Television series
Boku Dake ga Inai Machi
This live-action adaptation follows Satoru, a struggling manga artist whose involuntary power rewinds time moments before disaster strikes, until it drags him eighteen years into his own childhood to stop a killer before he starts. It's melancholic, slow-burn mystery wrapped inside a coming-of-age story, more interested in grief and small-town dread than flashy sci-fi. Good for anyone who wants their time-travel puzzle served with genuine emotional weight.
If you liked this
Signal2016
Same engine—messages across time save lives—sharpened into a relentless cold-case procedural, with an incredible partnership between two detectives working decades apart. If piecing together clues from the past hooked you, this does it best.
But Sixteen tightly plotted episodes demand commitment; it's a slower, denser watch than a single film.
Dark2017
A German series where a missing child unravels a decades-spanning time-travel conspiracy in a fog-choked small town—same eerie dread, same sense that the past won't stay buried.
But The multi-generational timeline gets genuinely confusing; you'll want a family tree by season two.
Broadchurch2013
No time travel here, just grief and suspicion tearing apart a small coastal town after a child's death—the same creeping unease of neighbours who might be monsters.
But Bleaker and slower, without the fantastical hook that makes Erased propulsive.
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
La Jetée1962
This 1962 French short essentially invented the 'send someone back to stop a death, only for time to insist on its own shape' story Erased tells decades later—same fatalism, same idea that memory is the only time machine we actually have.
Twenty-eight minutes of still photographs narrating a haunting, doomed time-travel love story—Chris Marker's short is the ancestor of nearly every 'go back and save someone' plot since, including this one.
But No real motion, barely any dialogue, told entirely in freeze-frame images—art film first, genre thriller a distant second.
More like this (8)
Mare of Easttown2021
A grim, brilliant look at how a missing-girl case exposes every secret in a working-class town, anchored by a career-best Kate Winslet performance.
But American register—sweary, gritty, more interested in trauma than mystery-box satisfaction.
Frequency2000
A ham radio lets a son talk to his dead father across decades, and together they try to rewrite a fatal night—the same ache of using future knowledge to save someone you love.
But An early-2000s studio thriller, glossier and more sentimental than Erased's melancholy restraint.
12 Monkeys2015no page yet
Turns the 'go back and fix it' premise into full apocalyptic science fiction, forcing its hero to relive trauma over and over to stop a catastrophe.
But Louder, bloodier, and far more concerned with time-travel mechanics than character.
Stranger Things2016
Kids on bikes trying to solve a disappearance the adults won't take seriously—the same nostalgic ache of childhood friendship under threat.
But Supernatural monsters instead of a flesh-and-blood killer; adventure comes before dread here.
Mother2010no page yet
From the same well of Japanese social drama—a woman kidnaps an abused child to save her, asking what you'd sacrifice to protect one kid.
But No mystery plot at all; it's unflinching emotional drama, and it will wreck you.
Confessions2010no page yet
A darker, more brutal Japanese thriller about grief, revenge, and what children are capable of—if Erased's tenderness left you wanting something colder, this is it.
But Genuinely disturbing rather than melancholic; no comfort on offer here.
The Keepers2017
Erased is fiction asking whether someone could have stopped an adult's crime years too late; this documentary is the real, unresolved version of that exact question.
A meticulous true-crime documentary about a nun's unsolved murder and the institutional abuse beneath it—the same slow unravelling of small-town secrets and buried guilt, minus any rewind button.
But It's real, it's about actual child abuse, and there's no fantasy safety net—considerably heavier than anything in Erased.
Russian Doll2019
Same engine—relive the past on a loop until you get it right—but transplanted into a foul-mouthed Manhattan comedy about a woman dying over and over on her own birthday.
Proof the 'trapped reliving time to fix a death' premise works just as well as pitch-black comedy—sharp, funny, and surprisingly moving once it reveals what it's actually about.
But Brash, sweary, comic—if you want more of Erased's hush and melancholy, this will feel like a different genre entirely, because it is.
People
Cast
Recommended by
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Edge of Tomorrow, Steins;Gate, Signal, Stray, The Promised Neverland, Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu, Hyouka