Future Diary (2011-2012)

[未来日記]

Director: Naoto Hosoda
Studio: Asread
Starring: Misuzu Togashi, Tomosa Murata, Masahiko Tanaka
Episodes: 26

Synopsis:
An introverted boy finds himself in a survival game where the players use diaries that can tell the future to fight to the death in a bid to succeed the God of Time and Space.

Impressions:
This series has been in the periphery of my awareness for a while, namely that it featured one of the poster girls for the yandere archetype. We'll get back to that in a moment. The main gimmick of pitting characters against each other with different predictive powers is neat. The male lead Yukiteru is sure to be a frustrating character for many, spending most of his screentime as such a whining, cowardly little wimp that Shinji Ikari looks like the captain of the football team by comparison. (Actually, I found Misuzu Togashi's performance to be so similar that I thought Megumi Ogata had been cast as Yukiteru, which would have played up Akise as a Kaoru expy even more.) Yukiteru being the way he is plays well when he's set against Yuno, but if you were expecting the setup to be paid off by him manning up, you're probably not going to be that satisfied. Speaking of Yuno, she's the main draw for many and one of the big reasons a lot of viewers stick around. Her psychopathy is one of the main sources of carnage in the series and if you can appreciate that, you can probably overlook how annoying Yukiteru can be. Most of the cast is either unsympathetic from the start or they quickly burn through whatever sympathy they might have had. It says something that a terrorist who has blown up a school among her many other crimes is the one people are most likely to root for by the end. (Minene is best girl.)

The pacing is a little uneven, with us burning through several Diary Holders rather quickly and then stretching out the rest of the conflict. I also wasn't too fond of the shift around the midpoint to get rid of a certain character that was outright admitted to be too much of a problem for the story. (It reminds me a bit of how Misora was disposed of in Death Note because Ohba realized she would end the story too quickly.) However, I feel the merits of the series outweigh the demerits. If you're just here for the carnage, you'll get plenty of that. If you can overlook the issues, there's a bloody fun experience to be had. Give it a watch.

Rating:
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