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The rules are simple: Outsmart and kill all the others to become a god.

"What are you scheming?"
"An interesting game."

Future Diary (known as Mirai Nikki in Japan) is a dark manga by Sakae Esuno about the asocial Yukiteru Amano, who obsessively keeps journals. One day, he finds that his imaginary friend Deus Ex Machina, the lord of time and space, has made his cell phone diary able to predict the future. After getting over the initial shock of having a supernatural cell phone, Yuki enjoys his newfound powers until he comes across a diary entry stating his exact time of death...

After taking out his would-be murderer, Yuki is invited to a gathering with ten other people, where Deus explains that they are now in a Battle Royale for the position of God. Some of the diary holders have personal reasons to claim the throne; others are psychotically insane. And soon enough, young Yuki finds himself struggling to stay alive without any true friends or allies aside from Yuno Gasai, a classmate who has been obsessively following him around without him realizing...

The common traits of all twelve diaries are as follows:

  • All diaries predict the future. Each diary does so in a different fashion, based on how the owner used it before they were selected.
  • Each owner is assigned a number from 1 to 12, and until their identity is discovered by the other owners, is only referred to by that number, Yukiteru, for example, being called the 'First.'
  • The diaries can take any shape or form, but the most common by far are cellphones.
  • Should a diary owner do something differently or influence events so that the results turn out differently from a diary prediction, the diary changes accordingly. These changes can also influence other diaries should their owner be involved. In short, the futures shown by the diaries are not set in stone.
  • In particular, if a diary owner's current path leads to their death (usually at the hands of another diary owner), the diary's entry will contain the words "DEAD END" to warn the owner is at risk and therefore must change the future if they can.
  • Most importantly, a diary is its holder's future. If it is damaged beyond working order by whatever or whomever, the diary's owner will cease to exist.

Future Diary also has two spin-off manga. The first is Future Diary: Mosaics, focusing on the ninth diary holder Minene Uryuu and expounding on several of the minor characters. The second is an Alternate Timeline spin-off, Future Diary: Paradox, in which Aru Akise replaces Yuki as the main character.

The manga was serialized in Monthly Shonen Ace from 2006 to 2010, and compiled into 12 volumes. It was licensed in English by Tokyopop; 10 of its 12 volumes were released before the US branch of the company went under. Viz Media currently holds the license as of 2014 and has rereleased the volumes digitally. An animated adaptation aired between October 2011 and April 2012 with a pilot OVA released beforehand.

An Alternate Continuity live action drama called Future Diary: Another World began airing in Japan on April 1st, 2012, based in an alternate world featuring a familiar plot but with a new cast of characters, of which some (but not all) strongly resemble the anime cast. Arata Hoshino takes Yuki's place, a Lazy Bum of a college student who has no interest in his future. That is until he receives a limited release cell phone from his friend Rui Moriguchi which happens to have the Future Diary's powers. Now stuck in his own survival game, with his own version of Yuno for company. The plot however develops into a very different direction from the anime.

An expanded epilogue, titled Future Diary Redial, has been released, featuring a similar ending to that of the manga.

The Future Diary is licensed by Funimation, and Redial's license was announced in August 2017.

Compare and contrast Death Note, which also features a "notebook" as a centerpiece, although in that case the diary controls the future rather than predicts it. Also compare and contrast Kamen Rider Ryuki, which also features a "There Can Be Only One" style royale amongst 13 individuals; also compare Kamen Rider Gaim which features a similar style as Ryuki where the winner would also potentially become god; also compare Danganronpa, which features a similar Battle Royale setup. See also Devil Survivor, for the counterpart "Laplace Mail".

Definitely not to be confused with Yume Nikki, although there may be some connection in there somewhere.


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The manga features the following tropes:

