If you can call this happy… Honestly, it was a bit too happy for me.
Yuno’s Realization
I always liked the story of Pandora’s box. When it was opened, plague, pestilence, war, famine, and all of the world’s evils poured out. But at the bottom of the box was hope. Now, if I remember correctly the story doesn’t actually say whether hope was let out of the box or not. But I’m hopeful so I’ll say it did. Regardless, suffering and hope are two sides of the same coin.
So where did Yuno go wrong? I think it’s because she abandoned both hope and suffering, like in the world before Pandora’s box was opened. She abandoned hope that she would be with (the same) Yukki for long, and resigned herself to wandering through the multiverse for eternity. But with her powers as a god, she also abandoned her suffering of being alone by finding a new Yukki. With neither suffering nor hope, she became empty and also lost her sense of joy.
Only when Yuno sees what she once was, when she both suffered and hoped in joy and contentment, she realizes what she has lost and repents. All in all, I’d say that the opening of Pandora’s box was a net gain for humanity.
The Ending
It was a solid ending, but I had one major problem with it. The ordering.
In the anime, they started off by showing everyone being obscenely happy in the third world. So we think everything is well.
Then they show Yukki moping alone by himself. We can’t feel particularly worried about him since we already saw everyone else living happily. Plus, you don’t get the same sense of time this way. It’s been ten thousand years? Sure it has… why is everyone still in middle school then?
In the manga, they reversed these two scenes. First they showed Yukki spending ten thousand years alone in the bubble. Only later, after we are sufficiently concerned that the story is not going to have a happy ending, do we see the other people living happily in the other world. But then our interpretation of this world is inverted. We see it not as a paradise, but only as adding to Yukki’s hell since he cannot partake of it.
The order of these two scenes matters a great deal, and I can’t wrap my head around why the creators made the decision they did to change it.
Also, they left out the single best scene of the entire manga! A giant Yuno smashing the wall of space-time with a hammer!
For jreding
She’s back! Even got two scenes. I think the animators must be partial to her as well.
Although it may have been hinted that there will be an OVA or OAD for the last 6 pages of the manga. not sure if that will be sufficient for 28 minutes or not but hell if it was 15 I’d still be happy. So long as I get an ending that I deserve.
It is a bit sad that I got lost with the story b/c I very much liked Yuno and would love to understand better her tragic fate. Two questions in particular after reading you post, dear draggle:
1) You are asking where Yuno went wrong. As far as I understood the plot, in the first game Yuno was tricked into thinking that as god she could resurrect Yukki. After she became god and this turned out to be impossible going to a new world with a new Yukki simply was the only alternative left for her. Ofc, alternatively she could also have killed herself at some point of time (but maybe not as god) or could decide to become an impassive god (like Yukki). But would this truly be better?
2) I don’t quite get why Yuno intended to kill her Third World family though. They were no diary holders. As far as I understood, Yuno killed Second Yuno just out of annoyance. Why couldn’t she simply leave Third World Yuno plus family and just walk away?
It was indeed nice to see Rin again (and hear her godly voice) – thanks for the pics! But my favourite scene which fully reconciled me with this show was that Tsubaki ended up with such a sweet and protected family life: http://bit.ly/J9tRzr !
It made sense. That’s good.
Ending was a little…uhhh…different? I mean I loved how the time line changed for the 2nd world so there was that which I really enjoyed that and Yuno death?! Nooooooooooooo! Ah well the other Yuno wasn’t as crazy for Yuki.
Oh really? I thought the same thing happened in the manga, the second Yuno merged with the third (or something) since Yuno had already become a god.
Ahh, Yuno breaking the space-time wall with a hammer, so it’s safe to assume that happened during the anime’s epilogue? I wonder why they left out that part though.. it looks so damn awesome.
I assume it will happen in the epilogue. It was pretty damn awesome.
