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Boku Dake ga Inai Machi japanese drama review
Completed
Boku Dake ga Inai Machi
3 people found this review helpful
by jwhites
Oct 26, 2019
12 of 12 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 6.0
Story 7.0
Acting/Cast 7.0
Music 5.0
Rewatch Value 5.5
The story was predictable for anyone who reads sci-fi or time travel fantasy, but this particular version had some decent quirks worth watching. I do not think the pacing did the storyline any favors -- too slow and draggy (and boring) in some parts, and jumped inconsistently for, apparently, reasons known only to the director and accountants who were presumably whacking him over the head with their calculators and demanding it be shortened due to cost overruns.

The cast seemed good, with the children stealing the show. They were particularly good at demonstrating friendship, trust, and transitory happiness of being a kid. Sadly, the adults were prone to overacting and being either unbelievably bad or ridiculously good and virtuous. Maybe that was the script.

I didn't even notice the music, which is fine IMHO.

The biggest downside was the dubbing/voice overs. They really, really should have stuck with subtitles because the voice overs were 1) obvious and no attempt made to put in background noises for compatibility with the scene, 2) completely inappropriate for every single character, with clear age mismatch, and little professional acting emphasis to differentiate mood and content, 3) bad, they were just bad and reminded me of martial arts movies from the 1970's where the face motions were not even close to synching with the spoken dialogue, and laughable because of it. Really, stick with subtitles so that the original voices are heard and there is not that dissonance between dialog and visuals -- it was distracting and made it hard to suspend disbelief.

All that aside, the beginning three or so episodes were interesting and paced well, and the last two or three were also quite good. The middle ones were tolerable, and overall the whole show is rewatchable if you want to clear up timelines and events.
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