Anime Review: Mirai Nikki/Future Diary

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.

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:

#1: "Blood teller" by Faylan (eps 1-14)

#2: "Filament" by Yousei Teikoku (eps 15-)

Source: Anime News Network

Links:

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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08/09/2013 - The Last of Us Platinum and Bamboo Blade

This is a late post since I forgot to change it from a draft (derrrrrp).My bad!

IT'S OVER! IT'S FINALLY OVER! This morning I finally finished the multiplayer on The Last of Us and promptly began playing Demon's Souls. It's kind of sad really, considering I did incredibly well on my last six or so matches. What really sucks is that I finished Week 12 with less than 85 survivors... Which isn't enough to get the skull mask. Lame, but, oh well. Here's a photo!

The Last of Us - Platinum Trophy (It can't be for nothing) - FINALLY!

I'm hoping that when they release the DLC for this game that it is purely singleplayer content - maybe explaining a bit more about when Joel met Tess or some of the past between Bill and Frank, that would be cool right?

But, this is Naughty Dog we're talking about, and considering what the DLC trophies were like for Uncharted 3, we probably know how it will actually pan out. Getting the platinum trophy also means that now I have to write a review on the game, not sure how well I will keep my polite demeanour when it comes to reviewing the multiplayer, but I'll try!

As I said before, I've started Demon's Souls and though the difficulty is incredibly punishing, it's still very much enjoyable. I was actually tempted to do it via the glitching route and duplication which makes the game much easier, but now I'm not so sure about doing it that way. The main thing that is tempting me to do it, is how easy it is to execute the duplicating glitch.

Another thing to look forward to is that I've ordered my copy of Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD from the UK and got a deal to save £5 on the Prima Walkthrough. The only reason I decided to buy the walkthrough was because of the exceptional quality of Prima's The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Legendary Edition walkthrough.

I'll make sure to upload a picture once the package has arrived! Unfortunately, I still don't have enough funds to build my new PC, which is sort of hindering my plans considering how limited I am with the functionality of this laptop.

Finally, I started watching Bamboo Blade! Unfortunately, I couldn't find a very good version so the subtitles are not spectacular, but it does not take much away from the plot. I would prefer 720p or 1080p, but I can cope with 480p if I have to. My girlfriend is trying to get me to watch Cowboy Bebop next and I think I've given in. I wouldn't normally, but it has been reviewed many times as an 'anime masterpiece' so I don't have much to lose.

Speaking of my girlfriend, it's her birthday tomorrow! I'm not sure I'll get much work done on the reviews, but I'll make sure to post a daily update as always (and not forget to change it from draft status).

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06/09/2013 - The Last of Us Multiplayer and World War Z

Good evening! It's been another day of multiplayer on *that* game, and as usual it hasn't been particularly fun. I've spent a good portion of the day trying to finish up this wretched multiplayer and in all honesty, I'm losing the will to live.

The most recent live update has tweaked the Explosives Expert perk, the Hunting Rifle and the Flamethrower. Let's evaluate these one-by-one, shall we?

1) Explosives Expert - This ability has been nerfed from 15% for stage one and 30% for stage two to 10/20%, and rightfully so. As a forum poster stated on the official Naughty Dog forums the other day "Factions mode should be renamed to Molotov Dodgeball". Even with the reduced radius from the nerf, molotovs are still far too easy to come by. Not to mention pretty much every player that has unlocked the perk uses it. I'm going to be a whiner here but today in a single match of Survivors consisting of six rounds I saw twenty-seven molotovs and twenty-three nail bombs. This is ridiculous, there were more explosives than bullets.

2) Hunting Rifle - The buff for this gun was actually needed, considering the average player who wanted to try sniping would just get annihilated by someone using a semi-auto on the other side of the map. They increased the scope speed and reduced the reload time, thus making the gun more feasible during high-level matches. I still prefer the semi-auto and burst rifle, but I do like the improvements.

