Mirai Nikki: The First Anime I Ever Hated

Mirai Nikki was the first anime I ever really hated. I remember reading the ending and just getting so so so mad at it. I came away after finishing it feeling angry and frustrated, wishing I had never wasted my time with it. Going back to those memories to write this post is a bit upsetting, but it's too late to watch/read something new and I'm out of other things to talk about so here we are.

Back in the summer of 2013 I was really into watching random anime and I think this one was popular around that time. My young naive self thought "Hey! This looks interesting, why don't I watch it?" Little did I know that watching this might almost make me quit watching anime all together. I was initially interested in Mirai Nikki because it sounded similar to Battle Royale but only in that there are people that are put in a situation where they are forced to kill each other. Writing these posts has made me realize that this is actually a quite common theme in Japan for whatever reason and we can find evidence of that from Battle Royale, Mirai Nikki, Dangan Ronpa, Doubt, BTOOM!, and countless others. It's really weird and I don't know why it's such a thing over there. Anyway, I was bored and I also happened to own the first volume of the manga so I figured I would check it out. 

Mirai Nikki is basically about these people spread throughout Japan that get approached by the god of time, Deus Ex (if I remember correctly) and he asks them to be the next god of time. But there is a catch, they have to compete in a killing game and survive in order to succeed his throne. Everyone has special cellphone diaries that do certain things to potentially give them and advantage in the game and some of them are really cool. Others are really useless. For example, before the game began the main character used to keep a diary on his phone of whatever was happening around him so when the game began he got the "truest" future diary in that every couple of minutes it would tell  him what would happen in the future around him. A lot of the characters are really cool and if I didn't have such bad memories about this I might've gone back and re-watched it to enhance the content of this post, but I don't even feel like it's worth it to google what the actual plot of this waste of time really was. 

I really really hate the stupid pink haired girl. Her name is Gasai Yuno and she's a member of the game whose cellphone diary is the Yukiteru diary which means that like every three minutes or something her phone tells her what's going to happen to the main chracter, Yukiteru because she's so obsessed with him. She is basically known in otaku culture as being the definition of a Yandere, someone who is obsessed with someone to the point of violence. She has killed her own parents, will kill anyone who threatens her insane relationship with Yukiteru, and she would probably kill him too if he didn't want to be with her. For most of the series Yukiteru doesn't want to be with her, she's insane, she forces herself on him, and her only good selling point is that she's willing to do anything to keep him safe. However a bunch of stuff happens and Yukiteru decides, "hey she let me have sex with her, she's not so bad!!" even though that is like the worst decision ever. Basically they team up and he wins the game, becomes the space god, and it's a really stupid ending. My favorite character, Akise gets killed off protecting him and that just brought back a lot of my sadness from Evangelion and how all the white haired anime boys I love always end up dying and by the end none of the characters I liked were alive anymore.

I feel like this post is just me rambling on about how much I dislike this anime and I can't really explain coherently why I don't like it because I watched it four years ago. All I remember is feeling blind rage at its ending, but maybe this weird post might make someone want to watch it. If you also share a seething hatred for this anime, or maybe you really enjoy it, let me know! I did like it pretty much up until the end I think and I know it's actually a pretty well liked anime by most other people so my arguments are sort of an unpopular opinion, but hey, it's almost two in the morning and I just want to go to bed so cut me some slack lol. Hopefully I'll be back next week with a better post!!

-Bookwyrm