    #-M 
  • 2D Visuals, 3D Effects:
    • A two-second appearance in the first opening is pretty much the only time Deus is hand-drawn. There are some bits of architecture and a few objects in the opening credits as well.
    • The ferris wheel scene in Episode 3 switches jarringly from CGI to traditional animation depending on whether the audience is viewing the car from the outside or inside.
    • Tenth's dogs are CG in several shots.
    • Episode 19 also has CG cars.
  • Absurdly Sharp Blade: Yuno is typically armed with a variety of kitchen implements, but the damage she does with them is out of this world.
  • Abusive Parents: Yuno Gasai's parents were originally nice to her, but soon gave her only enough food to barely survive to condition her into an "elite" person and imprisoned her in a small cage at the tiniest infraction. The depths of their insanity are particularly exemplified in how they kept and posted for her view detailed statistics on each such infraction, from talking back to coming in late, which is why she eventually reversed the situation and kept them captive in the cage in an attempt to show them the error of their ways, waiting for them to turn back into doting parents. They never did, so she never let them out.
    • It's revealed later on however that her mother was the abusive one while her father wasn't around to stop it making it Parental Neglect in his case. The anime also portrays her mom as being not all there and mentally unstable like Yuno as well.
  • Alas, Poor Villain:
    • Tsubaki's death, which is notably portrayed as far more sympathetic in the anime than in the manga.
    • Although most of the fandom hated him for being a Dirty Coward, Kurou has his death treated with sympathy.
    • Yuno gets one of these when she kills herself to allow Yukki to be god.
  • All Deaths Final: Not even gods can bring back a deceased's soul. However, this can still be worked around — and eventually is — by going to an Alternate Timeline where they are still alive.
  • Alternate Timeline: Paradox. Eventually, the entire plot of the main series moves to one.
    • It's shown that the 3rd world is less of a Crapsack World than the 1st world because all of the events that made the main characters' lives crap and motivated them to turn evil never happened. Almost everybody (including Yuno) lives happy, normal lives.
      • Note that this is mostly because the game was scrapped once the Mayor read Second World!Yuki's diary and talked with Deus to forget about it. Since the game, and thus the diary creations did not happen, the Twelfth, Eighth, Sevenths, and Third did not die due to the events that occurred because of them. The commotion stopped the Sixth's parents from dying, which prevented the Ometaka cult from degrading, and consequently prevented the corruption and death of the Fifth's parents, which also led to him being a normal little boy. Minene got Kurusu (the Fourth) to check his son ahead of time, so his son was saved, eliminating his reason for his Face Heel Turn IF the diaries had been made. God!Yuno's death ended the struggle, which caused Third World!Yuno's mother to show she still loved her family. This led to Third World!Yuno being a normal girl. The rest is inherent to the world however, as Hinata and her father (the Tenth) reconciled, Yuki's parents never divorced and thus, he did not grow up thinking himself a failure. This ostensibly led to him developing the confidence to becoming a couple with his original crush. The only thing that didn't change was that Third World!Minene was still a terrorist at large.
  • Always in Class One: Averted. Yukiteru and Yuno are both in class 2-B initially, and they end up in 2-C and 2-D respectively in their new school. While that can still be considered somewhat lazy, it looks like this was a deliberate aversion.
  • American Kirby Is Hardcore: The American release of the manga changes the cover of the volumes from white to black, adds a skull to the title, and throws in the tagline "Every Text Could Be Your Last".
  • Anyone Can Die: Given that it is a battle royale for godhood, this is to be expected.
  • Attempted Rape: Tsubaki orders her servants to gang rape Yuno, the same way they did to her for years, as a way to draw out Yuki and kill them both. Yuki manages to destroy her diary before anything happens.
  • Babies Ever After: The epilogue depicts 3rd-world Ai (Seventh) and 2nd-world Minene (Ninth); the first of which is pregnant and the second of which has two babies... who have apparently inherited part of Deus's power which was in her.
