Apr 23, 2012
Imagine a show that didn’t just “jump the shark” but became the very shark itself during its 26 episode run. Created by manga artist/writer Esuno Sakae, and animated by Asread, Mirai Nikki is an utterly over-the-top, insanely great series that consistently delivered with twists carried out by deus ex machina characters riding a trainwreck of a plot with reckless energy that absorbed every fatal flaw of narration and obliterated them to smithereens.
Mirai Nikki is a balancing act between high camp and the absurdity of classic anime tropes, a dialectical negotiation between the two poles that ebb and flows each episode. Most bloggers failed to note
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this, and chose to highlight only one pole, only to exaggerate its virtues or vices, which deep sixed their critique.
The reason its absurdity succeeded where many others fail because Mirai Nikki established fantastic premises and contrivances, yet remained well-written and consistent in sheer implausibility by sticking within those bounds. When other shows establish clear conditions and then flagrantly ignores them for convenience, they are shoddily written with inconsistencies.
Synopsis: A standard battle royal set in Japan where twelve competitors are selected to participate in a game with mobile phones that predict the future and the last person standing becomes the next “Lord of space & time.” However, the fact that the competing Future Diaries only predicted a possible future, rather than tell it, made for high drama.
Characters
Yukiteru Asano: a socially awkward 14-year-old whose neuroses and psyche became a Rorschach inkblot test of the audience. Being closer to the anti-hero of the spectrum of protagonists, he was less than ideal character for the audience to identify with. However, where clones of Yuji Everylead the Bland ™ populate the landscape of anime, Yukiteru was a self-aware wimp who wanted to break free from his loner habits. His Future Diary was a random one that passively recorded the events around him, but nothing about himself. That missing gap is filled by Yuno’s stalker diary, which consisted solely of information about the object of her obsession.
Yuno Gasai: the indisputable Queen of all yanderes, Yuno struck a fine line between dere dere and yanderu, and switched between them smoothly. Most important, her dere was authentic, not some cheap stand-in for a deeper complex. That alone supercharged every “normal” moment as a fraught one with tension.
The reason the main leads played off each other so well was the deep tension between Yukiteru’s naive yet earnest idealistic desires (friendship & loving family) and Yuno’s paranoid, cynical intuitions. Then again, Yukiteru lacked the convictions his ideals required, and Yuno’s cynicism spurred her violent tendencies, constantly exaggerating the tension with each passing episode. Yukiteru believed in the best of people and wanted to make friends and save everyone, but he did not have the necessary character. Moreover, he could not truly trust Yuno, despite the fact that she was a realist whose cynical intuitions were almost always right.
This tension was one of the strengths of the show – what Yukiteru wanted, Yuno could never give him, despite the fact she often saved his life. Yuno was named after Juno, the Queen of the Roman pantheon. It is worth noting that Juno was transposed from the Greek Hera, the most jealous of all goddesses in mythology. More interesting is how Yuno turned out to be Yukiteru’s anima, the feminine inner personality that helped the male subject to open up emotionally and evolve.
There are many other intriguing characters, such as an albino as the world’s greatest boy detective and an purple-haired atheist terrorist bomber who wears hot pink maid uniforms, but I’ve already said too much.
Conclusion: Mirai Nikki is a masterpiece of execution that surpassed its less than stellar technical merits (animation) and improved on the source material (the original manga was full of plot-holes that ended up being the plot itself). While there certainly are other shows with better production values, stronger characters or stories with greater impact, personally, none of them were as addicting or as much fun. I found myself refreshing the nyaa page every Sunday night for the fansubs. So, I recommend this thrilling rollercoaster ride – as long your level of suspension is held relatively high and your analytic tendencies are kept at a safe distance, then you are guaranteed a visceral thrill rush.
Originally blogged at my blog Heterodoxia.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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