It’s anime review time again! I didn’t feel the urge to write a review about any anime from the past season, instead I will talk about my impressions of Mirai Nikki, which ended recently. Mirai Nikki is a 26 episode long anime based on a manga written and illustrated by Sakae Esuno.
It was produced by Funanimation and Asread and aired from October 9, 2011 to April 15, 2012.
I jumped a bit later on the Mirai Nikki bandwagon, but thx to that I had the pleasure to watch nearly the first half of the anime without weekly waiting time. The genre is a mix of supernatural, mystery, psychological-thriller and comedy, with a number of lunatic characters in the cast.
Our main character Yukki is an outsider in his class, he is considered as a strange guy, who always writes random stuff into the diary of his mobile. When he’s at home he retreats into his own fantasy world, there lives a huge creature called Deus Ex Machina who is his “friend” and the god of Time & Space. Yukki’s daily life start to backfire when his delusion turns into reality.
The story starts with revealing the fact that Deus will die very soon and needs a successor to prevent the world from being destroyed, in order to find a new god of Time & Space, a deadly game starts where special mobile phones are given to 12 chosen humans. The mobile phones contain a certain feature that somehow predict events from the future and matching the owners personality, Yukki’s diary for example gives him random details about his surrounding.
At first Yukki is unable to cope with the situation and soon is tailed by a lunatic diary owner. Fortunately he receives help from Gasai Yuno, a girl who seems to be obsessively in love with him, for whatever reason, Yukki is not the kind of boy who attracts girls XD. Yuno is a diary owner as well and her device informs her about everything concerning the activities of Yukki.
Their diaries are covering the flaws of each individual device. Yukki isn’t happy about his slightly strange partner, but for the sake of his own survival he makes the best of a bad bargain and forms a team with Yuno so the dangerous adventure of this exceptional couple begins.
One of the interesting aspects of this anime aside from the setting is the twisted main heroine Yuno. Next to all the other characters she really shines in this anime also her relatively new voice actress Murate, Tomosa did a great job in portraying this, insane yet also likeable character.
On first look Yuno is a smart, dilligent and friendly middle school girl, something like a perfect girlfriend. Unfortunately she is something like a Yandere and acts very clingy and possessive torwards Yukki, she doesn’t want him to have friends and gets super jealous when he interacts with other girls. To the extent that she wants to kill everybody which seems to stand between her and Yukki. He really has a hard time with taking care of her yandere outbreaks and prevent her from doing something stupid.
Another little but nice part of Mirai Nikki is the romance which was developed during the first half. It is cute, to see this couple, they kiss, they are holding hands, all these things we rarely see in romantic anime. Well to be honest it appears like Yuno is forcing herself onto Yukki most of the time, but when Yuno is showing her dere side Yukki seems to have feelings her as well.
As team Yukki and Yuno are fighting against the other remaining diary owners. Most of the work is done by Yuno, she is athletic and ruthless so she makes a good job with protecting Yukki and getting rid of his enemies. Of course she also has her limits in one episode she was so exhausted from slaughtering the enemies, that she was taken hostage by the enemy. Coward Yukki had to man up and saved her from being gangraped, how shocking! Mirai Nikki isn’t demure at all, there is a lot of violence, blood, merciless killings, rape and other cruel things throughout the show.
Aside from the two main characters, we also have a third very interesting character called Minene. In her first appearance she was portrayed as an annoying terrorist bomber in an ridiculous dress, but soon she was developed in a much better direction, soon she became my favorite character.
Sidecharacters also play an important part, but they don’t get the same amount of character development as the three main characters during the show nor are they overly likeable, but as supporting characters they put more spice into the story, some just end up as “cannon fodder”.
Aside from it’s dark and violent atmosphere Mirai Nikki actually offers a lot of comedy moments during the show. There are a lot of hilarious comedy reliefs, especially the specials with Mur Mur, Deus assistant that appear a few times after the ending credits are very entertaining.
During the first half it felt as if Mirai Nikki was trying too hard to be cool and creative, with fancy events, lunatic characters, violence and story twists. A few times I was quite a bit annoyed that the common sense played a subsidiary role, just for the sake of being badass, even in a fantasy setting you can’t bend every rule to your liking. Anyway as the story progressed in Mirai Nikki these flaws vanished and the story and the twists got much more interesting and enthralling.
