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What could be better? Yuki knows when pop quizzes are coming, what the answers are, when the bullies are about to ambush him – he rules at life!
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Except one day Yuki finds out they aren’t so imaginary, as Deus fixes his cellphone to tell the future. Yuki spends his time writing diary entries on his cellphone, throwing darts at his seven dart boards and talking to his imaginary friends – the God-like Deus ex Machina ( Wakamoto Norio, as if it could have been anyone else) and his elfin assistant Murumuru ( Honda Manami). So what do we have here? We have a lonely, socially awkward and physically immature 14 year-old, Yukitero Amano ( Togashi Mizusu). Well, Mirai Nikki is a great pulp fiction that has no delusions of grandeur – it revels in the gloriously twitchy and absurdist escapism that it is. I tend to think of Death Note as a very good pulp fiction that gets bogged down by thinking it’s something profound. I think Asread did a pretty darn good job in the premiere at capturing the essence of what makes Future Diary the gem it is. So what does that leave me to talk about? How the manga is translating, for starters, and the merits of the scenes covered in any given week. But I can’t, obviously – I’m going to have to keep spoilers out of my posts and you’re going to have to be considerate in hiding them in your comments. It’s tough to review a show like this for me, because I want to view everything through the lens of what I know is going to happen. So it was a mixed bag – but really, Esuno Sakae’s manga is so good that all they really have to do is not screw it up. Screenwriter Takayama Katsuhiko has a long and solid record adapting manga and light novels. The director is Hosada Naoto, who directed Shuffle but is more known as an animator. Their most famous works are Shuffle and the last two seasons of Minami-ke (which some hated, but I liked pretty well). The promo video from last year was fine for what it was – not a real OVA but a short teaser trailer – but didn’t tell us much about what Asread would do with the material. I was optimistic but anxious in looking forward to this. So with that said, Asread has a pretty tough job on their hands to meet expectations. The manga is one of the scariest, funniest, juiciest and more ruthless you’ll find in mainstream manga and I absolutely love it. Whatever else happens, let me make it perfectly clear that I’m not impartial when it comes to Mirai Nikki.