mirai nikki | Draggle's Anime Blog

Well, that was fun. Explosions, frilly dresses and Yuno, what more could anyone ask for?

The Ninth

She’s one of my favorite characters from the manga (next to Yuno). For those of you wondering (warning: spoilers), she will come back, better than ever! With an eyepatch!

But really, we haven’t seen much of Minene yet (and it was the same way in the manga). Right now she’s just a crazy terrorist who shoots smoke bombs out of her skirt and pulls a motorcycle from hammerspace, but she becomes much more interesting as the story progresses.

Yukiteru, and Why I Don’t Hate Him

I often complain about spineless male leads and how much I hate them. So let me clarify: I don’t hate pathetic characters. What I hate is indifferent characters. For example, take the typical harem protagonist. He is surrounded by beautiful girls, but treats them all equally and has no interest in taking anything further. He lives his life just walking around town and tripping into girls’ breasts. He is a “nice guy” who just accepts things as they are. If a character himself can’t be assed to care about his own life, then why should I?

Yukiteru is different. He’s pathetic, spends all his time on his phone, and has no friends. But he isn’t indifferent. He knows exactly how pathetic he is. He hates himself more than anyone else does, and wants to change.

This episode did well at showing how Yukiteru feels about himself. He is deathly afraid: first of getting blown to smithereens, and second of his newfound stalker, Yuno, in that order. He has to rely on Yuno to survive. And you can tell from his words, shaking and eyes just how much he hates having to depend on her. But he’s desperate. He even kisses her to get her to help him (although hey, I bet he liked it).

Which brings me to another point: in what other series are the lead characters, who just met, kissing by the second episode?

The Trouble with Adaptations

The trouble with an adaptation, especially of a manga that you loved, is that you’re constantly comparing it to the original. If you thought the original version was amazing, it’s hard for a second attempt to measure up.

So, in line with this pattern, I enjoyed this episode, although not as much as I enjoyed the same part of the manga. Three reasons I can think of: a) I already knew what was going to happen, so there was less of a thrill, b) it’s harder to get the pacing right in an anime, since the reader of a manga can skim through the pages as fast or slow as desired, or c) the anime simply was not as well presented. I’m leaning towards a combination of (a) and (b).

However, already knowing what’s going to happen doesn’t always lessen the excitement. I’ve been rewatching Code Geass (for the sixth time!) and have found it nearly as exciting as my first watch through. So we can’t entirely blame it on already knowing what’s going to happen.

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Mirai Nikki is one of my favorite manga. So I was eagerly anticipating the anime adaptation, and probably would have enjoyed it no matter what. But how did it turn out?

Pretty well. Yukiteru’s portrayal went great: he’s pathetic but can be pretty cool when push comes to shove. Yuno (who is really the star of the manga, at least for me) went less well though. Much of her charm comes from how two-faced she is. She can be sweet and innocent, or a crazy bitch. I felt that they neglected the sweet and innocent part, and jumped the gun on the crazy bitch part, making it less effective. Look at this face:

This is a sex-crazed Yuno that I don’t recall seeing until much later in the manga. It’s the contrasts that make Yuno such an effective character, and I’m concerned that the animators are neglecting that. They’re only focusing on the crazy part. But much of her appeal comes from how she lulls the reader and Yukiteru into a false sense of trust and security, only to leap to an even higher echelon of insanity.

I must say: excellent casting for the voice actors. Yukiteru, Yuki and Merumeru sound just like I imagined them. Deus sounds even better than I imagined him.

I’ll definitely be blogging this. It’s gonna be awesome. This whole season is looking great for lovers of crazy characters such as myself. We have the murderous Caster pair from Fate / zero, the entire cast of C^3 (the second episode was amazing, by the way, although I’m not going to blog it) and we also have Gasai Yuno, the crown princess of the crazies.