  • Badass Normal: Aru Akise manages to outwit a number of journal holders.
    • He definitely earned his title of the strongest non-Diary holder in his spin-off, Paradox, where in one fell swoop, he seduces the Sixth, befriends the Fifth, and allies himself with one half of the Seventh and one of the Eighth's followers, all without use of a diary. This because he got bored of following Yuki's path, and so decided to Screw Destiny.
    • Later, he obtains a secondary diary from the Eighth, allowing him to scry the actions of diary holders and fool their predictions. He ends up losing it in the chapter following its debut, however.
  • Barbie Doll Anatomy: Averted in Chapter 52 after being played straight for the rest of the series.
  • Batman Gambit: Given that it's a series about people who can predict the future trying to out manipulate each other, this is bound to show up.
  • Battle Couple: The Seventh. Yes, the Seventh is two people. Yuki and Yuno gradually become this as well.
  • Because You Were Nice to Me: Yuno's devotion to Yukiteru stems from him jokingly making a marriage proposal to her shortly after she accidentally killed her Abusive Parents. She had been all alone and unable to imagine any kind of future for herself, but the thought of marrying Yuki gave her something solid to fixate on, and focusing on that kept her from completely giving in to despair.
  • Crapsack World: God arranges Battles Royale for kicks. The hero is apparently the only nice journal holder. A terrorist who blows up schools is one of the more sympathetic characters.
  • Creepy Child: The Fifth diary owner, Reisuke "Let the massacre begin!" Houjou.
  • Dating Catwoman: Nishijima and Minene in Mosaic, though the criminal is the main character.
  • Dead Man's Switch: Minene rigs one of these up to herself when she holds the school hostage, so the entire school will explode if her heart stops. This prevents the police from sniping her, as she knows one of the detectives is a diary holder. Later, during the final confrontation with the Eleventh, it's revealed that she's wearing another bomb rigged to go off if she dies. After being shot, she tries to use this bomb to penetrate the bank vault where the Eleventh is hiding.
  • Dead Person Impersonation: Yuno is impersonating herself. As if that isn't strange enough, when some people start getting uncomfortably close to the truth, she actually goes out of her way to hide the fact that she's not the real Yuno from this universe.
    • Minene does this as well, killing a rookie police officer and taking her place so she could get close to her target.
  • Death of a Child: Reisuke Houjou, the four-year-old fifth diary holder, dies horribly.
  • Deconstruction:
  • Department of Child Disservices: Several years after Yuno was adopted, her mother began abusing her to the extreme of locking her in a cage. Somehow, this information never got back to the child services agency, which one would imagine would still be checking in from time to time to make sure the parents were treating her well, as no one from there ever intervenes.
  • "Die Hard" on an X: Each certain arc of the anime and manga is set in this scenario whenever the protagonists are pitted against an antagonist with the Ordinary High-School Student as the John McClane. For the amount of borderline-NC-17-leveled Gorn and intense violence, it's up to par with Renny Harlin's approach to this trope, Die Hard 2 and Cliffhanger:
    • For Third, it's Die Hard with a Serial Killer.
    • For Minene's introduction, it's Die Hard in school.
    • For Sixth and Twelfth, it's Die Hard at a temple.
    • For Fifth, it's Die Hard in The Hero's home with an Enfant Terrible Creepy Child running amok.
    • For Tenth, it's Die Hard in a park.
    • For Fourth, it's Die Hard in a police station and a hospital.
    • From the Apprentice Diary Holders' perspective, it's Die Hard in an abandoned hotel with a Yandere holding her love hostage.
    • For Seventh, it's Die Hard inside a skyscraper.
    • For Eleventh, it's Die Hard in a bank.
    • For the final arcs, it's Die Hard in alternate dimensions and the space time continuum.
  • Disappeared Dad:
    • Yuki's dad, as his parents are divorced.
    • Hinata's dad is mostly absent from her life due to his obsession with his dogs and disappears altogether when he's killed.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: When Yuno chains Yuki up and feeds him herself, Yuki refuses to eat. It doesn't help that she's in her underwear and sitting on his lap. The following conversation occurs:
