It is so hard to find good psychologically-deep animes these days! Most of them seem to focus on fan-service – boobs, boobs and more boobs. Nonsensical scenes where the protagonist, surrounded by good looking willing females, always seems to end up tripping on something and falling on someone’s BOOBS, grabbing a BOOB by mistake or inadvertently catching sight of one of the female characters in a changing room, and obviously seeing her BOOBS in all their glory.
And what about all those lesbically-oriented all-female scenes in bath together? Washing each other’s backs and massaging each others BOOBS and what-not. Does that actually happen in Japan??
Anyways, as I was saying before, like many animes, I got side-tracked in all the BOOBS, yes finally I found another good anime. After Elfen Lied, after Death Note, after Higurashi: When they Cry, after Another, and Serial Experiments Lain… there came MIRAI NIKKI.
Or Future Diary, as you prefer.
The anime is not overly-long, being made up of 26 episodes and an OVA. *sigh* And that is another thing, some fairly good animes are just TOO LONG. I really TRIED to watch Bleach, and I liked it too. But seriously, 366 episodes?! Please! I hardly made it through Inuyasha, even though I loved it to bits, and that was ‘just’ 167 episodes!
Anyways, Mirai Nikki has a fairly interesting plot. God is dying and he needs a successor. He chooses a number of people and gives them Future Diaries which predict the future. Thrown into an insane game of life and death, the contestants must kill each other, in order to become the new God. The twist in the plot is that each diary is different and unique, so each contestant needs to understand the abilities pertaining to the other diaries, before s/he can combat and defeat its owner.
I don’t wish to give any spoilers, suffice it to say that we not only get to meet many diverse and mostly insane characters, and made to understand their psychology and perspective, but we also get to face some of life’s most difficult choices and problems too. Issues like child abuse, betrayal, love, relationships, friendship, and self-esteem.
A couple of years ago I started to buy those animes which I deemed ‘worthy’ to be in my collection, in blue-ray. Up to now I have Elfen Lied, Full Metal Alchemist, Death Note and Another. I could not buy Higurashi, as its second season was never released in DVD *sob*. I wonder… shall I buy ‘Mirai Nikki’ too? I’m half-way through it right now. I guess I’ll decide when I’ve finished it.
P.S There are a lot of BOOBS in Marai Nikki too anyways ;p
Darkly Dreaming Moonsong 