Category: Mirai Nikki

Apologies for the delay. In this season, it’s sunday that’s the crazy day, in which five shows that I’m blogging at the same time, and my sundays are often completely booked in real life. When I need to catch up on these series though, I do want to prioritize on the shows that captivate me more. With that, I don’t mean that Mirai Nikki is bad. It’s a fun show, but it didn’t capture me in the way that the other shows that I’m blogging are doing.

After 18 episode, I think I’m pretty sure of the reason why: the complete lack of good side-characters. Looking back, even Seventh were just one-sided over the top lovers. Everyone that Yukiteru and Yuuno faced was one-sided and in the end not very interesting. Only ninth got even close to being a bit of a dynamic character, but even that was bare-bones and ultimately not very rewarding. At this point, eight of the diary owners have died, but what did they really accomplish anyway? That’s pretty much my big criticism of this series.

This episode meanwhile was all about Yuno and Yukiteru. So yeah, these problems didn’t really apply to it. Yukiteru’s father again was a very one-sided character until nearly the end of his life, but at the very least his death had a very clear meaning for Yukiteru. In this episode he really snapped and actually killed someone (unless of course they’re going to play the same crap was when they did when he first shot that officer…). There was a lot of character development on Yukiteru this episode. On top of his feelings for his father, I also liked how they showed a bit of his past, and how he actually had a crush that he confessed to (and actually was turned down).

Also, we finally got to know Yuuno’s background. With six episodes left, it’s about time they did that, but at the very least this explains why she ended up as crazy as she did: parental abuse. A good reason, and Yukiteru was there at the right time for her. This episode tried to be a bit mysterious to the third corpse that Yuuno carried, but I bet that it was that girl that Yukiteru confessed to. This is anime. A female who once has been hinted towards being a potential love interest will never be able to move on and have her own life.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Overall, Seventh were by far the most interesting opponents that Yukiteru and Yuno faced so far. It’s probably because of this that this arc has been my favorite so far. This episode also delved a bit in their past and gave them a pretty nice closure. The creators made good use of how they as a couple are similar, yet completely different from Yukiteru and Yuno.

Oh yeah, and then there was that thing with Yukiteru’s parents. Now that was just done for the shock factor, I believe. Of course I went ‘wtf’ when he stabbed her, but that’s the kind of twist that Guilty Crown would pull if it had the chance, and it doesn’t really fit Mirai Nikki’s thriller atmosphere of putting crazy people in a death match. I’d understand it if he was under the influence of drugs or something, but to be completely sober and pull something so random…

As for the leaps in logic, this episode was fairly light on them. There was just one point where the Seventh guy yet again got hold of Yuno’s diary. And he yet again didn’t think about destroying it. Sure it was a fake and he could have used it to get more information and all, but by now he should have known that Yukiteru is completely useless, and Yuno the biggest threat, and that getting rid of her would make things so much easier.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

For a while throughout this episode I thought “this is the Mirai Nikki that people have been looking forward to?” During the second half of the episode however, I understood. That was actually a pretty interesting way to use Yukiteru’s father. The show still is chockful of plotholes, though.

The big ones in this episode: Seventh challenging Yukiteru and Yuno to a fight, when they could just as easily just destroy two cell phones. It makes sense to hold onto them in order to manipulate them… but they never actually do that. Also, this really depends a lot on Yukiteru being both a wimp and an idiot. Right from the start it should be obvious that Yukiteru’s father doesn’t know about the fact that Yukiteru dies when his cell phone gets destroyed. Yukiteru forgets about this just until the moment when it’s too late.

Still, at this point I don’t count the plotholes of Mirai Nikki as flaws anymore. What’s much more important for this series is whether or not it’s entertaining and whether or not the characters get to show themselves off. And with that, Yukiter’s father worked really well here. And strangely enough, the thing I like about him the most is not what he added to Yukiteru, but rather his character himself. His ignorance is totally believable and that made him great to watch for the second half of the episode. Also, I liked Yuno again, mostly through her subtle appearances outside of the action scenes in this episode. It’s unbelievable how close she was to actually killing Yukiteru’s father.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Okay. Something happened here. I’m not sure what, but this episode was much more fun than usual. The flaws of this series are still there. I mean, there was a point at which Yukiteru’s diary predicted exactly what traps he’d fall in, and yet he didn’t even notice realize this. On top of that, I have no idea why Seventh at the end didn’t just destroy the diaries of two competitors.