    Hinata: He doesn't want it!
    Yuno: Nah, he's pleased with it.
  • Downer Ending: Subverted at the very end of the manga. The series ends with Yuno dead and Yukiteru moping about it for 10,000 years, not even bothering trying to recreate his own world. Then you reach the epilogue which goes full reverse into an Earn Your Happy Ending. The anime plays it straight until The Stinger and Redial OVA.
  • Dragon-in-Chief: Yuno is this for Yuki.
    • The Starscream: In the last few chapters, Yuno becomes Yukiteru's final enemy after he refuses to kill her and he discovers she is actually the Yuno from an Alternate Timeline.
  • The Dulcinea Effect:
    • Yuki is shown to act this way towards Tsubaki, quickly trusting her and wanting to protect her. Granted, some of this is probably due to the fact that she looked to him like a beautiful Damsel in Distress that is one of the few sane people he had seen recently. Too bad he's very wrong.
    • Akise is shown to act this way towards Yuki in the Alternate Timeline spin-off Paradox. He just met Yuki, yet quickly decides to use Mur Mur's wish she promised him to save Yuki and comes to the conclusion that he's going to fight in Yuki's place, allowing Yuki to become God.
  • Distressed Dude: Yukiteru spends the better portion of an entire issue chained to a wall.
  • Drum Bathing: Near the end, Yukiteru and Yuno take a bath in a oil drum together.
  • Dying Moment of Awesome: Akise texts a message to Yuki even though Yuno just cut off his head.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: All the diary holders, prior to participating in the game, end up living their lives happily in the new timeline. Additionally, in the post credits scene in the final episode, 2nd universe god-Yuno respawns and she and Yuki begin working together to build a new universe. At the very end, everyone has their happy ending.
  • Easily Forgiven:
    • Yuki forgives people a little too easily, especially his crazy girlfriend.
      • Taken up to eleven when he forgives his own scumbag father for killing his mom in the span of one episode.
    • There are several examples of this throughout the story. Yuki being forgiven by the police, even though he accidentally shot one of them in the stomach. But particularly Yuno, who killed and dismembered several police officers but was allowed to walk free after it's revealed that the police chief orchestrated things in an attempt to get the police to kill the couple. There's also how Minene kills many of Yuki's schoolmates, and this is apparently forgotten soon afterwords until near the end on the series when Kosaka mentions it.
  • The End of the World as We Know It: Deus Ex Machina threatens this if Yuki doesn't buck up and start killing people. Though since he's on his way to a deific grave and the condition for saving the world is "get me replaced before I die", he may or may not have an actual choice in the matter.
  • Enfante Terrible: A 4-year-old child with a picture journal comes to kill the main characters.
  • Expendable Alternate Universe: Discussed by Minene and Yuki when they both travel to the third Alternate Timeline. Minene says Yuki must invoke this trope if he wishes to succeed. Yuki insists on protecting the third Yuno from the second Yuno, and that enables Earn Your Happy Ending.
  • Expy: From Neon Genesis Evangelion, both in the characters themselves and the relationships between them.
    • Yuki shares a number of character traits with Shinji, especially in the beginning. Both are timid and lonely but unable to connect with the people around them even if they really want to, and forced to fight even though they really don't want to. Both seem to want their father back in their lives, but both end up betrayed. The main difference seems to be that Yuki has his mother and Yuno, the latter being something of a mixed blessing.
    • Deus himself looks a bit like an Eva in some panels of the manga.
    • Akise is a close expy of Kaworu from the same series, and the Japanese dub even gives him the same seiyuu. The parallel is at the same time taken further than expected with the revelation that Akise is an Artificial Human created by Deus, just like Kaworu is an Angel, and harshly subverted when Deus denies that Akise's love for Yuki is genuine and an example of Akise's "free will", while it's commonly accepted that Kaworu's love for Shinji, born from his free will, was what made him disobey his orders.
    • Minene can also be considered as an expy of Misato.
