I think it takes a pretty willful obtuseness to not see how Kayo and Satoru's relationship can be read as a childhood puppy love. It's not really depicted as sexual or anything - that would be awful and gross even by anime standards - just as two kids blushing around each other and holding hands, because that's what romance looks like when you're ten years old. The "you're pretty" scene which you singled out would be nothing on its own, sure, but in the context of everything else it's clear what they were going for. Hell, if Satoru weren't 29 it'd actually be a pretty cute depiction of childhood love.
Well, yes. That Kayo's becoming infatuated with this boy is only normal considering her situation and Satoru's playing along and even enjoying it. No reason not to be fond of dragging a girl bit by bit out of her misery and seeing her light up every now and then.
My guess is the director or author (or whoever is responsible for these scenes) figured the audience would just put the Satoru-is-actually-29 thing in the back of their mind (or just not care, because again, anime audiences tend to be pretty desensitized to the creepiness of this kind of thing) and take that stuff at face value as depicting kids with childhood crushes.
I'm not quite sure what you're saying here. Do you mean to say that the director/author
intended for people to view Satoru's and Kayo's relationship from hereon as a regular crush sort of situation even though there's the problem with actual age etc. and ship them together overall, which I wouldn't agree with, or are you saying that, in the moment, these scenes are just supposed to mimic regular childhood crushes but the audience should have the larger context and Satoru's goals in the back of their mind, which I would agree with. Because judged on their own, most of these scenes are really well done and do not convey some creepy view and message on all this. That doesn't change just because there's a lot of bad anime where incest and so forth is the norm. When a show gives you no reason to impart trash-anime values on its content, then one shouldn't do so. Admittedly, Erased is a terrible thriller half the time, but that doesn't directly mean everything else is bad, too.
My issue to begin with, is that these shippers are so into shipping and/or are so accustomed to crappy incest, lolicon and whatever else anime, that they see a fairly nice portrayal of character interaction and twist it into some stupid shit. I wouldn't mind anyone being upset seeing Hinazuki together with Hiromi
as a first reaction. However, if you're then not capable and look at the actual context and all and figure that this isn't an issue whatsoever, then I wanna say its high time for some introspection. That people are actually going on online platforms genuinely upset and type out responses how Hiromi is a scumbag for 'taking Satoru's girlfriend', talk about her like a trophy, demand for her to wait however many years it takes for a comatose boy to wake up and get together with him, and so on and so forth...that is simply fucking stupid.
And I can't agree with any defense that tries to argue that the show itself pushed Hinazuki and Satoru as this sort of romantic pair, when it did so neither purposely nor accidentally.
Let's be honest, how is it even possible to forget that Satoru is 29 years old when he's constantly narrating with this older voice of his, even often explaining the different kind of views he has as an adult. That is part of the appeal to begin with. That's what special about his situation and that's what made Erased shine in episodes 2 and 3 in particular. So the argument that people are somehow justified in forgetting all this, even getting plenty of time to think about it, is kinda ludicrous to me.
), just that calling people weird for thinking Kayo and Satoru are love interests is kinda silly considering the show clearly wants people to see it that way.
