For those of you who don’t know what Mirai Nikki is, it means “Future Diary” in English. It’s about a boy, Amano Yukiteru, who isn’t very interested in many things. The one thing he does like to do is record daily events in his diary in his cell phone – he calls himself an “observer”. He also has an imaginary friend, aptly named Deus Ex Machina. One day, Deus decides to make Yuki’s cell phone into a “Future Diary” (Mirai Nikki) which records his future for the next consecutive ninety days, as if Yuki had already made entries for them. At first, Yuki thinks he is the only one with this mysterious diary, until he has a near-freakish encounter with Gasai Yuno, the most popular girl in his school. Suddenly, Yukiteru is plunged into a dangerous survival game where having your cell phone broken or destroyed means that you yourself will die as well.
Getting back to the OVA, it’s quite obviously aimed at people who actually read Mirai Nikki, which makes sense considering that it was bundled with volume eleven. As stated before, I was pleased with the OVA in general – the scenes were adapted accurately, the animation was pretty good, and the seiyuu were good as well. I’ve always imagined Yuno’s voice a little deeper for some reason, but it’s passable as well. The only thing I’ll nitpick at is that Deus’ CGI looked a bit weird, but that’s really all. All in all it is a good OVA for the manga, although I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who hasn’t actually read it before. In all honesty, it seems more like a long trailer than an actual anime episode (which is what it was probably meant to be, anyway). I really do hope that Mirai Nikki gets a chance to become a full-fledged anime series, since it has a lot of potential and, judging by the OVA, it’d look pretty good, too. And with the manga having just ended, I hope that an anime series is in order.
(Coincidentally, as I post this review, the anime is nearing its end.)