    • Kurusu seems to be modeled after Kaji in his first appearance but his willingness to perform a Face–Heel Turn in order to become God for his family, specifically to save his dying son make him more similar to Gendo in personality. 5/6 expies!
  • Even the Guys Want Him: Yuki, as far as Akise is concerned.
  • Everyone Calls Him "First": The diary owners are all referred to by the order in which they were given their diaries. Most of the diary holders don't even get any other name most of the time they are mentioned. Particular mention goes to Tenth (not called by his real name until his murder is being investigated) and Twelfth (his real name isn't even mentioned until his diary states his death).
  • Evil All Along: In Chapter 50, Akise claims that Yuno is the actual villain, who used Yukiteru, and plans to drive him to the brink of despair and kill him in order for her to become God. Of course, Akise is the one who said it, so who knows if it's actually true. As of Chapter 53, it seems that Akise was right and wrong at the same time. Yuno wants to kill him, but only so they can be together forever via an endless time loop.
  • Evil Versus Evil: The series originally began as a Black-and-Gray Morality, but once Yukiteru becomes just as bad as the others, it becomes this.
  • Eye Scream: Minene gets a dart through the eye and then receives a cool eyepatch!
    • Gory Discretion Shot: The anime shows Twelfth reaching in to pull the eyeball out...
      • In the DVD release, we see more of it.
  • Face–Heel Turn: Yuki, Yuno, Fourth, Mur Mur. Considering the very nature of the survival game, it would probably be wiser to list the exceptions.
  • Fanservice: Primarily of Minene and Yuno, although warrants honorable mentions, though the contexts for those two are disturbing enough to barrel straight through to Fan Disservice territory.
  • Food as Bribe: In the last chapter of Mosaic, Akise uses Minene's hunger to get her to compete in a beauty pageant with the incentive that she can use the prize money to buy herself food. He keeps it up by deliberately eating food in front of her as a constant reminder to why she's competing.
  • Four-Philosophy Ensemble:
    • The Cynic: Minene.
    • The Optimist: Yukiteru.
    • The Realist: Yuno.
    • The Apathetic: Akise.
  • Gainax Ending: The manga epilogue most certainly counts. 1st-world Yuno commits suicide because she can't hurt Yuki. This leaves Yuki as God of the 2nd-world, only he's so depressed about it he doesn't do anything and lives in a vacuum for 10,000 years with only Mur Mur for company. Then Yuno breaks the walls of time and space with a hammer. It turns out 3rd-world Yuno inherited 1st-world Yuno's memories. Then, 3rd-world Deus invites the two to become his successor — presumably this is because they've both already won the game once each. Both get a Happy End from this.
  • Godhood Seeker: The characters are competing for his position, but each has their own, unique, reason for wanting the position and power, very little to do with their ego. Not to say the reasons are good.
  • God Is Evil: Deus may have some damn significant justification, but any God that tells a 4-year-old to kill (semi)-innocent people earns this title.
    • Furthermore, the whole backstory behind Future Diary is that Deus, who to all practical purposes is God, considers the best solution to the problem "I'm dying and I need to choose a replacement" to be "pick a dozen deeply deranged and often violent individuals and incite them to kill each other until only one survives, and never mind how many innocent bystanders die along the way!"
    • Not to mention it's hinted in the first two versions of the game he set up each diary user to be mentally broken so they'd kill each other off quicker and it would be more entertaining.
  • Gratuitous English:
    • Akise agrees to give Hinata his diary provided she can guess which hand he's holding a coin in. LEFT OR RIGHT?
    • The 2nd OP is entirely in ENGRISH.
  • Grotesque Cute: Particular mention should be given to Yuno, Reisuke, and Mur Mur.
  • Heel–Face Door-Slam: Remember Yuki's father? The guy that only came back into Yuki's life to steal and then break his cellphone so that his debt will get paid off? Remember how he took Yuki's parachute to escape, leaving his son to die? Remember when he stabbed and murdered his ex-wife to avoid going to the police? Well, he had just spent the entire day praying for forgiveness and buying a telescope to watch the stars with his son. He promises Yuki to turn himself in...right before he gets stabbed in the stomach, while his son watches. Door slam, indeed.
