Everyone else is posting their photos of the Yuno Nenderoid finally coming in, so it seems it's my turn!
IT'S YUNO TIME!
Second Mirai Nikki/Yuno Gasai figure EVER and the first one to be released in 11 years LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
At first I was looking in the box like "Where's the Cathedral of Causality background??" It took me a little bit to realize that they taped it to the BACK of the box's interior design. Crafty.
Yuno is only my second-ever Nenderoid purchase. For both of the ones I have, I am amazed by how fragile their various interchangable parts are. A stiff wind blows a Nenderoid to pieces, absolutely shattering them. Lightly poking one causes it to drop all its accessories and then lose its hair. I think they could stand to make these interchangable parts plug in a little more firmly, y'know?
Oh well; now that Yuno's safely in her place on a shelf, though, she's helpfully shielded on five sides. And she looks wonderful, obviously! So, GoodSmile...... where are we at on that Pop-Up Parade fig? Hmm.... ? :)
It’s common for light novels to receive manga or anime adaptations in order to introduce the series to a wider public. What’s not so common is for the reverse to happen, though with a series as popular as Future Diary was back in the early 2010’s, it’s only natural that a light novel was among the many adaptations it received. Said adaptation was released in 2012 and written by the author Itou Nobuki (who, according to his MAL profile, hasn’t worked on any other piece). The light novel was divided into two books, and each chapter contains unique artwork done by Masahiko Yoshihara. The art is also the only different/new thing the light novel adds to this series.
The general consensus on the light novel is that it’s a retelling of the manga, which other than giving you a little more insight on the characters’ thoughts, doesn’t add anything new. I decided to give it a read to confirm this myself, and… I have things to say (spoilers for the LN ahead… and Future Diary too, duh).
First and foremost, the notion that the light novel adds nothing new is mostly correct, save for the prologue and epilogue. The prologue introduces the reader to ““Deus,”” who is experiencing some form of memory loss and is now being guided by MurMur through the Akashic Records to remember the events of the Survival Game. The novel then goes over the events we already know from the series all the way up to 9th’s death… where it suddenly ends. Yes, the novel ends with 9th’s death and jumps straight to the epilogue, where ““Deus”” informs the reader that he cannot recall the events after that, because it physically hurts him to remember.
That’s when we get the revelation that this isn’t Deus we’re dealing with, but Yukiteru, who has taken on Deus’ role after winning the Survival Game. Apparently, he’s experiencing problems with his memory similar to Yuno’s due to the trauma of losing her, so to further help Yukiteru remember the ending of the Survival Game, MurMur gives him Yuno’s diary, from which he gathers the final details. From there on, the events carry out similar to Redial, where the last entry in Yukiteru’s diary gets rewritten to “Yuno’s coming to see me.” Yuno then magically appears and it’s happily ever after and blah blah blah…
While I found the prologue and epilogue to be insightful in terms of giving us more details about the ending, I was pretty confused that the novel left out the most crucial aspects of the story. Everything from episode 22 and on from the anime (or the last two volumes of the manga), which includes: Yukiteru killing his friends, Yukiteru finding out that the dead cannot be revived, Happy End, time loop plot twist (which is the pillar the story is built upon btw), the final battle between Yukiteru, Yuno and the 9th… and the list goes on. If someone who hasn’t read the manga or watched the anime read this as a stand-alone piece, they’d be left scratching their heads at the epilogue.
The novel makes you raise all the questions that would lead to the eventual plot twist, simply to end with said questions unanswered. And if you think this is weird, it’s because it is. The author himself acknowledges this on the author’s notes at the end of the novel. He explains that the light novel was set out to be a two-parter from the very beginning, meaning he couldn’t extend it to fit all aspects from the manga. Which is understandable; however, he deliberately chose to end it with 9th’s death because he "wanted to leave the story at its climax for the epilogue."
Look, I understand this man was working with what he was given, but if he really wanted to blue-ball the audience, he could’ve at least tried to fit the revelation of the time loop before cutting to the epilogue. You know, so the story actually makes some sense? The epilogue casually mentions the second and third world as if it's something that's been brought up before, when this is the first and only time it's mentioned. Anyway, I’m going off on a rant here. I’m very particular about pacing and structure in writing, so seeing something like this really grinds my gears (especially since I wanted to see the events from the final episodes novelized).
With that out of the way, I did translate a little bit of the light novel since there’s no official translation out there, namely the prologue, chapter 1 and the epilogue. I’m not planning on translating the rest of the novel since it’s basically a retelling, but I did find those parts to be interesting enough to translate, given that the prologue and epilogue delve into Yukiteru’s ten thousand years of solitude.
Now that I have my little rant/ translation projects of the week out of the way, I’ll go back my cave ~
How do you imagine that Ataru and Lum's relationship progressed immediately after the ending? Did things stay the same? Ataru still chasing other girls?
Hai there, hope you're doing great!!
Okok, since you've asked I'll be glad to share my post-boy meets girl headcanons!!
