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)
i really thought that scene with yukiteru introducing yuno as his girlfriend was really well done in the manga,he seemed really confident and was smiling in that scene but here they made him nervous.
I agree that most of the characters, besides the phenomenal Yuno Gasai, aren’t generally interesting in themselves. Although you will have to admit that Deus Ex Machina was brilliant in choosing only whackos as contestants in his game.
However, the dynamics between Yukiteru’s naive but earnest idealism and Yuno’s cynical, paranoid psychotic realism is the driving force behind this show. The relations is what makes Future Diary stand out among the other battle royal themed shows.
The more I think about it, the more I believe that Un-Go is a lot more inconsistent than Mirai Nikki has been, to date.
Not only does the quality yo-yo dramatically (whenever the anime deviates from the source material) Un-Go also juggles too many themes: science fiction, detective mystery, & political drama. While that is indeed ambitious, it also requires a steady hand to keep those themes interchangeable. I enjoy the science fiction, but the detective mystery seems uninspired and the political drama seems like a drag, if not typical of Japanese views of their future.
Mirai Nikki is pretty consistent in its outrageous balls-to-the-wall insanity (psychotic characters, extremely high stakes, variegated abilities of the Diarists & the greatest Yandere since Medea of ancient Greece).
I don’t think that’s how bipolar disorder works, exactly. :/ Is it really such an alien concept that people can do what they need to do in times of dire need? I agree with the majority of the other comments that Mirai Nikki’s characters are far better than UN-GO’s. UN-GO has a more tightly woven story and better dialogue, but Mirai Nikki as a whole is more interesting.
“The white-haired guy’s plan only worked because of plot convenience.” But even so, he STILL outsmarted Hinata by exploiting the weakness in Yukiteru’s diary, and he wasn’t even a diary user. Also, I think you should start remembering names of important people.
“It took the characters an awful long while to realize that you can call an ambulance.”
Because they were running from a pack of rabid dogs that would have killed them? And right before Yukiteru calmed Yuno down with that lie, she had Hinata at knifepoint and was about to kill her? I don’t think calling the ambulance was the first priority on anyone’s mind at the moment.
Moving my comment from the old site: Agree with a previous post regarding individual taste. Mirai Nikki is very much a character driven story, so if you don’t find any of the characters interesting, most of its appeal would be lost. For other viewers including myself however, the cast is anything but boring. As for minor logic holes in the plot, I can look past them for one simple reason: Mirai Nikki is not a serious story and not trying to be; it knows what it’s good at and never deviates from that.
While I’m no fan of him, I don’t agree with the assessment of Yukiteru either. So far his thoughts and actions are quite consistent given the context. He is a wimp and he knows it. He is not very intelligent. However, no one can dispute the fact he still has a conscience. So when circumstances call for it, he can sum up all his courage to save Yuno or save others from Yuno. Not too unrealistic if you ask me. He always tried to find the least violent solution to move forward, but the whole world seem to be acting against him because whenever Yuno offered some morally questionable alternative, she was proven correct. At this rate, sooner or later he will snap, which would be quite tragic.
I think Akise’s play with the coin game was brilliant. You can call it a “plot convenience,” but really, the weaknesses and limitations of each diary have played a pretty big role in the story, especially with the play between Twelfth and Sixth… so Akise’s plan could only work in this particular story.
I agree there is definitely something off about the characters. I feel its cause most of them die off in like an episode or two and they can’t develop at all. Sorry but showing their backstory alone does not make them interesting.
I hope that what will happen is that there will be a point where the story keeps a certain amount of characters and just continues to focus on only those ones. It seems like thats what they are going for though which is good. But so far none of the diary users are given enough time to be interesting. 12th, 5th, and that cult leader were all extremely one sided and I didnt care less about.
That being said Yuno is a fascinating character and I dont mind Yukiteru. This shows that they can characterize characters if they keep them alive!
That’s a fair point, but like you said, the show is moving in that direction.
I think it’s not a huge spoiler to say 9th will stay around quite a bit longer (introduced back in episode 2); then in episode 8 and 9, isn’t it amazing that Yuno didn’t manage to kill anyone for two consecutive episodes? Not counting animal casualties , that must be a record for her already. So we suddenly have quite a few survivors take on recurring roles.
