Pursuit and Discovery

My little brother recommended me the anime, 未来日記, Mirai Nikki, or Future Diary in English, so I went and checked it out. Turns out, it's a pretty interesting anime. I also watched Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai, Koe de Oshigoto!, and decided to start catching up on Naruto again, from where I left off, similarly to how I did with One Piece, since I finished watching Slayers. Although I never did find the OVA episodes of Slayers yet...

If you've seen Law of Ueki, then there's a similar theme here. God is hosting a game where the last remaining participant in the game will become the new God of the world. Except unlike Law of Ueki, Mirai Nikki has a much more darker and twisted theme, as you actually have to kill the opponent rather than simply knocking them unconscious. And the anime makes good use of that fact to have a stronger, driving force for the characters, not only to become god, but also to survive.

I definitely enjoyed Mirai Nikki due to my interests in the theme of strategic competition in a shape outside the norm by having a supernatural power. That is what interests me in popular titles like Death Note and Code Geass, most likely. Mirai Nikki does a great job at this due to everyone having a different type of Future Diary. Each character has been writing diaries for different purposes, so when their diaries became a future diary, they reveal their futures about things that they would have written about and nothing else. The main protagonist in Mirai Nikki, Yukiteru, writes a journal about all the things that he witnesses and observes around him, granting him a very powerful future diary. However, his flaw is that he never wrote about himself in his diary, so he won't know what state he would be in in his future.

I don't want to spoil too much of the anime though, but the twists are very worthwhile, and definitely interesting. ... And twisted. I would recommend this title for most people, but be warned that there may be somewhat graphic murders and other dark themes involved in Mirai Nikki.

On a lighthearted note, Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai was humorous, but not burst-out-laughingly hilarious. It told a story of introverted people who did not have many friends... if any at all, and how they give some effort into making new friends. It's pretty much one of those lifestyle-type anime, so it isn't an epic anime in anyway. There is a little more going on than just a group of people working towards making new friends though, but again, I'm not one who enjoys spoiling the twists of stories.

If you're into lighthearted, lifestyle anime though, then I would say it's worth watching. Just that I know this type of anime doesn't appeal to everyone.

And Koe de Oshigoto! only has 2 OVA episodes, so I figured, why not? It'll be something nice and quick to experience. Turns out, Vicki enjoyed it a lot. Very humorous, with good elements of an interesting story was introduced in the two episodes. I am curious about the manga now, so perhaps I might seek them out somewhere, when I get around to it.

Finally, getting myself back into Naruto was hard, mostly because I don't remember what was going on in the main storyline due to the last few episodes being filler episodes, and not remembering which filler I left off at. I decided to start watching from the Bikouchuu scent bug filler episodes since that's what I remember seeing before Cartoon Network took it off or kept showing reruns or something. I probably should just watch everything from the beginning in Japanese, since there could be plenty of censorship involved in the US release, much like Bo-bobo and One Piece. I certainly haven't heard of too many for Naruto, but I wouldn't know without having watched in both English and Japanese. Either way, I'm going to be watching that for a while, unless Vicki and I can get through some other anime that we're in the middle of watching as well. Mainly Tiger & Bunny right now.