[Anime Review] Mirai Nikki

“Why can I never go back to bed? Who's is the voice ringing in my head? Where is the sense in these desperate dreams? Why should I wake when I'm half past dead?” 

-Emilie Autumn

Can I say something crazy? I absolutely adore the genre "battle royal" whether it be the movie "Battle Royal", the book "The Hunger Games", or that one video with the "Sesame Street" characters. I always find myself drawn to to this kind of story, that is the kind where an X number of participants are put in a remote location and are told to kill each other until one is left standing; I think they make up for thrilling stories. So you can imagine, when I find a story of this nature in anime, it pretty much goes straight onto my 'Plan to Watch' list, for better or for worse. While Fate/Zero was an absolutely amazing delight, and Danganrompa...less so, where does Mirai Nikki fall in the spectrum, hit or miss? Let's say it hit the ball out of the park...and into the river. 

The story begins with our main protagonist: Yuki Amano, a shy high-school kid who has a quite distinct lack of anything resembling friends. He's not bothered by this however, and instead spends his time constantly updating a diary kept on his phone, a diary that pretty much chronicles every single little thing Yuki does over the day, hour by hour. When he isn't updating his slightly creepy hobby, he talks with his imaginary friend: Deus ex Machina, the lord of time and space. Having a strangely vivid imagination, Yuki divides his time between having curiously detailed conversations with 'Deus', and building an entire timeline of his life on his phone.
      One day however, Yuki learns that his imaginary friend Deus, is not quite as fictional as he lead himself to think. It turns out Deus is actually god, but a god with a problem, he's dying, and the time to choose a successor has come, and turns out Yuki is lucky enough to be considered for the position. Not so luckily however, Deus also informs him that the only way to succeed him as god is take part in a specially crafted death-game where himself and 11 others will battle to death for the right to become the new king of time and space. In addition, each participant in the game has been given a "Future Diary" a device that will tell the future; Yuki's cellphone becoming his own diary, detailing everyone happening around him...a minute or two before it actually does. Armed with this information Yuki returns to his school, waiting his moment to track down the other "dairy users", he soon finds out the the death battle fully intends to bring the party to him when a masked man with a knife attempts to saw his head off. He is eventually saved by a classmate named Yuno Gasai, who turns out to another dairy user in the death-match, and also completely insane. She claims to be completely in love with Yuki(even though he can only remember talking to her once), and helps fend off the attacker. Yuki, reckoning he can use her considerably more skilled knowledge of fighting to stay alive, so he plays along with her love story, though as he uncovers secrets of her past, turning and running the hell away from her seems to become the more viable option. Together the two, will need to have to outwit the other psycho-paths Deus has chosen for this game, and discover the real reason behind this death-game.

Deus ex Machina, the shrimp-like lord of time and space who decided that the best possible way to choose an heir would be to lock 12 completely insane individuals into a death-game and see who will be the last one standing.

Now let's be honest here, this is a pretty awesome set-up, and leaves room for a lot of cool ideas what with the time prediction aspect of the death-game. The first few episodes of Mirai Nikki I actually found quite intriguing and I also really liked the dark tone and gritty violence it was going for, which is something I think is often underused in anime.  Not only could I expect some cool action and entertainingly crazy characters, but the whole mystery behind why Yuno is so infatuated with Yuki was also fairly interesting.  Unfortunately, it's the manner Mirai Nikki goes to answer its questions that leads to its downfall, as well as a few other pressing problems that need to be addressed. The series has a bad habit of trying to outdo itself far too often. It'll throw plot-twists at you as the series progresses with increasingly regularity. Here's the problem with that: if you try to continually provide mind-blowing twists that change "everything" you only end up pushing your plot and characters to the limit, you'll end up contradicting yourself, and relying far too often on convenience.  If you want to enjoy the show, you'll need to ignore the increasingly flawed plot, as problems start pouring in as episodes continue. Of course though, the show leaves the biggest "twist" for the very end, which completely destroys any continuity the series had left, and is so ridiculous that its hard not to roll your eyes. 

     Also, Mirai Nikki is not one to be subtle with how dark its trying to be. It'll completely lay down horrific information with absolutely no build-up or purpose, just because its trying to shock the viewer. By the end, Mirai Nikki has brought rape, entire families being killed both on and off-screen, and murderous little children to the table, really for no reason at all, and is exasperatingly dramatic for the most part. Yeah, that dude will definitely abandon his child to die, because "this is a dark show guys." Not to say the horror aspect never works, because personally Yuno has a couple scenes that freakin' terrify me, but its not enough to make up for the rest of the melodramatic crap. ...Onto the characters. 

