The Future Diary anime – Volume 1 (Limited Collector's Box).
Predict the Future, Win the Game…
Reality quickly unravels for antisocial Yukiteru when Deus Ex Machina calls
him into a death match to determine the new god of space and time. Each mentally
scarred player possesses a prophetic device tuned to his or her personality
disorder, giving them control over their future… and the fate of their
opponents. It's their strongest weapon – and their greatest weakness.
Within hours of abusing his digital diary's predictions, Yukiteru is
cornered by a crazed classmate. Yuno – who is obsessively stalking him with
her own psychic cell phone – is cute, sharp, and great with an ax. Still, her
psychosis hides a vile secret. As a serial killer, a cult priestess, and a
volatile escape artist take a stab at eliminating the teens, Yuki can cheat
death under Yuno's maniacal protection or – DEAD END.
Special Features:
- Episode Commentaries
- Textless Opening and Ending
- Bonus “Omake” Short
Future Diary Review
By T.H.E.M Anime
"..Future Diary is a show I find very easy to enjoy. The main reason for
this is the story is so damn entertaining! From the start, there is briskness in
the narrative that washes you along at an exciting pace, the characters are
stark, simple and interesting for the most part and everything seen and heard is
geared towards being cool and fun. The main leads, Yuno and Yuki, are standard
anime archetypes (the yandere and the whiny brat protagonist, respectively) but
the show does a good job of developing them into characters worth caring about
(at least by the end). In fact, the character development in this show is as
well paced as its action and even a number of the minor characters get the
development they deserve.
Musically, the heavy faux-gothic rock of the OPs suits the tone of the
show very well, capturing the show's bombastic and flamboyant narrative style
with heavy drum line and lyrics filled with meaningless German and Latin. To be
honest, if Future Diary knows what subtlety is, it certainly doesn't believe in
it and that fact is both a positive and a negative. Everything that is great
about loud, uninhibited storytelling is here for the taking. The violence is,
for a lack of a better word, glorious; it is inventive, exciting and merrily
gruesome for those who like that sort of thing.
Nothing about Future Diary's set-piece events is small or unassuming. Do
you want to see a school blown up? How about a hospital and a Tokyo landmark
too? Is a house too dull a venue for a fight to the death? How about a house
filled with poison gas and deadly booby traps? To Future Diary, to be boring
seems to be the only sin and it consistently fails to commit it. There is, of
course, a problem with all this. The louder and crazier the proceedings get, the
more and more the viewer is required to suspend disbelief to more and more
ludicrous levels. If Future Diary has a core problem it is that, its plot cannot
bear any degree of serious scrutiny. Anybody who has watched Death Note will
understand this; the more a show ups the ante, the more it pushes itself to
extremes for the sake of being cool, the more strain is put on a plot and the
characterisation. It's a fact that the actions required to create the most
awesome sequence of events possible will likely be counterintuitive to any even
semi-sensible human beings and while Future Diary does not commit any
unforgivable acts of narrative contrivance, it certainly shows the strain. It
has been said by others that Future Diary does not make sense because of this
but I firmly disagree. There are plot holes but none big enough to sink the
story, it does not have the tightly woven masterpiece of a plot of a show like
Monster but neither is it the mangled mess of a show like Another. There are
other problems though. Obvious budgetary restraints become very apparent at
points, there is some talking heads dialogue and some scenes have pieces of
animation that would make South Park blush. Also, as well as they are
characterised, Yuki can be annoyingly wimpy and whiny (before he grows up a bit)
and Yuno can come across as psychotic to an alienating degree, making it hard to
sympathise with her.
In the end, Future Diary does what it does and it does it well…It has
flaws that are not easy to ignore, especially if you hate plot holes to an
almost irrational level, but the show is irredeemably fun, exciting and
satisfying. If you don't want to think too hard for a while then Future Diary
might be just what you are looking for. Even with all its flaws, I read the
manga twice and still watched every episode of the show without a
moment's hesitation. That has to count for something.." 4 out of
5 stars.
Recommended Audience: There is no doubt that this is for adults only.
There is infrequent nudity, multiple cases of sexual assault and all this on top
of frequent scenes of gore and violence ranging from the implied to the
explicit. If that isn't enough, some might be disturbed at how morally ambiguous
(or downright villainous) the show's protagonists can be.