3) Flamethrower - Another buff that was probably needed, however I think ND went a bit overboard considering the speed that the flamethrower inflicts damage now can destroy all your armor and kill you in less than three seconds. Ouch. Still, it's more avoidable than a molotov and rarely used, so I guess I can't complain.

The next screenshot (followed by even more whining) will display how terrible the matchmaking system still is. <sarcasm/>Enjoy my pro photography skills!

Naughty Dog and their 'much improved' matchmaking process... Yeah, no.

As you can clearly see by the above photo, it still sucks. I wonder if their system couldn't grasp that sticking the four highest ranked players on the same team was a really bad idea, especially in a 'no parties' match.

Although all the above information is negative. I have one that really takes the biscuit. Today I was one shot (instant KO) by a 9mm pistol to the chest while wearing full body armour. I think some people might be exploiting a bug. Has this happened to anyone else? If so, let me know!

In other slightly happier news, I pre-ordered my copy of Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD Remix! Unfortunately it won't arrive here until the 24th of September, but I can live with that.

No news on finalizing my PC build either. If I had the money I'd be tempted to buy one of the new 8Pack systems from Overclockers UK. The guy who is designing and building them has a damn good reputation and several records under his belt.

I also watched World War Z today which wasn't actually that bad, although it was pretty much the plot for every other zombie movie and novel. I don't really have any gripes with the movie, but some of the plot had flaws. The entire opening scene looked as if it had been ripped from The Last of Us intro.

Well that's enough ranting from me. The Mirai Nikki review is almost ready and I'm very sorry for the delay, but I'm a perfectionist when it comes to writing these reviews.

As usual, let me know any of your opinions and thoughts on the topics discussed today. I'm very interested in talking to some other people who have watched Mirai Nikki to get their opinions on the series and the Redial OVA.

Overclockers/8Pack Builds: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=43&catid=2474&subid=2642
The Last of Us Live Update Notes: http://community.us.playstation.com/t5/The-Last-of-Us-Multiplayer/Live-Update-to-Multiplayer/m-p/41533903#U41533903

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04/09/2013 - Finished Mirai Nikki and The Last of Us Multiplayer

So it happened... I finished Future Diary. I can't say that it's a good thing either since I was really enjoying it. But I'm glad I didn't have to wait two years for the 'Redial' OVA, unlike the people who originally watched the series did. That must have really sucked.

Since the series is now finished, I guess I'll be doing my first anime series review tomorrow. That should be interesting since it will probably take a long time to write/proofread. The next series I'll be watching will most likely be Bamboo Blade, that said I also have Cowboy Bebop on standby as well.

As the post title states, I also did some TLOU multiplayer today, getting up to Week 4, Day 2 of my second journey. The sad part is that it has by far been the most infuriating day ever since I started playing the multiplayer. No less than five times was I kicked from the game at the end of the match when a team had won/lost. I lost approximately 22000 parts and five days of progression. It gets more annoying when you calculate it further as I might have to play the multiplayer for an extra hour. The sensation of rage is similar to that which you feel when you die in a Final Fantasy after not having saved it for the entire area. AAAARRRGGGGHHH!
Still I guess I can't complain, at least the game has given me my moneys worth, even if it was sort of a crappy way of going about it.

Oh and there was a live multiplayer patch released for The Last of Us today in an attempt to make the matches fairer. You can guess the impact it had, almost zero. I think another think that the phrase 'almost zero' can be attributed to is the number of times Naughty Dog has acknlowedged that they have failed.

I need to focus intensely on finishing TLOU so I can get around to playing Kingdom Hearts HD and One Piece Pirate Warriors... I'm pretty bored of Fireflys and Hunters. Oh and molotovs, can't forget the molotovs.
Sadly I don't have any more updates on my PC as I still don't have the finance to finish the entire build. Of course the disaster that occured only a few hours ago involving the chemical explosions that engulfed two of the Hynix plants also put a damper on that project, as they are some of the biggest manufacturers of DDRM on the planet. I'm not sure how much of an impact it will have on the end-consumer, but I highly doubt it will be positive.

