I’m just going to start off by saying that it is quite silly. Don’t get me wrong and start attacking my page, because “silly” doesn’t always equate to “bad” (case in point Gurren Lagann is one of my favourite anime of all time). But keep in mind that I didn’t say that the particular brand of silly is awesome. The premise is actually bloody interesting. It revolves around several people in a battle royale where the winner becomes the god of time and space and they are all equipped with supernatural cellphones that can tell the future (also known as “future diaries”, hence the show’s title) which they use to their advantage. A large perk of a premise like this is that it is perfect for setting up plot twists and for creating tension. Boy does the show use this to its advantage. Alliances are forged and broken by betrayal, good guys turn out to be bad guys and major characters are killed off. This makes the show unpredictable which we can all agree is a good thing. It also places a lot of focus on the side characters as well as the main characters as they off each other and help each other out so it feels more authentic than a lot of other survival game stories where the side characters are all placed in line for our protagonist to fight.
I am now going to address what I said earlier about the show being silly. It is over the top. And trust me, that is an understatement. Homicidal five year olds, zombies, the god of space and time (Deus Ex Machina) and the list goes on. Don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with being over the top to a certain extent (I love the Sin City graphic novels for crying out loud!) but there are times when the show tries way too hard and certain things just don’t fit to the point where you get the impression that the show doesn’t know what it wants to be. The show wants you to believe it is a dark psychological action/thriller. There are times when the over the top nature works in its favour, for example I thought the addition of zombies and a crazy religious cult added to the cool factor of the show as well as setting up entertaining action scenes (because honestly who doesn’t want to see a cute pink haired yandere fight zombies with a goddamn axe) but there were times when I felt like the show was saying “Oooh, we’re super dark and edgy because we have a five year old psychopath” and this gave me the feeling that they were trying too hard and made it seem quite stupid. And when you’ve added a character with an army of robot dogs, it stops being simply stupid and becomes fucking childish. Stuff like this prevents you from taking it seriously when the show obviously wants you to. That being said, the show was rather entertaining. Like I said earlier, it is quite unpredictable and has a certain cool factor. However the things I mentioned did hinder my enjoyment, which is quite a sad thing.
The characters are without a doubt the weakest part of the show and were what held it back the most. First off there’s fourteen year old Yukiteiru Amano, or Yukki as he is often referred to. He’s our protagonist. Yukki is dragged into the game by his friend Deus Ex (the god of space and time and the guy who started this competition) who Yukki had thought was his imaginary friend up until that point. Yeah, this fourteen year old boy has a fucking imaginary friend. Yeah that’s right, he’s a fucking loser! To further emphasize this point, before being dragged into this little game his only hobbies were recording mundane shit on his phone and unenthusiastically throwing darts (a feat which comes to his advantage later). But what’s he like? Well calm down and I’ll tell you. He’s a pussy. He cowers, cries and whimpers throughout the majority of the series making the viewer want to jam a screwdriver though his skull. “But dude, you have Shinji Ikari in your favourites, you’re contradicting yourself you biased prick!” is what some of you might be thinking right now. Well, Shinji is realistic and that’s the reason I like him. Yukki pushes this angst and wimpiness to the point where it’s not credible and exaggerated wimpiness is not something an average viewer would find appealing. I love Kamina from Gurren Lagann for his exaggerated manliness but that is an appealing characteristic in a protagonist. I guess the writer thought to himself “I’ll be different and put a scared kid in the role of the protagonist instead of the generic righteous leader type we’re so used to in these types of stories”. This would have been a really good idea if he was given more complexity than just “being a pussy” and if he were given a reason for being a pussy. A good example is the aforementioned Shinji Ikari. He’s an interesting and well thought out character that has layers (insert Shrek joke here). He also has good reason for being the way he is. His father treats him like shit and his mother died under dreadful circumstances when he was very young and to top that all off he’s forced into a situation that he knows fuck all about by his father. Yukki on the other hand grew up with a really chilled mom and an initially awesome dad (SPOILER: becomes a cunt later in the series) and his situation is nowhere near as bad as Shinji’s. And besides, Yukki makes Shinji look like Kenshiro on steroids. One Youtube anime reviewer referred to him as Noodledick Vaginasaurus and I can see why. He is without a doubt one of the worst protagonists I have ever seen. Towards the end of the series they try to make him seem like a badass but this drastic change feels really sudden and he doesn’t stay that way for very long so his character becomes very inconsistent.
The next character that I’m going to talk about is the character everyone thinks of when this series is brought up. Yes, the one and only Gasai Yuno. She’s become one of the most popular and iconic anime characters in recent years as well as the waifu of many lonely weeaboos. She is a psychopath who falls in love with good old Noodledick to the point where she is dangerously obsessed. She is also a contender in the survival game and is on Yukki’s side and she protects his useless ass from the other contestants. She flips between being a cute naïve teenage girl to being an all out psycho at the drop of the hat and these changes are unexpected and the transition is great. This genuinely creeps out the viewer and the fact that it can happen so suddenly adds to the sense of unpredictability that I mentioned earlier. She’s a fun character to watch too. Her insanity paired with her cuteness gives her a certain bizarre charm. However, as fun as she is, she is definitely not flawless. She’s ultimately just an archetype (that archetype being yandere) and this is a bit disheartening as it tells you that the writers were being lazy and just decided to use a simple, set archetype instead of adding more to said archetype. Another issue I had which was very much subjective was that she called out the protagonist’s name constantly throughout in a high pitched tone of voice. This was cute and pretty creepy the first couple of times but it got to a point where I felt like shoving screwdrivers in my fucking ears. She’s a really enjoyable yet problematic character who is frankly a tad overrated.
Now for the rest of this show’s cast. Unfortunately they’re the show’s worst flaw in my humble opinion. A lot of them are copied and pasted from other, better shows (we’ve got Kaworu and Revy here), are given less screen time than they deserve, feel like they don’t belong in this sort of show, have REALLY overblown backstories and for the most part they don’t behave in a believable way (dude, one doesn’t become someone’s close friend in three minutes).
Now let’s delve into the show’s art. It’s not spectacular but it’s definitely not bad. I particularly liked the depth and detail they gave the eyes of the characters and the scenes in Deus Ex’s world which had a really dreamlike quality due to all the purple used. The overall designs of the characters are standard fare and there is nothing about them that really stands out as being really good or really bad, with the exception of Deus who has the misfortune of being done in shitty CG.
The same can be said about the show’s soundtrack. It does its job sufficiently enough but when I think back there were no tracks that really stood out. The same can’t be said about the show’s OP tracks though. The show’s first opening is without a shred of doubt one of the greatest of all time. The contrasting red and whites and the song’s fast pace and grand scale are enough to send chills down one’s spine. The second opening is memorable for a different reason though. It’s in FUCKING ENGRISH and it is therefore goddamn hilarious.
In conclusion Mirai Nikki isn’t the deep mature thriller its fanbase make it out to be but it certainly isn’t the harbinger of anime’s decay like many critics would have you believe. Granted it can get REALLY fucking stupid but it can also be a ton of fun at times too. Whether I’d recommend this show or not doesn’t matter because you’ll probably watch it regardless due to its immense popularity. Since I’m more or less impartial to the show it’s not something I’d recommend but at the same time it’s not something I’d tell people to stay away from. So that about wraps up my review. Sayonara suckers.
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