Satoru Fujinuma’s life hasn’t gone exactly as planned. At 29 he’s delivering pizzas while failing to make it as a mangaka and living alone with a social life that extends as far as polite chatter with his coworkers. However, he has a special (if inconvenient) secret: on occasion, he’ll experience what he calls “revival”. It causes him to reawaken few minutes back in time, just before someone’s about to die, giving him a chance to save their life.
When Satoru was a child, three children were kidnapped and murdered in his town – a classmate, a child from a neighbouring school, and one of his friends. An older friend of his – Jun Shirtatori – was indicted and convicted, despite Satoru’s insistence that he was innocent. Satoru and his mother – visiting him for a few days, much to his annoyance – end up talking about it after a news broadcast about a missing child. She, a journalist, reflects on it after seeing someone suspicious out shopping, thinking back on the evidence, circumstances and suspicions from back then.
That night, she’s murdered before Satoru gets home from work, before she can tell him who the real killer must have been.
Satoru experiences another revival after finding her body – but this time he reawakens in 1988. A few weeks before Kayo Hinazuki went missing. He has a chance to save her, the others, and his mother.