Boku dake ga Inai Machi

Boku dake ga Inai Machi is a Mystery/Psychological manga kind of rough.

The story revolves around Satoru, a guy who get sometimes carried back in time when something bad is going to happen. With this, he gets to prevent accidents, save people and above all clear an unsolved criminal case that he lived through during his childhood.


If you are looking for a masterpiece you will be disappointed; when you read a Mystery story you expect most events to be connected as a big picture to get a grandiose conclusion, instead BokuMachi has a tons of unnecessary elements and events building up left and right that most of the time doesn't matter at all. Some parts looks rushed, characters get introduced but don't get any attention at all, you feel like there is missing elements in the story and wonder how much was planned in advance.

On the good part, the manga is quite a smooth read, it has a lot of events occurring, the relation between some characters are interesting and the overall winter-ish dark mood is nice. You watch the story unroll with the main character's thought and at times, feel a bit happy or sad for him. It has enough elements to make you want to keep reading it.

For an ongoing manga, I personally did not get captivated enough to quiver or get emotional. The story is fine and has potential, but lacks something to make it as appealing as it could be. Hopefully the manga will get better and more intense in the future !

Let me say this that I had no other expectations from this because I saw the trailers of the anime before reading this.
This manga is simply legen... DARY! First of all, the art was amazing and played in tune with the mood of the story. When the story went to the past, the art looked very nostalgic. Next, the story, is great as the build-up is fills you with suspense and the characters were mostly great. What I liked in this story was that the women actually played a very important role in this story and weren't exactly damsel in distresses. The suspense was amazing as twists and turns filled every chapter.

The heart of the entire story is Satoru's development and his relationship with Kayo because it gives the reader hope for a better ending and their romance/close friendship was well developed which makes me love it.

I love the characters as Satoru provided the backbone to this story and throughout the series showed development. Kayo, was just amazing and I really felt for her and I hope she will be with Satoru in the end. Airi was amazing and she's a badass just like Satoru's mom. My favourite character is Kenya because he is the perfect sidekick and can become the main character.

Anyways the story was great and I hope that there will be a good ending.

Boku dake ga Inai Machi, one of the most popular anime and manga at the moment, is a story about a young man, aged 29, who hasn't found much success writing manga and instead works part-time at Oasi Pizza Delivery (he, of course, delivers pizza). Nothing special so far, EXCEPT, he sometimes experiences something bizzare. When someone's life is in danger or when something wrong is on the verge of happening while he is around, he turns back in time a few seconds/minutes earlier, so that he can spot the abnormality and eliminate the danger. The phenomenon is called "rerun", although in the anime i heard it's called "revival" (I haven't watched the anime), and it's involuntary.
So far it looks promising, and it really gets you curious. The first chapters of the manga deliver. Satoru is very analytical as we are introduced into the action. He seems somehow bored of reality and the so-called "reruns" have already become common for him. However, after his mother is murdered by an unknown person that is linked to the past, Satoru experiences another "rerun", only this time he is sent back 18 years, when he was only almost 11 years old. He's still his 29 year old self, trapped inside a child's body, and he must solve a bizzare case of child kidnappings that caused the death of 3 children in his school and lead to his mother's death 18 years later.
The art of the manga looks really good and the story sounds really, really promising. The idea is intriguing and while the first chapters really get you into the story it only goes downhill from there, at least for me. I'll talk about several aspects that I disliked.
First of all, the most annoying one, is that Satoru seems like a normal 10/11 year old kid after he's brought back in time. From the analytical guy that we were introduced to, we suddenly get a 10 year child that seems lost in all this mystery (the whole story is indeed mysterious, but after a while I honestly stoped caring about who's the kidnapper and what really happened). Instead of doing some actual detective work, he befriends Hinazuki Kayo, the first child that was kidnapped, in an attempt to keep her from being alone (the reason why she was kidnapped so easily in the first place). He then suddenly starts getting excited at the thought of meeting her and having a birthday party together, and stuff like this. Like, what is going on here? If I started reading from those chapters I'd have assumed he's a normal kid. Especially compared to Kobayashi Kenya, his class mate and friend.
Now, to the next thing, Kenya. He's simply too smart to be believable at just 11 years. And "smart" isn't exactly the right word. He simply knows what people are thinking and "little" 29 year old Satoru isn't able to hide his thoughts. Very intelligent, yeah, I can believe that, but a great reader of human reactions and hidden thoughts when he's only 11? Not so much. After all it's just a little flaw, but if you compare the 11 year old Kenya with the "11" year old Satoru, Kenya seems miles ahead in all categories you can think of. After all it's not such a big flaw, but the fact that Satoru simply becomes a kid amplifies it for me.
As much as I like his mother, she figures out what's happening with Satoru just by looking at him (honestly everyone is more aware of everything in this manga than Satoru, who actually comes from the future and supposedly knows what is going on). And while it's funny in the beginning, it gets repetitive and there's really no explaination to it. Mother intuition too strong? Maybe. Definitely not a huge flaw, just pointing that out.
Finally, the few hints that exist regarding the criminal's identity are all pointed at one character. Sweet, innocent, little Satoru obviously notices nothing and when he actually discovers that the said person has a ton of candies in his car he just laughs about it. Of course, we know nothing about the criminal's identity and the fact that hints towards a certain person exists doesn't mean they actually are (in most detective stories it's usually the opposite, or maybe it's all just mind games and the person actually is the criminal, who knows?). But at least show a little doubt Satoru? I personally would've been creeped out if I found a ton of candies in the car of someone with a child kidnapper running wild.
Further details of the story I do not know, because I only read 26 chapters and I unfortunately dropped out. It was disappointing, at least for me.
Overall the idea is interesting, but the execution fails. From a promising detective story it turns into a "pseudo", or I don't know how to call it, child romance. It's not a horrible manga, and maybe it gets interesting later? who knows, but since I couldn't get past chapter 26 it's definitely not among the best in my opinion. It's a 6 from me. With all the hype around it it's at least worth trying and after all this review it's just my personal opinion.

