Mirai Nikki – 08 Impression

This is how feel  at times.

Episode 08 – New Model

So how many of you had expected things to turn out the way they did?

The show starts with Yuki entering a new school and essentially introduces a whole new group of people to the series.

Don’t you find it weird how the animators go through the effort of hiding the guy’s face when we can quite easily tell how he looks like?

Impression

For me, this episode was not one of the better ones. The whole episode felt weirdly put together and everything had happened way too quickly without much development. To add to that, not much care was given to the build-up of the atmosphere in this episode as compared to the previous episodes.

I think that it was quite obvious from the beginning that all of the characters were suspicious. The episode hadn’t done anything to hide that fact, instead, it felt like they went out of their way to make us weary of the characters. (What with the accusations and instant friendships etc.) Perhaps the only relatively surprising part was when Hinata had came back alive. When they had killed her off, I did think that might haven’t been innocent. But when she had reappeared, that revelation was nothing shocking to say the least.

A couple of interesting things to note in this episode was the altered memory of Kousaka and the breeder diary being able to control dogs. These two things didn’t make any sense to me. My understanding of the diaries were that they simply predict the future in different manners but they are unable to be used to control or change things. I mean, to alter the memory of the person and to control dogs goes beyond the capacity of the diaries right? =/ Although that did make things interesting, it also did introduce the aspect of “super power” abilities (which is something I really would rather not see in this series). Then again, I might be jumping the gun since it was never said that Hinata was the one controlling the dogs nor was it shown that she was using her diary to do so, it just merely showed us that she owned a Breeder Diary and wanted to attack Akise. Also, I guess the change in Kousaka’s memory could have easily been achieved through hypnotism and non-diary related. =/

As I had mentioned above, the pacing of this episode was quick. Although this fast pace of the story is nothing new, it was definitely not one of the better executed episodes. We are suddenly shown this influx of new characters that are meant to change the dynamics of the game. But within the episode, the roles of the characters have switched and shuffled and we are left with something totally different from the “impression” left at the start of the episode. Not enough time was spent on allowing the new characters to settle in our minds before moving onto changing everyone’s role. Also, the whole “instant friends” theme at the start of the episode hadn’t bode well for me, but thank god everyone (except Kousaka) had a motive and that had made this quick friendship “connection” plausible. Does anyone else think that Kousaka is highly suspicious? He had changed from hating Yuki to suddenly hanging out with him pretty quickly.

Here is a quick recap of the key points in the episode:

• First, we have the fact that one of the diaries have exchanged hands. By now, we can safely assume that Hinata was not the chosen Dairy owner but simply had the diary passed onto her by the dog man. Why? Well, I haven’t a clue how this exchange had worked nor the reason behind it.
• Then we are shown these 4 new characters whom 2 out of 4 are shown to own a diary whilst the other 2 remain as suspicious as ever with Akise giving off the impression of being Yuki’s only friend in the crowd.

As with every Mirai Nikki Review/Impression, I will have to spend some time on Yuki and Yuno.

Yuki: I think the guy has reverted back to his old whiny ways. He is back to being all panicky and whimpy, and it feels like all the character progress/maturity that he had shown over the last couple of episodes had flown out the window. =_=” Definitely not a step forward in the right direction. His stupidity was evident when he had announced the phone’s abilities. He could have simply accepted the fact that people thought he was psychic instead of explaining everything to them, especially since no one was asking for a proper explanation. It honestly shows that despite nearly losing his life multiple times over the span of the series, this guy has no survival instinct and doesn’t realise the danger of the game. Which is odd since his fear for his life is quite obvious when he is in a dire situation. Usually people tend to notice these kind of things. =P

Yuno on the other hand shows us her jealous and selfish side. Her character in this episode was somewhat ignored, mirroring the same way Yuki had ignored her. Doesn’t Yuki know that ignoring a psycho was a big No No? It is things like these that get people killed, especially when he had told her to her face that Hinata (which I might add is another female) was the first friend he has ever had. Ouch. Talk about stabbing someone who cares about you in the heart. Anyway, back onto Yuno. It was quite fun to watch all the different emotions that had passed through Yuno’s character in this episode – from being sweet and shy to showing the sociopath side of her character. It had definitely summed up her unstable personality.

Overall, it was a relatively mediocre episode up until the cliff hanger at the end of the episode. That part had me craving from more, it is sad that it had appeared so late in the episode. Despite the amount of plot holes in last week’s episode, last episode was still more entertaining than this week’s. Hopefully with the new introductions out of the way, we are able to get back into the game and the “darker”/more interesting side of things.

Episode Rating: 6.5/10 – It was alright. Best part is probably the appearance of Akise. He seems like a cool character. =P

Player Roundup: We now know 6 of 8 remaining players.

-ra

P.S: Isn’t it weird that no one wear school uniform in that school??

Mirai Nikki Question of the Week:

Since the theme is about friends this week, it is only suitable for me to ask something related to that.

With the choice of the 6 known participants thus far, which one would you like to have as your friend/partner if you were participating in the game?

Although we all know that Yuno is rather faithful and capable, I think that my choice would have to be Akise Aru. Despite not having seen much of his character, he seems like he would be a relatively nice and dependable person who is not going to randomly suffer from a psychotic break. Then again, what do I know about psychotic breaks? XP I am merely one of those who suffers from them all the time.

(This question reminds me of the Reality TV Series Survivor. Lol. Sigh, I have written a draft for the review of last week’s Boku wa Tomodachi but can’t find the motivation to edit and post it since I didn’t really feel to motivated to talk about it in the first place. For now, I shall simply leave you with this post instead.)