Mirai Nikki – 03

Keigo, a detective and the fourth diary user, sends Amano and Yuno off on a fun-filled, romantic date to serve as bait for Minene Uryuu, whom they have to finish off. She’s sneaking around the city, staying in the shadows and suffering from the pain of losing her eye. A mystery dude who turns out to be another diary user carries her to a secluded cabin where he drugs her in hopes of gaining intel on the other users she knows. Just when Amano’s fears about Yuno are allayed, she brings him to her house, where he pokes around and finds rotting corpses, making him flee from her in terror.

For some reason, we kept noticing unintentional references to other series this week. Like Deadman Wonderland, you have your girly-sounding guy (Amano, actually voiced by a girl); your seemingly harmless, cute girl (Yuno); amusement park complete with ferris wheel; and the pretty but psycho bitch with a horrible, pain-filled childhood (Minene Uryuu), who gets more depth this week. Like Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai, there was your sexy pool scene. Like Blood-C, you have things starting out all happy and bubbly, but with hints of unease, and then it gets real dark real fast, and our whelpish hero is in a very bad way. We have to say, while we were somewhat convinced Yuno was helping Amano out of love, we had no idea it would be “I want to use your entrails as hair ties and eat your face” love. Poor Amano…

With Minene – the would-be top threat – neutralized this week by the man with the bag on his head, Yuno is our wolf in sheep’s clothing this week. What’s so scary about her is that she’s really capable of anything; but hasn’t yet to come out and said what she wants or what she’ll do, which is good for a horror story, because what’s more fearsome than the unknown? Creepier still is the fact Amano will have a very hard time avoiding her, since her diary is basically set up to stalk him. So kudos to the show for starting out with a bafflingly placid date complete with acute bikini top loss, and taking it in the complete opposite direction. Now Amano needs to grow some bullocks.

Rating: 3.5

Mirai Nikki – 02

Amano’s school is bombed by the terrorist Minene Uryuu, AKA the Ninth. She then holds the school hostage and promises to finish the job until they hand him and Yuno over. They do, but the Fourth, a policeman, arrives and evens the odds. They’re able to defeat the Ninth with teamwork, but she escapes before they can kill her. Amano, Yuno, and the Fourth agree to form a “Diary Alliance”.

A school being bombed: we remember that about the brief OVA preview for this show. Turns out the perpetrator is a psychopathic pink maid with purple hair who was able to fill a school with bombs and mines. She wants godhood, and she’s good and ready to kill whoever gets in her way. This episode did a good job establishing just how much danger Amano is in, but also how his future/destiny is always changing as his actions deviate from what the diaries say.

And it isn’t only his phone. Everyone has a special diary that gives them an edge. Amano’s sweats the details; Yuno’s is all about him, whom she calls “Yukkii”, while the detective and bomb maid have diaries of investigation and escape, respectively. It’s a neat plot device that I hope the series continues to use in clever ways. It is indeed an interesting narrative that comes right out and gives you an outcome, and then puts the onus of preventing that outcome on the characters. It’s also nice that they didn’t forget about Amano’s prowess with darts, which will surely keep coming in handy moving forward.

Rating: 3.5

Mirai Nikki – 01

Amano Yukitaru obsessively records everything he observes into a cell phone diary, while interacting with the rest of the world as little as possible. He then escapes into his imagination, where the god of time and space, Deus, grants him the future in the form of predetermined diary entries that foretell the future. When he reaches a “dead end”, he learns there are others with “future diaries” like him, including his classmate Gasai – and that the goal of Deus’ game is to kill all the other diary holders, in order to gain his throne.

A six-minute sneak peak of this show way back in December was enough to intrigue us. So, Future Diary is basically Death Note. When you have a future diary, your only threats are those with the same power as you. In Amano’s case, these seem to be people who aren’t just content to survive using their diaries as Life Cliff Notes; they want to become gods. Only one can, so there’s gonna be death. Of course, Death Note had a lot more setup, and it was a while before Light was aware of other death notes in existence; the pace of key revelations is much quicker here.

This episode purposefully got most of the technical stuff out of the way, set the stakes, and introduced the main players. Basically, Amano needs to Gorilla Glue his phone somewhere on his body, because it’s his life now. He’s been sought out by Gasai, who works with him to off a serial killer, but considering how creepy she acts around him and the fact she’s a rival, trusting her isn’t the best idea. I wonder how long their uneasy alliance will last. Shows that mess around with time in a clever and compelling way are always welcome. Here’s hoping this is one of them.

Rating: 3.5