  • Heroic Resolve: Yuki demonstrates via a speech to Yuno, telling her he loves her and that she is irreplaceable to him. He vows to save her, all while climbing up a sheer cliff with his bare hands.
  • Hope Spot: Minene blows herself up to open an armored door. It doesn't work. It's not all bad though, since she secretly survives thanks to Deus Ex Machina. In a blink and you’ll miss it moment: for a series that has no problem showing blood, Minene’s ‘suicide’ room is significantly cleaner than it should be.
  • I Did What I Had to Do: An unfortunate byproduct of Yuki's taking a level in badass.
  • I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Yuno. In later arcs, after Yuki swears to avenge the deaths of his parents, Yuno offers to die for him when the time comes.
  • If It's You, It's Okay:
    • In the Alternate Timeline spin-off Paradox, Akise maintains that he isn't gay — he only feels this way about Yuki. This is also Akise's reason to Screw Destiny in Chapter 48 of the main storyline. He states directly to Deus's face that he loves Yuki, which is why he meddles with others' plans beyond the will of Deus.
    • In the main storyline there's Mao, who's not-so-secretly in love with Hinata — she can't stop looking at/thinking about/lusting after/recording in a diary Hinata's impressive bust (for a 14 year old).
  • Improbable Aiming Skills:
    • Yuki and his darts.
      • Possible justification. He was a social outcast who had nothing better to do, and owned at least four dart boards which can be seen hanging on his wall. Practice makes perfect.
    • Yuno is also ridiculously accurate, managing to shoot six policemen in the neck while running with a revolver.
  • Ironic Echo: In the manga, Minene outs Yukiteru as The First by reading the look in his eyes when she pieces together the clues leading to his identity. Later on, Yukiteru manages to avoid running on one of her landmines by reading her in the same way.
    Yukiteru: You said it yourself! The eyes have it! *cue Eye Scream*
  • Just Hit Him: Double Subverted in Chapter 23. After the flash grenade explosion, when Yukiteru and Kurusu regain consciousness, Kurusu grabs Yukiteru and actually starts to beat him up... but then either throws him or lets him fall down, with Yukiteru conveniently landing right next to the dropped gun.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: Yuno's mother dies slowly in the very cage she used to imprison her daughter. Said daughter wanted her to know how it felt.
  • Lonely at the Top: Yuki wins the survival game and spends 10,000 years as the god of the empty space of the 2nd-world.
  • Lotus-Eater Machine: Yuno traps Yuki in one because she can't kill him in the 3rd-world.
    • This was more of a subversion or playing with the idea of a Lotus Eater Machine used as Fridge Horror. While the Machine is utilized, Yukiteru is VERY aware he's in one as he's flat out told so and Yuno does nothing to mess with his mind or memories. So it's more like a very pleasant jail in which he can have anything he wants than a true Lotus Eater Machine.
  • Love at First Sight: In Paradox, Akise falls in love with the wounded Yuki at first sight.
  • Love Makes You Crazy:
    • Yuno. She was sort of crazy already though, given how she killed her adoptive parents. It's also likely that her non-biological parents were the ones who drove her insane in the first place.
    • Later on Yuki gets a little crazy for Yuno.
  • Mad Love: The only plausible relationship you can have with an utterly Ax-Crazy Yandere like Yuno.
  • Made of Plasticine: People are often sliced completely in two with absurd ease.
  • Manipulative Bastard: Happens with almost Death Note-esque frequency. A particularly disturbing mention must be given to Yuno in Chapter 49. Akise has stabbed Yuno and left her for dead and is trying to reach Yuki before he kills the Eighth and Hinata/Mao/Kosaka. Yuno, bleeding to death on the ground, calls Yuki and tells him that her diary told her that they were going to betray and kill him. Yuki, in the middle of a mental breakdown at the time, believes her and shoots Hinata. Yuno, on the other line, starts laughing her butt off, while a shot of her diary reveals that Yuki's friends weren't lying. She didn't want them to have him.
  • Meaningful Name:
    • The kanji for "Gasai" means "my wife".
    • Not to mention Juno "the goddess of marriage" which according to the Master Wiki is pronounced "Yuno". Coincidence?
      • The fact that Juno was the most possessively jealous yandere goddess helps a lot. Also, Yukiteru's own name is a corruption of "Jupiter".
