Erased Things

Goes without saying that this is going to be chalk full of spoilers. If you care about such things, you shouldn't be here.

Bit of background - going to Japan last time, Boku dake opened in theaters as a live action version of the anime (Trailer if you want to see what it looks like - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSh99w9GEzg). Before I left, I had only seen the first 10 episodes since, you know, those were the only ones that were out. Crunchyroll doesn't work in Japan (annoyingly blocks everything but RWBY, even news) so I was stuck on the cliffhanger of Satoru being stuck in the car.

They're pretty much the same to that point with minor differences. The other potential victims aren't mentioned to my knowledge much, if at all, putting most of the focus on the past timeline on Kayo which, given the shorter running time, made a lot of sense to me. They also changed how Satoru is put into the coma by having the teacher simply push him off a bridge while they're walking together during the big reveal. Far more realistic, takes away so much of the suspension of disbelief.

So after that, things kinda go off the rails on both - it really feels like a visual novel where for some reason Satoru got different endings.

Live Action - Satoru wakes up, in what's basically an identical situation to how the series/movie starts, in a hospital bed with a girl saying like "Oh, you're up!". Instead of Airi, this time it's Kayo. Admittedly, my understanding from here got a lot shakier, since I didn't really know what to expect, but the same basic stuff happens where he visits friends, tries to piece together what happened. One MAJOR difference is that he does talk to Airi again (in the rain, under the same bridge), learning that her passion was photography (something that was only hinted at in the ending to the show). You don't see the rehab and such, likely due to the difficulty in making him look like he'd need it.

So after all this happens, you get to the same final showdown on the roof and the confrontation with the teacher. Only this time, the threat isn't getting pushed off the roof because... well, he's not in a wheelchair and relatively defenseless. The teacher pulls a knife which satisfies the requirement of getting him caught in the act, only in the scuffle while the police etc are on the way, Satoru gets an artery in his neck sliced and dies. It cuts another 4 years and you see all his friends and mother around his grave and he's like celebrated as a hero (going so far as to use manga panels that basically spell it out)

I'm assuming if you made it this far you've seen the anime. If I had to guess which was the actual ending to the source manga, I'd guess that Satoru dying is way more likely. That seems like something likely to be cut out of the TV show, especially given how quickly it became popular and if the source material was going to end any other way, I can't imagine them just making that up. That said, production on the movie was probably moving before the ending was published, but why would they not talk to the creator to match the ending properly?

It was pretty funny though, I was bracing for an impact that never came. Especially when it began rolling the ED with 4 minutes remaining in the episode. Overall, both versions were enjoyable for what they were. I think the conversion worked relatively well for the movie version, although you can see where they had to make it work for the running time. I mentioned it in my little mini review that the use of child actors was something I didn't consider but they did fairly well at it, especially the kid that played Satoru. So yeah, that's basically it.

TLDR: If Erased were a Visual Novel, the Movie got the worst good ending, the Anime got the best ending and I have no idea what the actual ending was supposed to be.