Matrix-type Sci-Fi with no internal cohesion
4 / 10Sakebitosan · 2016
I watched this on Crunchyroll mostly on the draw of Guoriki Ayame (who was spectacular in "Antiquarian Bookshop Biblia's Case Files,") also because I like sci-fi in general, but...
The series revolves around a group of people who receive cutting-edge cellphones that have the ability to tell their users their immediate, minute-to-minute future. They're contacted by a 'net-type entity calling itself "Deus" who informs them they're in a survival game, and that the last one standing gets unlimited power - including the power to bring back to life the fellow-players who lost.
Periodically the people unfortunate enough to have gotten these phones get an ominous "Game Over" text message that signals their impending death. Well, sometimes. The protagonist Arata, a high-schooler uncertain about his path in life, meets a strange girl named Yuno, who latches onto him as though she's known him her whole life. Arata tries - and generally fails - to prevent everyone else from participating in this game to the death, while struggling to discover the identity of "Deus" and stop him or her from killing people. Or maybe they're not actually dead?
The problem with the series is that it bites off a huge metaphysical mouthful that it can't chew. It wants to be part "Matrix," part "sadistic unseen villain forcing people to kill each other" horror story, part "Tron," and part time-travel drama. The result is a mountain of confusion that quickly becomes more annoying than entertaining, and which misses any opportunity to present a theme of volition vs. determinism, which any sci-fi story involving "predestination" and/or time travel is ripe for.
For an elaborate scenario involving alternate dimensions, time manipulation and predestination to work, the story has to establish a cohesive set of internal rules and to stick to them meticulously. "Mirai Nikki" doesn't. It's difficult for me even to describe it because of that incoherence, but we're not really sure if these predestined "future diary" entries that show up on the characters' phones are unavoidable or if they can be changed by the volitional choices of the people involved. Usually they can't be changed, but... sometimes they can. Is the whole world just a manufactured illusion, as in "The Matrix," or is there some kind of unspecified technology or old-fashioned magic at work in manipulating events? We never really know. There are overlapping timelines and deja vu hints that actions are being repeated, but none of these details are resolved or adequately explained - probably because they can't be, while maintaining any logical cohesion.
Guoriki-san's character Yuno is presented as someone not fully real: She knows things she can't possibly know, she suddenly and inexplicably morphs into irrationality and often viciousness, then snaps back to the warm, smiling, happy-go-lucky girl who who's strangely dedicated to Arata. I don't know whether the writers thought that that would make her seem more mysterious or interesting, but it ultimately short-circuits the character entirely. It's like one of those French movies where one or more of the main characters arbitrarily goes insane, rendering the rest of the story as a game of 52 Pick-Up. Rather than good character creation and story writing, it's a bit of a cop-out.
By the time you get to the wrap-up in the last couple of episodes, you've been pulled through so much suspension-of-disbelief and so many weird metaphysical convolutions that you no longer really care much about what happens. I was actually glad to be done with this one - never a good recommendation.
The CGI effects are good throughout the series, but the settings themselves - the buildings, the rooms, even the city streets - are oddly drab and oppressive. The acting is characteristically perfect by all involved but again, the story itself is the big letdown here.
I don't recommend this unless you're a Guoriki Ayame fan or are really bored and have a lot of free time you don't know how else to spend.