I think what really sold me on this episode was Yuno’s mindless enthusiasm. Before, I liked her character, but I couldn’t yet see why everyone was gushing over her. The part at the beginning of the episode, where she just sneaked in and prepared food for Yukiteru: that probably was my favorite moment of her so far. Now that’s a stalker..

Seventh also pretending to be Eighth was a nice twist, including making up these weird powers like being able to see the future of the next person you flirt with (wtf?). They’re still rather big stereotypes at this point, but it does work that they’re complete opposites of Yuno and Yukiteru. I do admit that I found the first half of this show a bit boring at times, but if it has indeed been building up to something bigger, I can still turn into a fan of it.

Also, I like the new OP and ED. In particular the animation, safe for the rather forced bits of the previous OP.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Well, now this is something I didn’t see coming. I mean, the last episode hinted to this, but I didn’t think that the creators would actually deliver exactly what it promised. Things… are bound to become much different now.

Still, I liked such a crazy turn of events a lot. This is the point where Yuno just drops all pretense and flat-out drugs Yukiteru. It’s a bit of a shame that the uninteresting classmates seem to now have become major characters here. Also, I didn’t expect Deus ex Machina to be such a cheater by randomly appointing new diary holder. And to what extent? To save four random bystanders? Is he so much on Yukiteru’s side that he thought that he wouldn’t win the game without the help of these four? Also, if he’s a god, can’t he just randomly zap people he doesn’t like?

That returns me again to that scene earlier in the series, in which Yukiteru’s destiny got majorly changed apparently, after he looked at the room with the corpses. After watching this episode, I’m still not sure why it was that big of a deal. Heck, it probably just delayed things. If Yukiteru never looked into the room (which is pretty unlikely, but still), Yuno would probably have taken him even earlier on that little trip of hers.

In any case though, I liked how crazy this episode was in terms of plot development. The halfway point is a great point to go into a different direction, and now it’s really time for this show to pull all brakes, while also using the build-up of this first half.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

The next episode will be important. This episode was mostly dull, but it did promise things to get very interesting next week. In fact, this entire episode was saved by its premise: not knowing what the hell Yukiteru and Yuno have been doing, and yet they dropped a lot of hints about what went on. Next episode should be the explanation, and that will be the opportunity for this series to show whether it can grow or not.

As for this episode, my biggest problem with it was that the characters it did decide to focus on were rather dull and didn’t really keep my attention. In particular the classmates were dull and just bait for pointless fanservice at the beginning, while Akise himself showed that he’s a decent character in that he at least is smart, but can’t really carry an episode alone. Not to mention that convenient brain-fart he had when he walked right into an obvious trap. A lot of people seem to like him, but I don’t see why he’s so enjoyable yet.

This is something I realized when writing up my end of the year post, but in terms of crazy series with over the top and psychotic characters, Mirai Nikki wasn’t my favorite of 2011. That was Deadman Wonderland. Sure, it was incredibly rushed, but nearly every episode had something interesting and was over the top, with all kinds of larger than life characters. This show in its turn has the advantage that it’s twice as long, so I really hope that it can take advantage of that. What I’m really missing so far is some good character development. Because of that this episode was rather sneaky, because Yukiteru and Yuno are about to change into something interesting that can keep the show going. This episode served as build-up and there it did its job really well. However, I do hope that these side characters will either change for the better, or just disappear, because I still don’t really have confidence in them.

And for god’s sake, the skits at the end are actually only getting worse…
Rating: (Enjoyable)

Okay. Now this was just crazy.

The big difference between this arc and the previous ones lies in the characters. In the previous arcs, the villains just weren’t interesting. their characterization was too simple, their characters were too one-sided. Fourth has been around for a while, which really helped. Ninth and that other officer also were getting better, which resulted in an episode that was finally about characters I could care about, and it’s no longer an “us vs them” deal. As a result this was pretty much my favorite episode of this show so far.

What I do want to know is how Ninth escaped from all of this. I know she has the escape diary and all, but even escaping is very hard if you’re chained to a freaking police officer. I mea, the fact remains that she blew up a school and a hospital. Did he just let her go because she looked cute or something?

