Mirai Nikki – 26 (Fin)

As she prepares to kill her, Yuno recalls how her past self used to dream of becoming a happy family. When she delivers the killing strike, it hits her father instead, shielding his daughter. Kurusu arrives and holds Yuno at gunpoint. In the Deus fragment, Yukiteru gradually realizes there’s something he needs to do; his parents support him. He breaks out of the fragment with the Second Murmur, who catches Kurusu’s bullet. Yukiteru tells God-Yuno to kill him, but she stabs herself instead, as neither of them could stab the other in the end. Amano wins the game, and the Third World begins. All the former diary holders, including the other Yukiteru, carry on normal, happy lives, but Yukiteru remains in a void for 10,000 years, unwilling to create a world without Yuno…

Mirai Nikki delivers a powerful and rousing finale, in which everything Yukiteru and Yuno did, and everyone they killed are restored to the time before the game touched them, and it seems to be for the better. The Yuno who sought to reset the game and court Yukkii once more decided on her own to stop the cycle, and while Yukiteru’s love and devotion to her played a part in it, witnessing her mother and father and the other her come together also had an effect. Her father was always away at work, her mother suffered from depression, and she took it out on Yuno until she snapped, locked them up, and let them starve to death. In short, this Gasai Yuno had bad luck. The cards just didn’t fall her way.

But something Yukiteru did in that fragment, whether it was intentional or just the result of his determination, gave Yuno and everyone else a second chance at life, including himself. In the new Third World, the third Yukiteru doesn’t even know Yuno, but Yuno seems troubled by something she forgot, while the Yukiteru who became a god wallows in self-pity in some void, alone save for Murmur…for ten millenia. After all those happy endings, seeing him end up there was equally troubling. So Yukiteru and Yuno are troubled, despite how things worked out – and you know what that means…their story doesn’t end here.

Rating: 4

Car Cameos: The cops show up in black-and-white Toyota Crown GRS180s, while Kurusu and Nishijima pull up in what could be a black Subaru Legacy B6 (judging from the headlamps), an interesting choice of detective’s car.

Mirai Nikki – 24

Yuno prepares to kill Yukiteru so Murmur can help her become a god and restart the cycle, but Ninth flies in to save him. Deus brought her back to stop second and Murmur, who try to escape by time warping, but Ninth follows them with Yukiteru in tow, to two years in the past in a third world. Despite Ninth’s warnings, Yukiteru interferes with the third Yuno by calling an ambulance, but Murmur and God-Yuno show up, forcing Ninth to retreat. She urges Yukiteru to choose who he really wants to save.

With the second world about to end and no winner to the game yet, the series had nowhere to go but the past, and so back we go, to a third world where one of two things will happen: either Yuno will kill herself again, restarting that vicious cycle we talked about last week, or Yukiteru will stop her. Both have powerful sidekicks in their corners: it’s great – and indeed actually plausable within this series’ mechanics – to see Ninth alive and kickin’, now infused with Deus. Watching her fly around, manipulate matter and travel back in time like, well, a god, is fun stuff.

Yuno, meanwhile, has Murmur, who as it turns out isn’t playing favorites out of some desire to rebel against Deus. This particular Murmur isn’t beholden to the dying Deus, but to Yuno. When Yuno became a god, Murmur became her loyal servant. We love how things are fitting together in these final weeks. And now we see how Yukiteru could bring back his parents, friends and Yuno: by becoming a god, going back in time, and preventing the game from ever being developed. That’s the key to saving everyone. Is that what he’ll choose to do? Will the ‘rules’ allow that?

Rating: 4

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