Mar 9, 2016
Warning: This review includes a description of the premise and first events within the anime (spoilers?) as well as questions regarding the story. Writing the review without it would have resulted impossible for me.
Mirai Nikki is a story about two morons with the ability to -literally- read the future from their phones, who are showered day after day with an absurd amount of people who can also read the future and all are trying to kill him. One moron is extremely moronic, while the other one, a mere psychopath who wants to protect the extreme moron. The first one most of the time is a
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coward, physically weak, and mentally disabled by being neither wise nor smart. Essentially being, you know, an extreme moron. The only thing he has going for him is being extremely lucky and good at throwing darts (or is he lucky at it? It was never clear what it was). Even though the psychopath is yandere towards the extreme moron and also, you know, a psychopath, her smarts save the two characters' asses every god dammed time.
Mirai Nikki was such a huge let down. For starters, the music is far from good. The drawing is casual at best. And the story is squeezed at parts where it needs pause for character development.
Even though all these 12 people, who can -literally- read the future, are complete estrangers, they all start meeting with each other since day one, and the meetings never stop! A complete disconnect from reality! Sure, “this is an anime” you say, but the story is set in the real world with the premise as a plot twist to reality. Therefore the only thing to change reality should be their ability to read the future. How is that even enough to find each other, and so many, from day 1? At the end of each episode they try to explain how this happens, but it still falls short (for example: How have the corpses at Yuno’s house not been discovered (just the smell of the rotting bodies with her away to the neighbors!)? how did 12th know about 9th? How could 12th even walk being blind? How did Yuno know 12th was blind (Oh wow she is so smart! Right? Wrong. Smartness that equal to guessing correctly without a clue.)? How did 9th know and find Extreme-Moron so easily since at best she only knew about 3rd’s homicides (school gossiping about his new weird actions can be hardly be a reason for it)? And the list goes on…)
Each character at best is given 30 seconds to 1 minute of character development as well as an explanation to their past, which is barely enough to understand them and side with them at all. Alright, fine, so 10 out of those people are secondary characters, but what about the main characters? The protagonist is introduced to be a completely loser and the author(s) hardly even try to give us a single quality about him with which to cheer for him! “Ooh! Big deal he is compassionate! He doesn’t play by the rules and thus he is special!” but how in the fuck does this TROPE help at all when the scenario at which they are at is a Hunger-Games-esque one of kill or be killed. At least in the Hunger Games Katniss was smart and actively sought ways to win (survive) while being a good person. Here Extreme-Moron doesn’t even seem to want to live, and unlike Kaneki from Tokyo Ghoul, even by episode 5 he is still the same complete moron with little to no sign of character progression. Once here and there he shows courage, but those actions rather just feel like a drag on the necessity for him to take action, after most of the job has been done by his psychotic girlfriend.
I haven’t finished the series but I can foresee the tone won’t change much. I came hoping for a cat-and-mouse and contest-of-smarts anime like Death Note or Erased, but here I am watching a burlesque display of how 12 people meet and kill each other, both under the unlikeliest circumstances ever, effectively making me suffer disbelief, and thus not taking the story seriously, which in turn causes complete disconnect and rage for wasting my time on it. I suppose it's my fault for expecting it to be more than it actually was. I suppose I will finish it since I always try to finish what I watch, and additionally only thing it seems to do right is to always end in a cliffhanger. Still, I cannot help but to think “Such an amazing premise, such a horrible delivery.”
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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