowed to pretend all of this away.
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It's all about video games and whether you can pet the dog, and it made me think of you.
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(Anonymous) 2019-04-19 01:29 pm (UTC)(link)I love Erased! (https://i.postimg.cc/ZqZ5qGT2/desktop-pic.png) I am sure you are not shocked about this given our similar taste. I wanted to pick up the manga when I finished watching it, but alas, that turns out to be far harder than it needs to be.
I figured you might write some fic for this since you wrote Jefferson fic despite his screwed up mindset and screwed up mindset also fits Erased's killer. But yes, that fic idea does sound like it could be... misconstrued. I also wanted to read or write Erased fic, but in the least surprising fandom twist ever, you can't find anything that actually interestingly explores that killer-victim link, because it's all ship fic and I'm not going near that for various reasons.
The opening is amazing though! There's so many good shots, and it does a good job showing that interplay between the present day and the past too. It's so good. :D
(Incidentally, trying to find fic with Haytham and Connor interacting that isn't in a modern AU or incest or both in one is very difficult. FANDOM, WHY DO YOU NEVER WRITE THINGS I WANT TO READ.)
I was trying to work out what the traumatised Keichii expression reminds me of, and I think it's young Nina/Anna from Monster, but I can't find a decent example. (Monster is also another story that's basically like the trauma train, and it's got LOADS AND LOADS OF CHARACTERS many exploring that theme, lol. Also, I suppose its anatgonist is sort of the counterpoint to Erased: if he takes a particular interest in you, you're not actually going to die! But probably everyone you care about will instead. If he's not interested in you, you're very dead if you've ever met.)
-timydamonkey
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Hey, that doesn't preclude 'or write'! You should write the interesting killer-and-victim fic you want to see in the world.
It hadn't occurred to me to check what fanfiction already existed, and I'm oddly pleased to see that Satoru/Yashiro is by far the most-written ship. Despite the rise in debates over 'purity' in fanfiction, there are still modern fandoms where the relationship writers choose to explore is the most fucked-up relationship possible. It's good to know fucked-upness still has a market, even if it's not my personal brand of fucked-up.
(I'm surprised to hear it's hard to find canon-era fanfiction about Haytham and Connor's relationship! It's such an interesting relationship; why wouldn't people write about it?)
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(Anonymous) 2019-04-19 04:14 pm (UTC)(link)See, I feel like the oddball in fandom because I am very interested in looking at those rather fucked up relationships: but I don't mean relationship in the romantic way. That doesn't interest me at all. The interaction is what fascinates me, but in fiction it always seems to turn into romance. Bit of a bugbear of mine.
Still the fic I'd most like to see in anything, in a fandom that doesn't actually have a fandom, is a counterpoint fic to The Bunker Diary that explores the villain. (I know you've not read it, so easiest way to explain it is probably to imagine a Danganronpa scenario with people locked up, but imagine there's no mastermind reveal and in fact said mastermind doesn't take any presence in the story whatsoever save a very short recollection by the main character of his abduction. Instead, the mastermind gives a few provisions, basically plays around with them like toys, and then totally abandons the toys for an unknown reason. There is a lot of "why?" a fanfic could explore very nicely, I think. But, no fandom. Also, this may explain why you found that review going on about it being depressing and pointless, lol.)
Come to think of it, the fanfic I'm proudest of is the one where I wrote as the villain of Heavy Rain, and I wanted to explore their mindset. So it clearly is a theme I'm interested in... just not romantically, sadly!
(Must be poor taste!)