That's all for the evening guys. Don't forget to subscribe to the thread and follow my profiles. You might have noticed I also added a gallery page, feel free to check it out whenever you read these posts!

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03/09/2013 - Mirai Nikki Marathon!

I said I would do it, and I did. Although it's not quite on the level of my 25 episode a day One Piece marathons, 9 episodes in a row is sort of intense. It was mixed with shopping for PC components (which turned out to suck more than I expected) but I'm still proud! I should be proud... right?

I made the mistake of thinking I was starting to understand this anime, but no, it just keeps getting weirder.

Warning: Spoilers

I pretty much expected the Fourth to turn out to be a douche, although he did have a decent motive to want to become God. The Ninth is also starting to grow on me as a character, even though she's a globally known terrorist. But, with only seven episodes left in the series there aren't many characters left to be revealed, and not many more that are still alive.

It's nice to see that Yuno's character is starting to develop a bit more, even if she is just getting more and more psychotic with each episode. The imprisonment part with Yuuki was weird even for her, and the whole booby-trapping the entire Hotel was crazy. Credit to the author who came up with the pickaxe in the elevator idea though, that surprised me.

Still, Akise is also proving to be an interesting character, but I think he's a bit too intelligent for his age. He reminds me a bit of Light from the Death Note series, just slightly less insane.

I also have to give credit to Yuuki. While I'm not a fan of main characters that are slightly pathetic - see Haruyuki in Accel World - he's doing well to have not lost his mind after the amount he has been through, I think I would have given up by that point.

The good thing about the plot of Mirai Nikki is that it keeps you on edge most of the time since you never know which Diary Owner is going to turn up and what kind of ridiculous power his Diary will present him with. The Seventh's Diaries were cool, albeit pretty cheesy and I quite like the Ninth's Escape Diary as well.

I'm aiming to finish the series tomorrow if my time allows me, but it might take a few more days yet, so you guys will need to wait patiently for the series review! No spoilers, I really want to enjoy this series. Especially considering I've managed to avoid using a Wiki to answer something I've been curious about, instead of waiting for something to actually happen.

In terms of PC component hunting, I tried selecting some websites that offer international shipping, only to be shot down by all of them. Tigers Direct wanted $500 for shipping and using Amazon would mean that I would need to pay $300 in import taxes. No thanks.

Well that's all for tonight, I really need to sleep. Hopefully the stupidly loud thunder won't wake me up.

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01/09/2013 - Future Diary/Mirai Nikki

So I finally got around to watching this series after watching the pilot a few months ago, I have to say it's pretty amazing!

I've watched a total of ten episodes today, hoping to watch another ten tomorrow. It's pretty graphic in a lot of scenes, especially the bit with the eyeball... Ew. Even so, the plot is well written and there are plenty of twists to keep you interested.

It's definitely worth watching, especially if you can watch it in uncensored Blu-ray, but of course it is not always easy to get your hands on a copy, unless you fancy going the torrenting route... Although, I do wish that anime was more available in a more legal manner, specifically the jpdub/engsub format. I know a lot of anime fans feel the same as me when I say that English dubbed anime just doesn't cut it, except for in certain situations (Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex). The problem even with English dub is that we need to wait a long time for it to be released in TV/DVD format.

I also read a rumour today that the final episode of Shingeki no Kyojin/Attack on Titan will be premiered in Japanese theatres. Hopefully this does not mean that it will not be released on television at all, since that would really suck.

It would seem that AoT has really started losing peoples interest since they aired the 13.5 recap episode. The plot has been much slower until the most recent episodes and even then, it still doesn't seem to have the same viewing figures as it did in the beginning. Maybe 25 episodes is enough for this series considering the manga chapter releases are rather infrequent.

I think the next anime series on my list to watch is Bamboo Blade. I had a brief experience with the English dub but I can't say they did it much justice.

Well that's all, leave a comment and discuss any of the anime mentioned here. I'm particularly looking for opinions on Attack on Titan.

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