Wednesday 26 October 2011

Future Diary - Mirai Nikki - Episode 3

After seeing your school blown largely to smithereens and most of your classmates blended into mush by the explosions responsible, there's only one way to relax - go on a date to the local amusement park!

At least, this is where Yukiteru and Yuno end up as this third episode begins, enjoying the usual attractions to be found there such as rollercoasters, haunted houses, and getting to feel your girlfriend's boobs pressed against you in the swimming pool.  While this all seems fine and dandy, there is actually a little more to this than meets the eye (and no, I'm not talking about Yuno's breasts), as our pair of diary owners are actually acting as bait on the behest of detective Kurusu as he continues his hunt for Minene Uryuu.


While Uryuu struggles with her injured eye and finds that her escape from the locked-down town is problematic despite the special properties of her particular diary, it seems that help is at hand in the form of a good Samaritan who offers to help her.... but what's his real goal?  Meanwhile, Yukiteru's attempt to find out a little more about Yuno don't go particularly well - at least, they don't until he's invited into her home, and his hunt for the bathroom leads to him making a far, far more shocking discovery which almost literally looks set to turn the world within this series on its head.

After the break-neck pace and sheer brutal force of last week's instalment, perhaps taking things down a notch was required of Mirai Nikki's third episode, although that doesn't really hide the fact that much of this episode is pretty run-of-the-mill as it engages in its depiction of the typical anime amusement park shenanigans topped with a dose of fan service.  It's only as we enter the final stretch of this instalment that things suddenly become interesting again, courtesy of Uryuu's dilemma and, more importantly, Yukkii's discovery which is clearly going to shake things up big time - a perfectly placed hook at the end of an otherwise mediocre episode to drag me right back into my fascination with the series thus far.

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