Mirai Nikki (Future Diary) Series Impressions
So comes the conclusion to secret anime. This started as a watchbet with MikeHattsu but by episode 5 I was utterly traumatized and refused to continue. Now that I'm free for the holiday break I decided to give this another shot. Perhaps the first time I attempted to get through this I wasn't in the right mindset. Anyways, I digress...
Mirai Nikki follows a group of crazed psychopaths hoping to rule the world through some death game where the winner is granted the power of god. Each participant supposedly has a goal to become the god of this insane world. The motivations of each character is largely ignored or unexplained. We occasionally get some short back story for a minor character but they largely feel out of place and contrived. For that reason it is hard to root for any individual character.
Instead of defining the characters in any meaningful way Mirai Nikki focuses on creating bizarre scenarios to entertain the viewer with explosions, dismemberment and boobs. Each plot to kill a death game participant seems to take the protagonists Yuki and Yuno to various different backdrops as an excuse to blow up some new setting. Collateral damage is not a consideration for any of the participates with many bystanders dying as the psychopaths attempt to kill each other. For this reason the jump from place to place felt extremely forced just so they could animate more death and destruction.
http://a.pomf.se/wwzirj.webm
The main protagonist Yuki is a spineless coward throughout most of the anime. He is just an average middle school student who like to write about the pebble on the ground in his phone diary. Suddenly he is thrust into this death game and he doesn't want any part of it. As the story progresses certain events happen which changes his demeanor and finally gives him a purpose to participate. However this is so late into the anime that I gave up caring about his plight and would just hope he would die some painful death like some of the other minor characters had experienced.
Yuno is Yuki's yandere stalker and what could be called the antagonist of the anime. She is manipulative, violent and disgusting. Her motivations also remain unclear for a majority of the anime where they only start to reveal themselves near the end. The guise of her love for Yuki blinds her and causes her to react violently and irrationally. When it is revealed why she is such a broken person it was hard for me to feel any sympathy for her. Her actions are incredibly selfish and that love she feels comes off as cheap. I also found her to be incredibly grating, constantly shouting Yuki's name with her annoying voice.
http://a.pomf.se/czfaid.webm
Watching the plot unfold felt like watching a train wreck unfold before my eyes. The very first attempt on Yuki's life involves blowing up a school and killing many students. The way Yuki manages to escape death or other inconveniences was hilariously awful. Dodging landmines by reading a diary, avoiding eating poisoned fruit because "the weight felt different" and shooting up a police district but getting off scot free for some inexplicable reason. The world around Yuki seems to cater to him because he is protagonist. The absurdity in his escapes just had my eyes rolling halfway through and I had given up on the euphoria I would experience from his death.
The writing was equally as awful as the plot. Characters act incredibly goofy for one scene and switch rails to a murderous villain the next. One of the side characters (Ninth) who is the recurring terrorist that probably has the highest kill count is being tracked down by a rookie detective. However, once he catches her he begins to fall in love with her. Their entire relationship was incredibly silly yet I felt they were the only characters I enjoyed watching. Ninth would do several things to escape from him, going so far as to shoot him yet he continued to push a relationship onto her. It was dumb but it was fun seeing their love blossom on the battlefield. (fucking MGS)
Mirai Nikki suffers from an identity crisis. There are times it appears it wants to be a serious story but is held back by the silly plot, characters and dialogue. As such I wasn't sure how I was supposed to approach watching this. The first time I attempted to watch this I took it as a serious anime and gave up on the fifth episode. After I returned I learned to turn my brain off and just watch the madness unfold. There are several other problems with Mirai Nikki, including my previous rant of why I originally dropped it but I won't retread old ground.
Overall Mirai Nikki is an incredibly stupid anime with unlikable characters. It is animated well enough and the soundtrack serves its purpose. Would I recommend this to others? Probably not but there is some fun to be had if you don't over think the absurdity present. Or if you need an education of what the term "yandere" is.
TLDR: Arbitrary rating one Katana and a pack of C4 out of black hole time travel.