Top: Yuki, Middle: Akise, Bottom: Yuno

Our main character Yuki really isn't much too talk about. He starts out the series as a complete wimp, and while his gradual growth of confidence is nice, it's handled sloppily at best. The animators never really seemed to care too much about his character, and this leads to a massive personality change for him in the last third of the series, which reasoning for is extremely crude and hard to see how he got from point A to point freakin' point H so quickly. To be fair though, he's probably the most down-to-earth character here. He really gives off the impression that he's in a fight he never asked for, and especially considering how much his life starts to crumble apart during the anime, its hard not to at least respect him for how well he takes everything. Unfortunately his character is often brushed aside because the animators apparently thought we need to again see how awesome and crazy Yuno is again. Why do you think I needed to settle on a Yuno thumbnail for his review? Since the animators didn't care enough about his character to make him good, Yuno pictures were my one and only option. The hell? He's supposed to be the main character!

     And now for the only character in this entire show that we're supposed to care about: the queen of stalking herself, Yuno Gasai. For the first half of the show, the character development she's given literally begins with she loves Yuki and ends with she's insaaaaaane. Thankfully she's given enough back-story to make her a decent character by the end, even if her reasoning for doing the things she does seems a little sketchy, though to be fair she is crazy, so I guess that's an excuse. I just can't help but feel that Yuno is just the perfect "yandere" that we're supposed to worship, and draws complete character attention so that everyone else in the show becomes super 1-dimensional. It's same problem shows like Sword Art Online and Gosick had, just concentrating on one character simply means that you didn't care enough about your world as a whole to make it fleshed out and interesting, which you know, sucks, and means I won't have to much to say on this next character. 

     Akise Aru is an enigmatic want-to-be detective who regards attending school with quite a bit of contempt, and prefers to spend his time solving cases. He appears later on in the show and becomes an ally of Yuki during the death-game. Besides from this though, he doesn't have a lot more to him, besides from acting mysterious and totally not like Kaworu from Evangelion. The only other personality trait he acquires would be traversing into spoiler territory, but even that is completely out of left field with its reveal, and only really serves to aid Mirai Nikki's worrying habit of digging its own grave. While he has a cool reveal at first, he quickly falls into the category of characters I would list as "meh".

     The students that make up the high-school characters are fairly one-sided and boring, and the other participants of the death-game are killed practically as soon as they're introduced, but there's one more additional character I would like to touch upon briefly. Ninth is a part-time ally of Yuki and part-time terrorist participant of the death-game. She's generally likable and has some awesome moments, and ell, the anime was even kind enough to give her a decent back-story before switching instantly back to Yuno smashing someone's head open. 

Finally something positive to talk about. The soundtrack for Mirai Nikki was composed by Katsuhiko Takayama and it actually contains some bad-ass tunes, from two exceptional openings and that track above this paragraphs. It's full of those high energy action songs that really get you ready for what's to come, though if I had to add, certain tunes can be overused due to the low amount of actual music on the OST. 

     The animation was handled by Asread, and don't feel too sorry if you haven't heard or them. They've only ever been credited with making 7 anime series as well as a couple OVA's, so understandably, the animation is fairly average. Oh, it's not bad, but there's never any time the animation is superb or standout moments, though they do tend to make the series's many fight scenes engaging and exciting. The character designs are a bit of a mixed bag, with some designs looking semi-realistic, but others quite literally resemble the Pillsbury dough boy. I'm not even joking. All in all though, most of them are distinctive, which is really all you can ask for, and once you see these characters again after watching the show, you should recognize them instantly. 

So, in conclusion I'm not going to say Mirai Nikki is a good anime, or that it's even worth your time. Its great premise get completely ruined by the over-the-top plot twists and bland characters. It handles its mature themes in an immature fashion, and pretty much falls apart plot-wise by the end of it. Though if you're in the mood for a good ol' bloodbath to turn your brain off to, I'm going to not stop you.This series can be fun at times, even decent, but that quite long list of problems I mentioned above will stunt that pretty quick. Also if you don't like Yuno's character you're basically screwed enjoyment wise. Yeah. She's crazy.... and stuff.

Final Verdict: 4/10

P.S: You'd think Deus would have saved a lot of time by just picking slips of paper out of a hat.

Recommended Anime:

Another

More if you're leaning toward the horror side of Miria Nikki, and are expecting a blood-bath. If you you're ok with the mystery and such, this should be an awesome watch for you, because it certainly delivers with the gore. 

Deadman Wonderland

OK, so I never actually completed this anime, but it shares a lot of physical characteristics with Mirai Nikki, wacky insane side-kick included. 

Goodbye for now guys.

Like the review? Click here for my review on My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU.

Or here for the first part on my Top Ten Anime OP's countdown.

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