I've longed to read the manga since the moment I had finished watching the anime. I had the feeling something wasn't right about the way anime ended. Fortunately, I was right.

The story begins quite smoothly and slowly giving the time to get to know the characters, their way of thinking and living.
There are some things which are just given to a reader without any further explanations. You just have to assume them. I wouldn't say I liked it but that's not the most important part here so let it be.
The story tells us about a "detective game", involving time traveling. The most part of it is dedicated to monologues of the main character which makes the story very engaging. There's not much action in it, but that's for the greater good.
It's smartly constructed. There are in general 3 large parts of the story which are deeply connected with each other. Lots of minor details which seemed to have no significance eventually turned out to be very important.
You'll think with Satoru. You'll analyze with Satoru. You'll find the culprit with him. You'll feel yourself in his shoes.

To be honest, art isn't something to admire here. It has its own style which I would call as "a bit edgy". It makes a good job of conveying emotions, actions and thoughts. So I wouldn't count it as bad either. Also, there are some frames which are just great.
It makes its job in a proper way.

I guess you would never forget Satoru, Kayo, and Satoru's mom at least. They became quite real for me. Besides them, lots of another cool characters out there. Characters are a core of the manga. Everything's based on them. A reader has the opportunity to see how they grow supporting each other. Such thing as a "friendship" is showed here in a right way. It's not that pretentious as it might be in some shounen manga, yet very gorgeous and simply a nice thing.
To add more, few characters have their own philosophy. I've found some interesting thoughts.
The antagonist deserves some praise. I didn't understand to the end his philosophy but it was the interesting one without a doubt.

I like stories like this one. Very much do. It's not perfect. To some degree, it may be even absurd. But, what's more important, it gives a reader something to think about. Something to live with.
It's sincerely kind.

I would recommend it to anyone. Especially to those, who are, alike me, unsatisfied with the way anime ended. You'll find a gap and a proper ending right here. And don't forget about additional 5 chapters, please note, they are very important!

tl;dr: A manga with really high highs and really low lows in terms of characters, and a reasonably interesting and suspenseful plot.

This manga has a somewhat interesting structure. There's an overarching plot revolving around a serial killer that the protagonist, Satoru, is trying to stop and discover the identity of while in the middle of a massive time slip. The key characters in this plot are the Satoru and his friends on both sides of the time slip searching for the serial killer with there being multiple potential victims that they end up looking into in order to protect.

However, the real highlight of the manga story wise was somewhat separated from this in that it was the story of a single one of the potential victims, Kayo. She has a backstory that is dark even without considering that a serial killer is after her. So while Satoru does end up saving her from the serial killer, what's more interesting is how he helps her overcome the other issues she's facing in life and the character growth both she and Satoru go through as a result. This makes a pretty significant portion of the manga, and it felt well written and impactful. However, ultimately, this is just a small part of the story, and once she's been saved, the story moves past her and she essentially drops out of focus entirely. That what felt like was such an important character was dropped so abruptly felt pretty disappointing.

Unfortunately, that's not the only instance of this happening as something similar is also the case with another character named Airi, but to an even worse degree, wherein while Kayo at least gets a proper ending to her story, with Airi it felt like her story was really going somewhere, but in the end was just completely dropped as if it never happened. As such, while there are really strong moments and even really strong smaller stories relating to characters and their growth and development of bonds, overall the manga felt like it didn't do enough with anyone outside the protagonist so in terms of characters it felt kind of weak overall. The extra volume is composed of side stories centered around the important characters outside the protagonist, and that definitely addresses this weakness, but it still didn't really hit the notes that I wanted it to in that I wanted it to have something more fleshed out in terms of an epilogue.

Going back to the overarching plot, the core plot of the manga is the mystery involving who the serial killer is and Satoru doing what he can to find and stop him. This aspect is decently written and pretty intriguing throughout with a decent sense of suspense, though it felt pretty rushed at times, especially the ending, which while not nearly as bad as the anime still felt kind of abrupt and overtly simple in the end. The art to be frank I wasn't much of a fan of and felt that while it did convey the story decently enough, it didn't look very nice. I'd go as far as saying some of the author's previous works had better art.