‘Stranger Things’ Fans Will Be Obsessed With This Anime You’ve Never Heard Of
It’s called Erased. And if you love Stranger Things for its small-town dread, its kids-versus-the-dark structure, and the way it wraps supernatural twists around real emotional stakes, then Erased is the next story you need to lose yourself in.
I stumbled onto Erased completely by accident while restlessly scrolling for a new obsession, and it’s the perfect show to fill that Stranger Things-shaped hole in your heart. It’s not a buzzy Netflix drop or a rehashed thriller with a “dark twist.” It’s a 12-episode anime from 2016 that barely anyone talks about, and it’s so much better than it has any right to be.
Erased is the perfect blend of Stranger Things meets The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but quieter, sadder, more human. And it proves that when it comes to thrillers, there’s still nothing that can top a high-quality anime.
The setup is killer: Satoru, a 29-year-old struggling manga artist, has a strange gift. He involuntarily jumps back in time right before something bad happens, just long enough to stop it. But when his mother is murdered and he’s blamed for it, he’s thrown 18 years into the past, into his 11-year-old body. The only way to stop the murder? Solve a series of kidnappings that haunted his hometown for decades.
What follows is a blend of grounded emotional storytelling and edge-of-your-seat tension that puts most live-action thrillers to shame. The stakes are huge, but the focus stays intimate: protecting vulnerable kids, healing old wounds, and learning how to face the things we couldn’t change the first time.
The animation is clean and haunting. The soundtrack aches. And the emotional payoff is (I’m not exaggerating) devastating in the best way.
If you’ve been craving a story that grips you from the first episode and actually delivers, Erased is your next must-watch. No filler. No cliffhanger cop-out. Just a beautifully told story you’ll wish you could forget, just to experience it all over again. Dive in right now, it’s streaming on Hulu.