Mirai Nikki is a very cool anime that does a good job in combining all of the genres it makes use of. The main focus of this anime is pure entertainment, but it also has a very good setting and creative storywriters a few times they were a little too creative, I would say but overall a cool show was created; it is thrilling, funny and sometimes even romantic.
The ending could have been a little more satisfying, but the overall impression is still very good. I would even dare to say that it was one of the better new longer run animes I’ve seen in a while.
Miette-chan
Ah Mirai Nikki, an entertaining series to say the least.
I did not watch the show as I read the manga before. Even now I am still unsure if i liked it or not. I always have to stop and thinking about if the question pops up which only happens with this show.
Over all though, I liked the premise, the different battles between the diary users and hidden secrets where nice.
wieselhead
Yeah but a little silly sometimes to be honest.
Ah I see, well the content should be the same.
The end was a little underwhelming but I liked the whole thing for its creativity and the drugged writer :p
There were many cool twists.
Hoshiko
Great review. I especially appreciate the pros and cons you’ve listed on Mirai Nikki. At least, I know what to expect. Actually, I watched the first episode of this series when it was showing but never pick it up again due to time constraint. It seems to be a fan’s favorite and Yuno seems to be attracting a lot of attention.
wieselhead
Oh really? thank you very much. You can really motivate me, thx to you Im somewhat halfway done with the Witchblade review.
Ah I see, well Nopy and feal87 made me interested in the show, at first it’s a bit weird, but got used to it very soon.
Yuno is definetely an interesting character, if not the best of this show, maybe you’ll like it.
fabrice
I liked the way the ending was done in the TV season. The way it’s only hinted at how Yuuno comes instead of the HAMMER left a mysterious feeling rather than a WTF impression.
To be honest The sense of mystery behind the anime ending was done ALOT better than the utterly disappointing ending that the manga decided to show. Sometimes things left off as a mystery just seems to trigger a better impact.
wieselhead
I don’t know the manga end, but I would like to check it out, maybe at the weekend ^^
feal87
Why Hinata is not in the choice of the poll?! What a sadness!
I’ll go with Yuno as a second choice…:D
Great ending btw…:)
wieselhead
Ah right Hinata was so cute, but I forget about Hinata after the fake corpse episode, I really thought she was dead and it made me suffer because I was quite attached to her.
Haha good choice ^^ At least in one world everybody was happy…
Nopy
Mirai Nikki was one of the more enjoyable series this year. I couldn’t get enough of Yuno and her craziness.
I agree that a few things seemed over the top and ridiculous (Yukki and Yuno stomring the mayor’s office for example), but overall it was a great series.
wieselhead
Yeah it was definetly something I was looking forward to every week.
One of your posts actually convinced me to start this anime, Yuno is love ^^
Sometimes I thought the team behind it took some drugs XD
Mirai Nikki was a great experience
Persocom
I’m looking forward to the entire series being released on DVD through Funimation, I want to own this XD Yuno was by far my favorite character but the whole cast was pretty good, though I could have done without yaoi boy. Yuno’s voice actress is going to be fun to watch climb her way through more roles. Maybe it tried to be too cool a bit, but I don’t believe it was too creative. I guess the first half did have some hard to swallow parts that weren’t very realistic, but then the real world is even more messed up than Mirai Nikki.
wieselhead
Ah good to see you liked it that much ^^ Yaoi boy was a little weird well and also annoying .
That shouldn’t appear too negative from my side, I also liked the show, there were just a few minor details that were a bit over the top 😀
Yeah thats also true somehow.
Pedropinilla
Didn’t watch the anime because I read the manga before and there’re lots anime out there to watch as a new experience. Also, in the manga you find some arcs that the anime doesn’t have and one of them is focused on Minene and is a very nice one (like she).
If you ask me if I like Mirai Nikki I’d say yes… definitely and maybe, maybe, just maaaaaaaybe I’ll watch the anime someday.
wieselhead
It often happens that the anime adaption isn’t as good as the manga, so I don’t think you need to watch the anime.