    • Heck, all the diary holders have names that associate them with some Roman god or goddess.
    • Each Diary has an identifier attached to it, reflecting how each diary was used before the game and thus how each diary reflects future entries in the game. For example, Yuno's is the Love Diary; her entries always center around Yuki. Yuki's is the Random (or Indiscriminate) Diary; the fact he took note of everything around him (though notably not of him) means his Diary is one of the most powerful in terms of sheer information.
    • Listen to Deus Ex Machina's leitmotif ("Egoist"). The choir in the background constantly chants the names of Roman gods.
  • A Million Is a Statistic: The conflict between the diary holders has resulted in a total body count that numbers somewhere in the hundreds. Most of the diary holders have no reservations against killing countless innocent bystanders in pursuit of each other, and even the First, Yuki, ends up crossing his moral boundaries.
  • Moment Killer:
    • Nothing gets in the way of a marriage proposal like learning that the Big Bad has succeeded in his plan when you thought you'd foiled it.
    • Yuno invariably kills her own moments. Usually by doing something completely insane.
  • Mood Whiplash: The relationship between Yuki and Yuno constantly and abruptly switches between "Aww aren't they such a cute couple" and "What the hell is wrong with that girl?!"
  • Morality Kitchen Sink: The two main protagonists consist of a Classical Anti-Hero who later devolves into an Anti-Villain and an Ax-Crazy Dark Action Girl. Meanwhile, the antagonists can range from Anti-Villain or even Hero Antagonist to crazed serial killer or Omnicidal Maniac.
  • Ms. Fanservice:
    • Yuno, throughout the whole series.
      • Early on, she and Yukiteru visit a water park where Yuno loses her swimsuit.
      • Later on, Yuno chains Yukiteru to a chair so he can't leave her. This requires her to attend to all his, ahem, "duties", including feeding him and letting him pee. And on top of all that, she spends the entire time in nothing but a bra and panties.
      • Near the end of the series, Yuno starts wearing an black lacy dress with Zettai Ryouiki boots and straps all over. Add in the fact that she's wielding a katana the whole time, she basically turns into a Lady of War sprinkled with Axe-Crazy.
      • Yuno went from having an appropriately-sized chest for a middle schooler (fairly small in the beginning) to having large breasts in the course of about two chapters.
      • In one of the last few chapters, she gets her HAPPY END sans censoring.
    • Minene also gets in on the action occasionally. At one point, Twelfth chains her up in her underwear sans bra, with only Godiva Hair to protect her naughty bits. Oh, and she gets a gratuitous Shower Scene without censoring twice in the series.
  • Mummies at the Dinner Table: Yuno keeps her parents' corpses in a cage and talks with them. Later, she chops off their heads and carries the decayed skulls around with her.
  • Mundane Utility: In the grace period between Yukiteru getting his diary and Deus announcing the game, Yukiteru uses it for things like cheating on a test.
  • Murder the Hypotenuse: Both Yuno and Akise (in Paradox) are willing to do this and much more in order to keep Yuki for themselves.
  • Must Not Die a Virgin: Yuki and Yuno, who are both virgins before Chapter 52.
  • Mythological Theme Naming: Each of the Diary Holders' names have some connection to a Roman god/goddess (with Minene being connected to two). Most of the gods or goddesses that they're associated with are a part of the Dii Consentes, the twelve gods and goddesses that were held in the highest regard, but we also have John Balks (Bacchus) and Yomotsu Hirasaka (Pluto).
    • Also, the three "main" characters (Yukiteru, Yuno, and Minene) intentionally form the Capitoline Triad (Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva).
    • For reference, the diary holders are associated as follows:
      • Yukiteru -> Jupiter
      • Yuno -> Juno
      • Hiyama -> Vulcan
      • Kurusu -> Mercurius
      • Houjou -> Ceres
      • Kasugano -> Proserpina (Kasugano also shares properties with Apollo. Along with being believed to be clairvoyant by her followers, her family name has the Kanji for "Sun" (æ—¥).)
      • Marco/Ai -> Mars/Venus
      • Kamado -> Vesta
      • Minene -> Minerva (and Neptune)
      • Tsukishima -> Diana
      • Balks -> Bacchus
      • Yomotsu -> Pluto
    • In addition, Akise -> Apollo

