Mirai nikki

its kinda hard to review this without giving too much away...plus the 1st episode aired 26wks ago now, so my memory of how it started is a bit hazy...

Yukiteru loves playing around on his phone and has an imaginary friend named Deus. But Deus is not imaginary, and Yuki gets caught up in a strange battle royale type game where the players, all holding phone diaries like Yuki's, must kill each other off until the final survivor becomes a God. Their diaries each predict the future in different ways, allowing them to evade or capture each other. One of Yuki's cute classmates, Gasai Yuno, has a diary and is strangely attracted to Yuki for reasons he can't quite understand...

This showed rocked! Yuno is an awesome femme fatale, and all the other characters are well written too...the animation is great and the story action packed and violent (probably not for kids)...Yuki is a bit of a pussy, but he mans up over time...still, you can't blame him for being a bit hesitant to kill friends and strangers alike...watch this for sure!

Every once in awhile I will watch an anime, and at the end of watching it I will sometimes think, 'What the heck did I just watch'? But in the end, I will look back and think of how complex the story was and how it was well thought-out until the very end. The Future Diary is one of those animes.

Here we have a bunch of people trying to kill each other to become a god, using different diaries that can tell the future. This story is very well thought out but also extremely complex in its own right. There will always be a feeling of suspense and you wonder what is going to happen next. You will think, what will happen now, and after that, and after that. But every time a question is answered, immediately another takes its place to basically try and blow you away. And sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn't. That being said there were plenty of moments when I was like, 'What?' And it forced me to think, and question my previous answers which made the show a little bit more complicated until it all tied together in the end... sort of. Now the constant suspension and turn-around moments in this anime may throw some people off, but all in all this is a very enjoyable anime. If you are not shy of blood, suspense, sex, and complete mind-boggling questions, then this is a show for you. As I said before some might be turned off by the constant complexity and changes in the story, but you may still enjoy it. Give it a shot, and you might just be as surprised as I was.

Future Diary (Mirai Nikki) is an anime that was on between October 2011 and April 2012. It's a survival game among 12 people who have mobile phones receiving diaries about what will happen in several minutes within the future. Each future diary holder receives a future from a different perspective. So, the diary holders fight each other while avoiding their expected death by knowing the future.

The survival concept in a story such as Battle Royal, where everyone has to be killed until only one person remains, is not new. So you may figure it would be another survival story where only the protagonist survives in the end. But this survival game is interesting in that the diary folders use techniques in order to change their expected future. Another striking thing that stands out is that Yuno's love toward Yukiteru goes out of control to be psychotic and violent, showing her affection crazily to him. Although a typical 'Yandere' character like Yuno would be annoying, I could even develop a love for this crazy character toward the end. I think it's a new type of survival story in that the audience could be moved by a 'Yandere' girl.

Meanwhile, I couldn't help but compare the character Aru Akise from Future diary with Kaoru Nagisa from Neon Genesis Evangelion because both are played by the same voice actor, and the character's personality and the feature are very similar. Once I started comparing the two anime, I realized that there are other common points between the two. The protagonist, Yukiteru is shy, naive, cries easily, and a negative person, which is similar to Shinji in Evengelion. A similar character to Asuka found in Future Diary would be Yuno Gasai in that she is strong, sort of crazy, and strong-minded. You might find some other similarities while you watch Future Diary after Evengelion.

While I was wondering if the two anime have some common themes in the characters, I was drawn to the story of Future Diary towards the end. It is painful and upsetting to see Yuno's unruly character where she doesn't care for anybody but Yukiteru, and she cannot be in love with him. But I felt like I could accept everything from her in the end.

Overall, I like Future Diary. So I give it 8 stars.

For around the first 2/3 or so, I was thinking that this could be one of the greatest anime created, if the ending held up. However, that did not happen. It wasn't hard to follow, but I feel like it tried to make itself more complicated just to be more complicated. And I didn't exactly hate the ending, but it wasn't good either. It did have a really good twist, and overall I'm glad I watched it, but what could have been great turned into something that wasn't all that special towards the end.

This anime is rather dark and psychological meaning it involves a lot of thinking. If you enjoyed watching death note then this anime is definitely one to watch.

Story: 5/5 The first few episodes tend to leave the viewer with a dazed confused puzzlement. It starts off fast, episode one sets the plot and episode two starts the craziness already. It starts off really fast but slows down in the middle and then picks up extremely fast again. Overall, the story follows two young kids in their development of their "future diaries." Let me say, the plots are always twisting. Its a dark twisted story of survival. Lots of action, thriller, suspense, supernatural, and romance. There's a very dark overall mood in the anime with this overlooming supernatural sense. However, the writers effectively at the same time are able to make the anime relatable to the viewers through a mundane sense of psychology and situations that occur. That being said despite the serious tone set there are moments when the characters seem mundane living their daily lives and when it gets crazy things get messed up fast.

Animation: 5/5 Keep in mind its a rather new anime and very short. The quality is superb and that being said please don't watch for the faint of heart. There's blood, lots of it. It's not super gore heavy but man... when it does get bloody it gets pretty gory. The colors are a tad dark, everything is on the darker side mainly but they do get vivid from time to time.

Voice and Sound: 5/5 Great voicing and sound. Haven't seen the dubbed version (i only watch the subbed). But the voices are perfect for each character and the development. Sound is sweet, and sadly i don't pay attention to the music. But that being said, the music must work perfectly because they never annoyed me.

Overall: 9/10 The anime is superb and very thoughtprovoking. At first the anime seems to be a slasher film but the twists and turns and underlying meaning and themes nags at the viewers mind. It has the action that Death Note was missing and added the dark element that I personally prefer that Code Geass was missing. The story is simple but the best thing about the anime is the development of the main characters. The biggest twist and turns are from the actual characters themselves and once the puzzle is pieced together it is sure to make the viewer go "damn....so thats what happened" Only reason i don't give it a full ten is due to the gaps and holes. The anime picks up way to fast and the ending seems inconclusive (though that is how the manga ends). There could've been a few more episodes to piece the story better. But overall a great short series thats both dark and thought provoking with a little more gore and action than Death Note.