Yeah i feel like once it does move in that direction it will be even more enjoyable. Dont get me wrong I do enjoy it now. But I dont get the insane hype most people have. I keep hearing about how crazy it is but i dont see any of that.
but that kinda brings me to another point is that what was the point of having 12 diary owners? couldnt they have 6 really well developed ones that last for a lot longer? [i guess im comparing it to fate/zero’s cast, who is very well developed for the most part and nobody seems pointless like in MN] I feel like they were trying to use the fodder diary owners for the main character’d development, but even to that end it wasnt very successful i feel. Idk maybe Im just watching this show with the wrong perspective.
Yeah, I think in general every serious conversation I have had about improving Mirai Nikki has concluded there are too many diary holders.
Part of the problem is the author wanted to have twelve, because that lets him use the roman-deity theme naming thing he came up with. Turns out half of them kinda suck, so have to get killed off.
The other problem is that if you cut it down to like six or seven, Yukiteru and Yuno take up two slots, you probably lose another slot to the third (the one who dies easily at the beginning of the game), so that is 3 slots right there. To keep roughly the same story as the original you need another slot for the ninth and another slot for the “last boss” diary holder, so that takes care of five slots. That only allows one or two holders to die between the first chapter and the final chapters.
So you probably need more like nine or ten, at which point twelve is not much different. The conclusion I think is that there are too many, but it is because they tend to work by themselves and die one by one (or at least shortly after being introduced, 6th, 5th, 12th, 10th…). So really they need to live longer and work together and betray each other more, or something.
Very well put. By the way, it’s interesting that Clay brought up fate/zero. I haven’t been following that show very closely, but heard great things about it. From what I know, 10 episodes in, no significant deaths yet; the show is still focused on characterization.
I did watch fate/stay night before, which was quite Shonen, somewhat similar to Mirai Nikki. The MCs fought successive battles, eliminating rivals one by one, finally facing the last boss.
Yeah I hear you guest, it would have been nice to have diary holders interact more with each other and not just the main duo.
And fate/zero seems to be a good comparison for the show cause theres 12 main characters but all of them feel interesting and its because they have gotten multiple chances to be on screen and work off other characters. The shows have about the same length and same amount of characters with the stories revolving around them dying eventually. I feel like since fate is airing the same season it just proves what could be done with the MN characters if they tried. Ah well.
Fate does seem like an interesting comparison when you put it that way. I haven’t followed it b/c I’ve been intimidated by how background it seems to require, but maybe I’ll check it out now just for the contrast.
I’d add that most of what winds up making Mirai Nikki good/memorable/whatever is a pretty high-quality mind-screw that plays out *very* slowly over the entire series. A lot of the more-questionable authorial decisions seem to have been made as unfortunate trade-offs to try and preserve the mind-screw/surprise-factor.
Better characterization winds up being hard to square with the mind-screw. Not impossible, just hard, and perhaps beyond what the author’s abilities to pull off. You’ll start to see what I mean over the next arc or two, but it’s basically that more-realistic characters would think more critically and investigate things more carefully.
The author himself seems to be well aware of this, and one of the side-story volumes is about Akise replacing Yukiteru as the main character and then using a mix of brains and balls to win the game — happy end and all — in only a couple days.
Actually that is my main complaint against Fate. 10 episodes in no major death even after all of the battles. It feels like they are intentionally milking the characters for as long as possible before they are killed off. Hopefully somebody dies soon To me it feels like too much posturing going on and lacks substance.
I get the feeling like most of the first half of the series is meeting the different diary keepers and killing off all the ones that they don’t care about (so far five have already died). 1st, 2nd, and 9th (Yuki, Yuno, Minene) are going to stay around much longer, and 4th (the cop, Kurusu) is pretty important too. The last half will probably be how these characters (and Akise) develop before Yuki/Yuno kills them all.
(comment transferred from old site)
“I mean, Un-Go spends far less time on characterization and yet it has far better characters.”
Your mileage may vary… A LOT. Un-Go’s characters seem way more bland compared to Mirai Nikki’s. In fact, Un-Go’s greatest stumblingblock is the fact I hardly care for the main characters at all.
On the other hand, the dynamic between Yuki and Yuno seems ingenious to me, and is something I’ve never seen before in an anime. And then the rest of the cast is quite eccentric and colorful, making them very memorable. In contrast, I can hardly remember *anything* about any of the side characters in Un-Go.
Nice episode! Am I the only one who find Yuno very annoying? It’s probably only because I prefer Aki xD