I also love the way in which the end of this episode featured Yukiteru claiming that the officer he shot turned out to be alive. I know that being shot in the chest is survivable when treated immediately, but there still are so many things wrong with that:
– First of all, what happened Yukiteru’s sense of responsibility? “Oh, he didn’t die; I have no guilt whatsoever; I don’t need to visit the hospital to apologize to him or anything, let’s move on now…”
– Also, I love how this show just lets it slide off that Yuno has just become a mass murderer here. I’m not even talking about those corpses she hides. This episode did show her mercilessly kill about five police officers. And nobody even mentions that afterwards. Could Yuno perhaps be this ghost that only diary holders can see or something?
Rating: ** (Excellent)

This show is fun, but it just makes no sense at times. Yuki has no problems with falling down a height that would have easily killed him (its a miracle they survived it even with that truck there), but gets incredibly scared to cross a ladder over just one floor, from which he just could have lowered himself.

Also, with all those unfunny skits at the end I didn’t thin it was possible, but this show actually made me laugh during that scene. Yukiteru was completely stupid there, but because of that the comedy actually worked. That was really refreshing after sitting through all of these bad skits at the end of each episode.

I’ still hard pressed what to exactly think of Yukiteru. I mean, he’s not as bad or dull as Shu from Guilty Crown (tip: if you want to make someone the next Shinji, at least get his characterization right!), and instead he’s the exaggeration of all wimpy male leads out there. This leads to scenes where he randomly shoots police officers (wtf?), and scenes where he keeps whining about being hungry and completely fails to understand the situation he’s in.It has its fun moments, but it’s exactly that latter part that bugs me a lot, and I do think that that’s holding this show down a bit.

As for Yuno, she’s a lot mote fun, although there is one thing that this anime did that I don’t really like, and that is the way they used the “vaant eyes” of in this episode. I mean, at least try to create some suspense here. Right now they’re like this “psycho-switch” on this computer. It’s too un-subtle. I often dislike the way this is used in anime. It’s like hanging a sign over the character saying “oh look, I’m acting strange!”. I get that this is supposed to be over the top and all, but even over the top series can become better through subtle acting.

Also, as for the bad jokes in this episode outside of the skit: how did Yukiteru smell donuts from outside… inside a closed window?
Rating: * (Good)

Hmm, either the OP and ED changed, or some wiseguy at the subbers thought to be funny to overlay a piano track. I’m edging for the latter because it just sounds too unprofessional. I mean, it’s nice and all that someone at Gotwoot knows how to play the piano and all, but using this method you make both products just inferior.

In any case, this episode consisted out of two halves. With the first half, I’m beginning to understand why everyone keeps going on and on about Minene. On top of showing an interesting and different part of her past, it also finally showed a confrontation between diary holders that didn’t involve Yukiteru and Yuno. If we’re going to compare Fate/Zero with this series, then it’s not the fact that nobody died in Fate/Zero that irks me the most, but rather that every major confrontation has to have Yukiteru in it. He’s just not an interesting character, even after 10 episodes.

This is shown even more by the second half of this episode, which returned to the dating sim roots again. I get that they’re trying to build up and all, but that bridal fair just wasn’t interesting at all to see Yukiteru stutter and mumble his way through. Afterwards, during the big supposed moment of this episode: what idiot just mentions a corpse in front of someone he hardly knows?
Rating: (Enjoyable)

Rather than Yukiteru finally manning up, I think there’s a different explanation for his behavior. with this episode, I’ve really gotten convinced that Yukiteru has a bipolar disorder. I mean, every single diary owner is crazy. Being a wimp is nice and all, but I do not see Deus ex Machina select a wimp amidst various kinds of deranged lunatics. A guy with multiple personalities fits much more: throughout this series Yukiteru kept switching from an incredible wimp to a pragmatic hero whenever he needed, which lead to a huge personality shift. It’s perhaps this inner beast of him that lead to him getting a future diary.

Now, the actual mind games in this episode were a bit questionable. The white-haired guy’s plan only worked because of plot convenience, the plot also relies a lot upon the fact that the dogs of the bad guy are so bothered by their metal beaks that they can’t run fast, and it took the characters an awful long while to realize that you can call an ambulance.

That’s just nit-picking, though. In general, these things tend to stand out due to a lack of interesting things happening to distract from this. In this show’s case, it’s the characterization that still feels like it’s missing something: for me, most of the characters aren’t very interesting to watch. I still haven’t exactly pin-pointed what this series seems to be missing, as obviously it has Yuno being the mother of all yandere. It’s probably because the rest of the cast is a bit too bland here, but why? I mean, Un-Go spends far less time on characterization and yet it has far better characters.
Rating: * (Good)