Future Diary - Mirai Nikki - Episode 4

I was tempted to start this entry by suggesting that the end of the last episode of Mirai Nikki revealed the true extent of Yuno's craziness - but let's face it, we already knew she was a knife short of a carving set didn't we?

Of course, finding out that the girl who is stalking you might also be a serial killer is never a good thing, not least when her Future Diary is monitoring your every move, meaning that Yukiteru can do little but wait for detective Kurusu to come by the next morning.  Even this isn't enough to save him from Yuno's attentions however, as she ensures that she's present to stop him passing any unwanted information onto Kurusu before all three of them set off in the continued hunt for Uryuu.

Thanks to Kurusu's own diary, tracking her down proves simple enough as she's been taken into the custody of a cult know as The Sacred Eye - a cult headed by Tsubaki Kasugano, a girl whose eyes are not exactly worth of reverence but (you guessed it) an individual with a Future Diary of her own to support her power.  However, with Tsubaki having come across a "dead end" in her own timeline, she's looking for help from Yukiteru in return for handing over Uryuu.  The true nature of the attempt on Kasugano's life soon becomes obvious, in a spiral of bloody and violent confusion which threatens to cause our cult leader harm from a different source, before Yuno's brutal proclivities actually come to good use in terms of preventing their equally crazed opponent from reaching checkmate.

After a lull in last week's episode, we're back to the good stuff again with this latest instalment of Mirai Nikki, as it goes back holding a place as one of the more deliciously twisted shows I've seen in recent years.  Yes, almost everything about it is utterly, utterly ludicrous, but somehow that insanity simply fuels the series and its equally insane character roster as they go about their grisly and mentally disturbed business.  Looking at its component parts in isolation, Mirai Nikki should probably read like jumbled fantasies of a middle school kid who has played too many violent video games, yet somehow when you throw all of its elements together you're left with a series that is as "yandere" as its female lead - it's utterly, dangerously nuts, but that isn't enough to stop you falling in love with it.