One day, said man decided to put as many fucked up things that he could find on this train. He put razors, cyanide, bombs, and even decided to mix in some sweet things with all of this, like boxes of sugar and a pink dress fit for a loli. He piled the train up, barely being able to fit in all of this stuff onto it, and set it off - awaiting for the end result.
Of course, with the train being overloaded with a bunch of different shit on it, it was only natural that the man's train would crash. And crash it did. However, the man did not care. For he would see it that this trainwreck made all the way to its destination, no matter how much shit he had to pull out of his ass to make it work. And so, with everything in the train clashing into one another as the man pulled his own strings to make the train continue going (no matter how much logic it defied in the end) he eventually got the train to reach the end.
Some people looked at the mess of the train and thought, "Wow! Look at all of this stuff! There's knives in this train? Stuffed animals? Explosives? Books? How marvelous! What a wonderful thing this train has brought everyone!" while others looked at the end result and knew right away what a terrible mess all of this stuff was. Rest of the town was too busy watching K-On! to care.
The moral of the story? When you take as much random crap as you can and load it all into one train, it will crash. And if it crashes you should end it. Oh, and people like trainwrecks.
If you haven't already voted this unhelpful for the seemingly irrelevant story, I'm here to tell you that this tale was my description of "Mirai Nikki's" story - a trainwreck. I won't give you a rundown on what the story is about. You have the synopsis and Google for that, so I'll just get straight to the point. The story doesn't really have any idea where it's going or how it should be directed. They made sure to throw in as many psychotic characters, themes, events and mix it in to be able to attract as many viewers as possible. Seriously, you'll find everything from rape to child abandonment to feeding children grass - all to make the story and characters look like they have depth and the viewer to feel "cool" for watching such miscellaneous shit. The transition between events in the story doesn't flow and all seems very random at best. It's as if these events happen just because the plot demands it.
The story had some strong points - while the fighting scenes didn't always make the most sense or had little to no build-up, they were very entertaining to watch and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't interested in seeing how it played out. However, the poor writing and lack of common sense in most of the story is what makes it so terrible. The plot loses all of it's purpose by the end of the show as well, which just makes everything worse. It's a good story to be mindlessly entertained, but for those of us who were paying attention you can tell just how often things failed to make sense. It was all driven off of shock value and crazy, psychological things.
Speaking of crazy, psychological things, let's talk about the characters, or as I like to call them, "plot devices." Each of the character exists only for convenience of the plot and nothing more, and same goes for their past. Every diary holder, save for First & Eight, has something that makes them insane or crazy in some way or another so that way they can serve purpose to the plot. If these characters weren't all deranged or had these insane backstories than they would be of no threat. So why did a bunch of characters with messed up lives get chosen to be diary holders, and then someone like Yuki (I won't focus on the Eighth) who lives a completely normal life gets chosen as well? It doesn't add up.
As for the characters themselves, Yuki is just a normal guy thrown into a pit of madness. Many hate him, some pity him. Me? I pity the guy. You can't help but look at it realistically - he's a normal kid thrown into this survival game where everyone has some type of mental issue and is out to kill him. This doesn't make his crying and patheticness any less annoying, but it's justifiable. At the same time you can't help but wonder why Yuki was chosen to be a diary holder in the first place considering how out of place he is. Then we have Yuno, the main reason why everyone watches the show. Yandere. That's pretty much her whole personality. (save for her own fucked up past that tries to give her depth and reasoning.) Yuno is like a robot, per say - only programmed when desired to scream "Yukii!", act innocent, then kill people. And apparently that sells. She's a selfish, unreasonable character who's popularity is earned from her constant blushing and murdering. While she was indeed suffering from major emotional trauma, none of that justified the actions that she had towards Yuki and the people he cared about. Despite her "love" for Yuki, she still constantly hurt him and the friends that he loved - doing what she can to turn him against them instead of letting him be happy with both him AND his friends. She's simply an annoying character with no actual depth or personality.
As for the other diary holders, they're mostly forgettable and run a cycle of "appear for a few episodes, fight Yuki/Yuno (mostly Yuno), win, reveal traumatic past, fight Yuno, lose" and repeat. In short, most of the diary holders were just forgettable and used only for the sake of being killed and adding excitement to the show. Side characters like Yuki's friends (namely Akise) are on-screen more and provide more to the story then even most of the diary holders. That doesn't change the fact that everyone is pretty flat. No real development is given the the majority of our cast. The development that does occur for a few of our characters is written or presented pretty poorly with very little reasons to back it up. I won't say too much as to not spoil the series, though. As I said before, these characters are nothing more then plot devices - created to make the story more "interesting" and to shock the viewer into thinking they're looking at an emotionally deep character.
Artwork is nothing to be fawned over and is mediocre at best. Character designs aren't terrible but they aren't something that I'd call memorable either. The bloodbath scenes are the ones that look the most realistic and it's obvious that the animators took their most time in animating these. The animation is pretty fluid throughout the fighting scenes, but it's an overall forgettable performance save for the blood and gore that they flesh out so well.
The soundtrack was again, not very memorable, but you can at least say that it stood out. Emotional music fit those so-called "sad scenes" pretty well (despite the lack of real feeling in the scenes themselves) and was well-played out. The battle music and of course, suspenseful tracks were also well-fitting and it's easy to say that those tracks were what helped keep you on your toes as to when something may be getting ready to happen. The seiyuu's did a pretty good job considering their roles, but based on a personal experience I can't say that hearing Yuno screaming "Yuki!" every episode and listening to Yuki cry every episode didn't get annoying or ear-aching. But overall no real complaints here.
Did I enjoy "Mirai Nikki?" I don't know, do I enjoy not knowing where the hell a story's going? Do I enjoy watching pink-haired girls who only exist for "love" do a bunch of random, messed up stuff to everyone every other episode? Do I enjoy trainwrecks? No, I can tell you right now that I don't. The thing that made this show bearable, however, was Minene and Akise, who were probably the two most interesting characters in this show for me. Minene got more screentime then most of the diary holders and was actually tolerable, while Akise held that intelligent personality that always spices up a show for me. Otherwise no, this show held little to no enjoyment for me. Even though I'm a sucker for thrillers if there's nothing to hold it up, not even a simple plot that can be explained in a few words, then I won't enjoy it.
Overall, "Mirai Nikki" left a bitter taste in my mouth. The lack of any reasonable directing - or even reason at all - along with a mix of unlikeable, forgettable plot devices, or as we all call them characters made this show nearly intolerable for me. It took as many different, fucked up things as possible in order to appeal to the general audience, threw in some blood and a horny yandere and viola! A masterpiece! Or so says the people who only look on the outside of the trainwreck. For those of us who are examining this train and everything that actually happened for the end result to be.. this, then you'll be able to see just how terrible "Mirai Nikki" actually was.
