Apr 29, 2019
Haruka na Machi e is an interesting take on the time travel story. The protagonist, Hiroshi, is a middle-aged man with a wife and children. He misses his stop while coming back from a business trip, and ends up in his childhood neighborhood where he visits the grave of his mother. He ends up falling asleep there, and wakes up in the same place as a child, to the time before his father suddenly left his family without explanation. Upon going home and seeing his whole family together again, Hiroshi makes it his goal to find out why his father abandoned his seemingly perfect and
...
happy family. What makes the story unique is that Hiroshi is not sent back in time on a great mission to change this key moment in his life, but rather to understand why it happened, and why it matters.
Much of the story deals with the day-to-day aspect of Hiroshi's life as a student. As a middle-aged man trapped inside a young body, his outlook on his much younger peers can often be condescending or careless, but he is always brought back down to earth in some way or another. His personality can get tiresome at times, but he is generally likable and relatable. Though not the most major point of the story, these interactions do serve to remind Hiroshi of the thoughts and feelings he had as a child, and perhaps those of his own children. It helps to change his perception of things.
Of course, the more important bits of the story revolve around Hiroshi's family. Throughout his story, Hiroshi strives to learn more about his parents, their past, and their personalities. As he's actually a grown man close to their age, he can relate to them now more than he ever could. He has an easier time uncovering and understanding their drives and desires. And as he uncovers more and more about them, the pieces start to fall together. Hiroshi starts realizing the reason that his father left, and how important it is for him to find this out at this point of his life.
Haruka na Machi e expresses itself very well. It's not hard to understand, but it's not overbearing either. Sadly, this doesn't mean that it was extremely entertaining either. The event that the story is based on is not particularly mysterious or exciting. Nothing is dramatized, and while it's certainly true that this method of storytelling is more realistic, it personally did not capture my attention as much as some other stories have. That's just a personal grippe, really. My most major criticism of the story is that it sets itself up sometimes to seem as if past events can be changed, but it doesn't bother to make a point that it can't or won't. Hiroshi's motivation is rather unclear, even by the end, when nothing has changed not because it couldn't, but rather just because it hadn't.
Personally, Haruka na Machi e wasn't really my kind of time travel story, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. It's definitely worth reading , and maybe you'll do a bit of reflection afterwards.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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