First up is Ataru, I think Ataru will still womanize even after the finale, I feel like it's still too early for him to let go of that habit. But that won't mean that there won't be any change. I feel like Ataru would a bit more open about how he feels about Lum, like he won't be like "What do you mean? I don't like you!" but would instead be like "yeah, yeah, you know how I feel about you..". Naturally, he won't say 'I love you' but he'll show it, for example: sometimes he'll be the one who brings up a date or sometimes he casually hold hands or hugs Lum randomly, you know a little bit of flirting to show that he does love her. I feel like the reason for this change would be because he doesn't want Lum to get the idea that he doesn't love her (like in boy meets girl) and do anything stupid to split them apart, but naturally, he keeps this thought to himself..
As for Lum, she'll still electrocute him if he cheats but like I said with Ataru, there is change. Since Ataru's been more open now, she wouldn't be scheming to get him to show his love but instead she'll be scheming to make him say 'I love you' (the final page has her promise that she'll do it). Ataru, being Ataru, will try many roundabout ways to avoid saying it. Lum also appreciates Ataru's flirting and gets really excited and happy when he does.. and may even go for cheek kisses and such to show her happiness, which gets him flustered. Most of the people in Tomobiki just watch them and agree that they are fit for the other since they're both idiots made for each other.
And that's about it I think! Basically, they don't change too much but there is some great progress in their relationship!!
First, is that Ataru's womanizing will continue till he is married to Lum. After marriage, I think he'll lose the pervert side of his womanizing but he will casually flirt to a small degree,though it's more due it being a habit than anything else. He will try to control it for the most part. I like to think that the flirting era of his would end fully once they have children.
Another thing is that once AtaLum get married, Ataru would give Lum an earth cookbook so she would follow it so she can make edible food for him (he can't survive on takeout forever after marriage, can he?) Lum has a lot of trouble making it, even with instructions (because she can't taste earth food, she adds unwanted stuff to make it more 'flavorful', causing obvious disasters.) Eventually, Ataru drops Lum off at Shinobu's when Shinobu's free and when he goes for work, so she could teach Lum how to cook while cooking with her. This will go much better since Lum's cooking with someone who has experience. Lum will go to Shinobu's place from time to time and eventually Lum will get better at cooking earth food. She also sometimes cook with Ran too..
Also I just realized how similar Rupa is to Shingo, like they're both guys who say that they're engaged/ married to Lum, pisses off both Mendo and Ataru that way and eventually kidnaps Lum. Both have their reasons for this too (Shingo being brought up by historical dramas and having no proper social skills and Rupa being told that Lum is his soulmate with the added villany side for a bit because plot), It's not huge or anything but it's an interesting bit I wanted to point out..
Heck, the characters even think Rupa is immune to Lum's shocks (like Shingo!), but then it was revealed that he was just toughing it out.
Here’s the (long time coming) update on the Future Diary Radio CDs! I’m sorry it took so long to finish this project, as always, school has me on a chokehold, but I’m glad to say the translations are finally done! In case you missed the original post, the Future Diary Radio CDs are an obscure piece of media from Future Diary that include commentary from some of the show’s voice actors, regarding their experiences voicing the characters and opinions about the series. You can now find the three tracks with the translated subtitles on my Youtube channel (daisynilla) or on the links down below. Special thanks to @iwanpepsu, @syrpai and @the-chosen-blood-teller for helping me gather the tracks from the radio CDs.
And on a semi-related note, I also wanted to use this post to comment on a couple of things that came up while doing research for this project.
1. In all of the three Radio CDs, the voice actors mention something about a live concert that happened at Shibuya AX on July 29th. I'm not sure how well-known this concert and the music featured in it are among the fandom, but given how much it is talked about in the radio CDs (and how much information I gathered on it incidentally), I figure I should make a separate post dedicated to that. Especially because of… this:
2. On one of the Radio CDs, there was a mention of the DVD cast commentaries done by the Japanese voice actors. I don't own the DVD, but I was accidentally sent the audio for these Japanese cast commentaries in response to my last post about the Radio CDs. For my sanity’s sake, I’m not translating this, (I feel like the radio CDs are a good enough stand-in for the cast commentaries) but given its mention, I wanted to provide some of the context surrounding it. Like your regular cast commentaries on any DVD’s bonus features, the voice actors share their comments of the show as they watch the episodes. The order of the voice actors featured in each episode goes as follows:
Episodes 1-2: feature commentary from Misuzu Togashi (Yukki’s VA) and Tomosa Murata (Yuno’s VA).
Episodes 3-5: Aizawa Mai (Minene’s VA, ps her voice is so high it caught me off guard), Kawahara Yoshihisa (12th’s VA) and Sendai Eri (Tsubaki’s VA).
Episodes 6-8: Sanada Asami (Reisuke’s VA) and Mizuhara Kaoru (Rea’s VA).
Episodes 18-20: Yukana (Mao’s VA) and Shiraishi Minoru (Kousaka’s VA).
Episodes 21-23: Inada Tetsu (Ryuji’s VA, aka 11th’s secretary) and Konno Hiromi (8th’s VA).
Episodes 24-26: Domon Jin (3rd’s VA) and Honda Manami (MurMur’s VA).
(Also, I'm pretty sure the English version of the DVD includes cast commentaries too, but I don't know if those are the Japanese cast commentaries with translated subtitles or if it's commentary from the American cast… probably the latter, but I guess I’ll have to look a little deeper into that.)
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