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| The main character of Mirai Nikki/Future Diary - Yuuki Amano |
Well here it is, my first anme review, and what a series it is!
Mirai Nikki or Future Diary in English is a series that I have been interested in for some time, but unfortunately due to other projects and happenings, I was unable to watch it. This all ended a few weeks ago when I just finished the AIKa series and was looking for something new and exciting to grab my interest.
I remembered watching the pilot episode on a video streaming site back in March and thinking 'You know, this could be really interesting.' Overall, a fairly accurate opinion. But enough about my reasons for watching it, the review is what you want to read! Let's try and find the reasons why you should watch it!
Warning: This post will contain plot spoilers, possibly major, but I will try to be careful with wording.
Plot:
Future Diary is a horror/thriller anime that is based around 12 characters known as Diary Owners. The Diary Owners are people who have been keeping diaries across various mediums (phones, scrolls, books etcetera) and have a common 'imaginary' friend known as Deus Ex Machina or The God of Time and Space.
Unfortunately, Deus (voice by Norio Wakamoto) is not long for this world and is looking for a means to entertain himself, while simultaneously selecting a new successor for his position. Being the God of Time sounds pretty cool right? Well, keep reading.
Deus brings together twelve people from completely different ages, backgrounds and positions of power and grants them a new device, a Future Diary. The Diary has the ability to tell the Owner their future for a certain period of time, but the future it displays is unique to a person and their abilities. For example, one of the main characters, Yuuki Amano's Diary only tracks his observations around him, and not much about himself while another character's Diary will only work for investigations, or escaping.
The twelve selected Diary Owners are put in to a rather sadistic game, which gives them the objective of killing all the other Diary owners and assuming the position of God. Some of the contestants are highly interested in this position and go all-out to kill the other Owners, while others do not even want to be involved in the game and choose to hide, hoping they will be forgotten.
The main complications with the game arise due to the nature of it - murder. Third party characters and relatives get involved and the story becomes incredibly complex and involving several high-ranking officers and politicians, meanwhile the two main characters (who are just high school students) struggle to survive against daily attacks and betrayals while trying to keep their friends out of trouble.
Character Development:
Yuuki Amano (voiced by Misuzu Togashi) is the first character we see in the series and no offence intended, but he's a loner. He refuses to socialize and has absolutely no interest in people. This becomes more apparent when you overhear a conversation between his classmates explaining that all he does is type his thoughts and observations in to his phone - a diary. This doesn't change when he gets home, as he lives alone most of the time because of his mother's work and his father not being around due to a recent divorce.
This will immediately start showing why his nature is so closed-off and why he shuts himself in his room, hides under a blanket and zones out to speak Deus and Murmur.
The other 'main' character is Gasai Yuno (voiced by Tomasa Murata), an innocent and friendly looking girl who is also pulled in to Deus' twisted game. Notice how I said innocent and friendly looking. Yuno has some very dark secrets and a schizophrenic personality that displays itself at least once per episode. She also has some of the creepiest facial expressions you'll ever see, as well as a habit for saying incredibly dark things in a cutsie tone while laughing like a maniac. She's weird, but a very good counterpart to our harmless and scared Yuuki-kun.
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| The incredible - yet immensely creepy - Gasai yuno. Stares in to your soul, right? |
The other Diary Owners also have relatively well-explained plots and sometimes have most of an episode dedicated to them. It was a very good decision that the author made to not focus the story entirely on Yuuki and Yuno, but display the conflicts/alliances between other Diary Owners as well. In most cases, the characters that are introduced earlier have deeper back-stories, but that is to be expected of a short series.
There are also a large number of third-party characters involved as well, some of which could do with more detailed explanations, but I find that to be the case with almost every anime.
On a whole, the character development is actually very good and should keep you interested throughout the series, Yuuki's emotional moments might get a bit annoying, but he's only a lonely high school kid, his character is probably very accurate.
Animation, Voicing and Music:
Animation throughout the series is pretty solid, there don't seem to be any lazy moments where the animators have used duplicated frames (not as common these days as it was back in the early 2000s). If there are any, they aren't as noteworthy as the ones in AIKa, which same 3 second fighting animation displayed for over 30 seconds on two to three separate occasions in a single episode. It might just be because I watched the uncensored Blu-ray version, but it did seem particularly smooth. Also, with a series like Future Diary, you cannot enjoy it to the full extent while it is censored. This doesn't apply if you're squeamish, but who doesn't enjoy an animated bloodbath? I'm not crazy...
Voice acting is very well cast, I don't often have an issue with voice casting in Japanese dubs, but in some cases their English counterparts drive me insane. Naruto and his 'Believe it' catchphrase springs to mind, or the 4Kids Sanji from One Piece, ugh.
Misuzu Togashi is a very good match for our protagonist, Amano Yuuki, a very convincing match. This is especially true considering that until I did research for this post, I had no idea that Yuuki's Seiyuu was a female. Whoops.
My hat goes off to Tomosa Murata for her role as Gasai Yuno. It takes a lot of talent to execute such a weird character so well. The ability to say those disturbing sentences without ruining your characters tone is not a gift everyone is blessed with. I do however find it strange she has not had more roles in the anime scene, but she's definitely one to watch.
The music of Future Diary is not something that jumps in your face, the scene changes and background music were always subtle, but effective. This series has a lot of flashbacks, thoughts and some heavy dialogue scenes lasting for several minutes, so the subtle music goes appreciated. I've lost count of how many times I've been watching a Hollywood film and I've not been able to hear the dialect due to some deafening (albeit good) musical score.
The opening and ending themes are not at all subtle though. This is also a good point since an anime so largely focussed around murder and survival wouldn't work with a cute moe opening theme since it would kill the entire atmosphere almost as brutally as the show kills characters. The titles and artists of the opening and ending themes can be found at the bottom of the post.
Ending:
Probably the lowest note of the series in my opinion, but it still wasn't terrible. The ending left much to be desired, however this year the OVA titled Future Diary: Redial was released. The OVA is the length of a single episode and is used to fill in the gaps and better explain the events after the closing of the series. It does a good job of this, as well as giving a more final ending to an otherwise exceptional series.
Conclusion:
My final thoughts on this anime are that it is absolutely worth watching. It's not often these days that I will sit and watch ten to fifteen episodes in a single day, but I found Mirai Nikki hard to put down. The characters and plot will keep you interested, the frequent twists will completely throw you, and the cliffhanger endings to each episode will make it even harder to avoid saying 'I'll just watch one more episode.'
Watch it. It will be worth it.
Don't forget to share, subscribe and comment on my first review. Let me know what you think and what you want from these reviews in the future (my Diary doesn't tell me)!
Music used in Mirai Nikki (Future Diary):
Opening Theme:
#1: "Kūsō Mesorogiwi" (空想メソロギヰ) by Yousei Teikoku (eps 2-14)
#2: "Dead END" by Faylan (eps 15-)
Ending Theme:
Links:
#1: "Blood teller" by Faylan (eps 1-14)
#2: "Filament" by Yousei Teikoku (eps 15-)
Source: Anime News Network
Anime News Network: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=12896
My Anime List: http://myanimelist.net/anime/10620/Mirai_Nikki_%28TV%29
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Diary
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