Quite a disturbing pic indeed sweatdrop
Title: Mirai Nikki (Lit: Future Diary) (Volume 4)
Author: Sakea Esuno
Runs in: Shounen Ace
Rating: 7 (+1/2 for Yandere, -1/2 for mostly useless main character +1/2 for kickin’ God)
How much I’ve read: 4/4 volumes (unfinished)
Story: At this point, Yuki has realized two things, number 1: Yunno is a freaking headcase and is the last sort of person he should be anywhere near, number 2: He sucks, and he’s not going to get anywhere without Yuuno. This volume is about the tension between those two pieces of information. Yuki meets some people at school, and it looks like he’s going to have actual friends, however, because Yuuno is, as said before, a headcase, things aren’t going to work out.
However, Yuuno isn’t there right now, (she’s chasing after some weird guy who looks like a cross between L, M, and Light) so we’re treated to happy school comedy + panty shot. They meet up with Yuuno in the park, and she’s basically doing all she can from flipping out and murdering the people around Yuki, and, then, out of nowhere, dogs attack and L-ight (as I’ll refer to him) comes to save the day. The group runs to a local Gazeebo, and the main part of the manga beings.
You see, the dogs are controlled by another diary user with what must be one of the most lame diary powers ever. Inside, Yuki is forced to use his diary to predict what the dogs are going to do, and there’s a little bit of tension as the people first don’t believe him and he’s forced to convince them that he can see the future. Finally, they beat the dogs.
Then, predicatbly, one of Yuki’s new friends is revealed to be a part of the diary user’s plan (surprisingly not L-ight, who had been acting like a d**k). She confiscates Yuki’s diary and holds Yuki hostage. There’s a long and complicated sequence in which L-ight uses the limitations of Yuki’s diary, acting gay (as in, actually homosexual), and some trickery to beat the traitors. They run away, Yuuno tries to murder them, Yuki stops her by calling her his girlfriend and giving up his hope for any kind of a real life. Finally, at the very end, there’s a big twist that was actually fairly unexpected
Basically, this volume introduces a bunch of new characters, and establishes that Yuki is really, truly up crap creek without a paddle. The problem is that it has way too much of the silly “If I do this, he’ll do that” shinanigans that I was hoping to not have to sit through. The diary use-age in this volume was lame, with the new antagonist clocking in at an astoundingly small 5 micro-fonzies. Also, the new characters proceed to completely marginalize the older ones, especially freakin’ L-ight. Basically, if the next volume is like this, I’m dropping Mirai Nikki.
Art: Same as always, but there are fewer bad character designs, especially since the major new character’s design is effective plagiarized from another, more popular manga.
Ease of Reading: Fairly Easy + a little. Not quite pushing it up the next category is the fact that it’s got an awful lot of complex syntax. Also, the diaries still don’t have furigana, which makes reading them slightly harder.