Soo…instead of spamming all 26 of your blog entries, I decided to wait until I finished the series and leave you one jumbo comment. Before I get to that, I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed reading your entries. The recap and analysis was fantastic; I thought and noticed things I never would have had you not pointed them out for me. Good stuff.
Mirai Nikki. This isn’t the type of anime series I usually enjoy. Wikipedia listed it as an example of a series with a yandere character, so my curiosity got the best of me and I decided to give it a try. I’m glad I did. The ending and sub-themes didn’t do much for me, but overall I thought it was well put together and a refreshing departure from what I’ve been watching lately.
Anime like Mirai Nikki are becoming more common nowadays. The whole man becoming/surpassing God theme is everywhere and it doesn’t sit well with the Christian in me. I can say the same for the justification of murder, desensitization of violence, selfish pursuit of pleasure, children (14!) getting it on and the general devaluation of human life – all Mirai Nikki sub-themes. These are pretty dangerous in themselves, but it’s nothing new to mass media (or anime for that matter) so I’ll just let it go. I did want to touch on one theme because without that other BS, I think there was something there.
I’m almost positive it wasn’t meant to be interpreted this way, but I thought Yuki to be more of an emotional trauma victim than an everyman character. He never had any real hobbies or friends, he was beat up regularly at school, he was betrayed by nearly everyone he met and he passed the time by recording his everyday surroundings on his cellphone. In the first episode, we learn Yuki’s only form of companionship came from his imaginary friends who turned out to be Deus (God). Can you say potential psychopath?! He was on (or nearing) the border of insanity and it wouldn’t have taken much for him to have become a psycho killer like Yuno. I wish the creators would have played up that fact a bit more.
Anyway, the only constant in Yuki’s highly depressing world was Yuno and he (naturally) ended up embracing her and later (also naturally) convinced himself of his feelings for her. Interesting how the creators had Yuno tell Yuki at the end that their “love” was based on necessity and he would have loved anyone who provided for him. (They even include his parents in this!) What we ended up with was a surprisingly pragmatic message on the nature of love and relationships. Quite the departure from the romanticized love we see in typical high school anime!
I never read the manga, so this ending was very hard for me to follow. Actually I’ll be frank – it was a mess. Let me get this straight: Yuno 1 traveled to the future and killed Yuno 2 so she could live as Yuno 2 with Yuki 2. Then Yuki 2 got upset with Yuno 1 for killing Yuno 2 even though Yuno 1 and Yuno 2 are the same person. Yuki 2 then time travels in order to save Yuno 3 from Yuno 1. Yuki 2 gets angry at Yuno 1 for trying to kill Yuno 3, even though the only reason Yuki 2 loves Yuno 3 is because of the time he spent with Yuno 1 who he believed to be Yuno 2. WTF?
Even with the confusion, the action kept me on the edge of my seat and the typical high school anime moments provided a nice break between all the chaos and bloodshed. I’ll probably stick with sports anime for the near future (you should review some of those!), but this was a nice a change of pace and I’m glad I gave it a try.
Wow, you sure got through that series fast. Glad you enjoy the post, I’m glad to hear someone actually reads them after they’re published. 🙂
The surprassing God thing really has gotten stale with anime. Whenever they trot out the line “you could call it… God” for some robot or something it always makes me groan.
Yeah, Yuki definitely is a potential psycopath. He’s a horribly broken person, and the creators really did fail to explain this aspect of his character. I liked the portrayal of love too, much better than the usual lovey-dovey claptrap.
The ending was pretty confusing, and this was true of the manga as well. You pretty much have it right, although I think Yuki 2 loved Yuno 2 the entire time at the end. He wanted to stop Yuno 2 from killing Yuno 3, but it wasn’t because he was in love with Yuno 3.
Glad to hear you liked it overall! I don’t really like sports anime, sorry… I dropped Kuroko no Basuke after the first episode, even though it was actually pretty decent…
How in the hell do you smash space and time with a hammer…..
With a REALLY BIG hammer, I guess