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Finished Utsuro no Hako to Zero no Maria. What I'm about to write next is not a proper review, however, if you truly wish to know what you may possibly feel after you finish reading this LN then make sure to read it.


It was my first LN that I managed to finish. It's not the first one I read though, I've also read probably 100 manga or so.


I'm saying this because I want to prove a point on my upcoming statement.

I've thrown around a lot of 9's and a lot of 10's when I really enjoyed an anime or a manga, and honestly, I truly ... felt they were worthy of the 10, after all I really did enjoy them that much, upon starting this LN I just couldn't stop, read all 7 volumes in a mere 2 days, fuk it's 5:23AM as I'm writing this, right after I finished reading. This LN is... a masterpiece... I have only considered Spice and Wolf to be a masterpiece before but honestly, after reading this LN I can safely say that all the 10's I've given so far are a mere 8 compared to what I just read, it's hard enough for me to properly write exactly what I'm feeling.


The mystery, the twists & turns, the despair, the love... All of it was amazing, I don't think I'll ever find something as good as this, MAL says I have spent 120 days of my life just reading & watching anime, that's a massive time sink if you think how long that actually is, it's probably a lot more than that since there's a lot of anime & manga I didn't list yet, I don't know if I'll get to 240 days or even 500 days but I get the feeling that what I've just read is the "epitome" of the happy & in general all kinds of feelings that I could feel by reading & watching anime/manga/LNs.

It's a shame that I finished reading this LN.. If only I had a box that could make grant me the wish to forget all the memories of all the manga & LNs I've read so far just so I could read them again.....



;)

Introduction
"Doesn't matter if you're weak. If you struggle hard enough, you can make a miracle happen." — Minene Uryuu, Mirai Nikki, 9th Diary Holder.


Yukiteru Amano (Better known as Yuki) is a loner who never really interact with people and prefers writing a diary on his cell phone with his only companion being an imaginary friend named Deus Ex Machina, the God of Time and Space. However, Yuki soon learns that Deus is not a figment of his imagination but real when Deus makes him a participant in a battle royale with eleven others. Within this "Diary Game", the contestants are given special diaries that can ... predict the future with each diary having unique features that gives them both advantages and disadvantages, whoever wins the battle royale is crowned the successor of Deus as the God of Time and Space.



Story

Although I really enjoyed the anime, it's one of those animes where you can't tell too much about it without spoiling it, I'll do my best to summarize it without spoiling anything for you.

The plot happens around the Main characters, Yukki and Yuno, as mentioned before, Deus Ex Machina, The God of Time and Space, invented a game to choose his successor as God, Yukki had been chosen as one of the players, although against his will he was forced to participate in this game, Yuno was also a player of this game, funny enough, it was a girl from Yukki's own class in school, which then becomes friends with Yukki, in this Kill or be Killed game.

The first episode features Yukki's daily life and his relationship with Deus, along with how he reacted to discovering that his cellphone now was a diary that predicted the future and how Yuno became his "friend".

The story although I loved it, is a bit repetitive and both Yukki and Yuno join forces to defeat the other 10 players, so it's a bit repetitive as they face a new player every second episode.

Although it's repetitive, there's many plot twists, early in the story, half way the story and especially at the end of the story, which in my opinion is what made this such a great anime.

If you aren't much of a philosophical person I don't recommend this anime, this anime can be pretty bland if you don't take your time to think about the characters, how they felt, why they did the things they did, and how would you feel and do in their situation, if you do these things you'll have a greater understanding of how this story was supposed to be watched/read as, a tragedy,romance and action.


Story wise, although it had one or two plotholes from what I've noticed, I really enjoyed the story, which you can only understand completely after watching the end because it's when all the mystery's in the show are resolved, but since it was pretty weak at the start and it took 20's episodes for us to understand the whole story, I give this a 7/10



Characters

Although many people say the characters were pretty badly written, it isn't entirely true, there were bad characters, not gonna deny it, but most people judge Yukki and Yuno just for their initial appearance without disregarding the ending and the story behind them, nor the character progression throughout the story.

Each and every character has a back story on why they are like they are and some of them are very interesting, I personally enjoyed Yuno's backstory, Minene's character progression and the 7th's backstory..


Although I personally find Yuno's character a perfect 10/10, there are a few characters who were completely ridiculous which created the plotholes in this anime, so I give characters and average of 7/10.




Animation

Mirai Nikki was produced by Asread, which had at most a couple of famous series under their belts but nothing extraordinary, although the studio wasn't that great, the animation wasn't bad, again, nothing extraordinary either but I enjoyed the character designs and some of the scenes. I give it a 7.5/10



Sound
Although I'm not the kind of person who watches the openings and endings, the first Mirai Nikki opening was pretty damn good, so good that I watched it all the time until it was switched for the second opening.
The other openings and endings were alright, I watched them all before writing this review and they were fine.
The OST "Time to Battle" I believe it's the name, is also awesome, I find myself even nowadays listening to the 20 minute version of it. I give it a 9/10



Conclusion

Although this is my favorite all time anime and I rated it a 10/10 in MAL, I can't bias or this review is useless, as such I give this anime 2 different ratings.

* If you aren't a psychological person and aren't able to get into the characters shoes and understand them then I would rate this anime 6.5/10.

* If you are indeed a psychological person and you take your time to understand everything the anime tells you about the characters and why they did what they did in the anime and why they acted like that, this can potentially be a 10/10 Romance/Tragedy anime, however basing myself on the not so good characters and not the perfect animation, I would say it's a 8.5/10





I recommend this show as it's my favorite show, there are many people who didn't completely understand the story or didn't take time to think about the story and the characters like the writer intended the viewers to and as such they have bad opinions about the show (which is totally fine) as long as you keep an open mind you'll have one hell of a ride.