    N-Z 
  • Nay-Theist: Minene. Until she became a diary holder she only attacked religious targets, due to losing her parents who were viciously killed in the crossfire of a religious conflict in the Middle East when she was a child, which was heavily implied to be in Palestine between the Arabs and the Israelis ("I lost my folks in the Middle East, thanks to a 1600-year-old-fight about three takes on the same damn God"). Because of this, she grew up to have extreme contempt for organized religion and the concept of God in general - which is partly why Deus chose her to be the one he would give half of his divine power to in order to be ready for Mur Mur's imminet betrayal.
  • Necromantic: Yuki becomes a rare protagonist version after his parents die. He decides to win the game to bring them back to life. It won't work.
  • Nobody Poops: Subverted in that Yuno mentions taking care of Yuki's "potty breaks" when she kidnaps and holds him hostage and she later has to pee in a corner in front of Yuki while they are hiding out.
  • No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Yuki's friends try to warn him that not even God could bring back the dead. They get killed by Yuki for their efforts.
  • No One Should Survive That!: Downplayed in most cases. Several characters manage to survive some gruesome injuries (having their throat slit, getting shot in the head, decapitation, etc.), but they usually die not long after, either by letting the injuries take their time or getting killed in a different manner.
  • Non-Action Guy: Until he Took a Level in Badass, Yuki didn't do much fighting. Yuno was usually the one to kill their enemies. The Seventh diary holders eventually call him out on it.
  • Official Couple: Yukiteru/Yuno, Marco/Ai, Nishjima/Minene, and a bit surprisingly, 3rd-world Yukiteru/Wakaba. Also, in the anime Kamado Ueshita and John Balks are unambiguously shown to be a couple in the 3rd-world.
  • Offscreen Villain Dark Matter: The Fifth is four years old, but somehow he's able to acquire a gas mask, poison gas, and a syringe of poison to use against Yuki and Yuno.
  • Once More, with Clarity: When Minene was asking for info about how Eleventh's diary works. Deus runs his arm through her though it was dismissed as an illusion and was never mentioned again. Later it was revealed that Deus had transferred half of his powers to her to combat a threat which is threatening the flow of the game and makes her forget about it for a while until the right time.
  • Only Sane Man:
    • Yuki starts off as this, but then loses it when his parents die.
    • The Eighth is relatively sane — she doesn't have the will to kill. Her children, on the other hand, do. The only reason why the kids are fighting though is because they want to protect the woman who raised them from the other diary holders.
  • OVA: The manga was given an 8-minute one in September 2010 that rapidly covers the first several chapters.
  • Personality Powers: Each one of the diaries reads the future in a different way, this as a result that each Diary reflects its Holders, in terms of personality, traits, desires, etc. Thus, each has a name.
    • The First's diary (Random/Indiscriminate) reflects on him being an indifferent, reclusive bystander.
    • The Second's diary (Love) reflects her obsessive love towards the First.
    • The Third's diary (Murder) reflects his murderous tendencies.
    • The Fourth's diary (Case/Investigation) reflects his job as the police chief.
    • The Fifth's diary (Hyper Vision) reflects his childish impatience.
    • The Sixth's diary (Clairvoyance) reflects her role as the leader of a cult.
    • The Seventh's diaries (Exchange) reflect their mutual love as a couple.
    • The Eighth's diary (Server) reflects her kind and giving personality.
    • The Ninth's diary (Escape) reflects her survivalist nature. It also reflects her desire to escape from all the hardships she endured since childhood, and to be saved from it.
    • The Tenth's diary (Breeder) reflects his obsession with his dogs.
    • The Eleventh's diary (Watcher) reflects his megalomania as well as his status as the creator of all diaries.
    • The Twelfth's diary (Justice) reflects his justice seeking outlook.
  • Pink Girl, Blue Boy: Yuno has pink hair (in the anime her eyes are sometimes pink as well instead of red) while Yuki has blue eyes.
  • The Plan: In a series about dueling future readers with magical diaries, you need to do this to get anything done. Thankfully, due to the... unstable nature of the future (with up to 12 people actively changing and screwing with it), there are no plans which are durable enough to get to the Roulette stage of gambitting.
  • Plot Induced Stupidity: Without this, the plot would be stupifyingly complicated. As it is, though, the main character often only checks his diary just before or after an event. Even though it is initially described as being able to see 90 days into the future, it is very rare for anyone to even bother to read more than a little bit ahead. Vaguely justified in that the future is constantly changing whenever any of the diary holders does anything at all while knowing the future, so anything more than the immediate future would be pretty useless.
  • Please Dump Me: Chapter 56 has Yuno doing everything she can to get Yukiteru to hate her.
  • Potty Emergency: Yuno is forced to relieve herself on the floor of the supply closet she and Yuki are hiding in.
  • Property of Love: Yuno labels Yuki as her property that she won't let anyone take away from her. She also proclaims herself as belonging only to Yuki and she will let him use her for whatever he wants.
  • Protagonist-Centered Morality: Yuki's Slowly Slipping Into Evil leads him into doing the very things he feared when the death game started, thinking he can resurrect everyone when he is the last man standing. Unfortunately, he's been duped into thinking that way after both of his parents died.
  • Quit Your Whining: Kosaka calls out Yuki after he murders his friends.
  • Rape as Backstory: Tsubaki. Also Ai and Marco's backstory in the anime; he interrupts an attack on Ai.
  • Reality-Writing Book: Future Diary features journals which contain the future entries of characters, allowing them to see what they'll experience in the future, and react to them. The journals change as they do things. Most of these journals take the form of diaries entered into cellphones. However, Sixth has hers on a scroll, Fifth's on a picture book, Twelfth's on a voice recorder, and Eleventh's on a tablet.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Redemption Equals Death: Yuki believes so, and as he asks Yuno to kill him and become God he thinks to himself that it's his atonement for killing all those people. In response, Yuno from the first world stabs herself and dies. Her memories are transferred to the third world Yuno.
  • Relationship-Salvaging Disaster: A few days after the confinement incident, the attacks of Seventh forces Yuki and Yuno to come back together to beat Seventh. It helps that after this Yuki was convinced by Seventh to reevaluate their relationship and give Yuno an important Armor-Piercing Question about her love for him.
  • Reset Button Ending: An inversion on the usual good-to-bad, in that the '2nd-world', in which the story takes place, ends, and they create the '3rd-world', in which everyone — including most of the diary holders — live happily ever after. In fact, thanks to time travel, Yuki's actions help undo several tragic backstories, so most of the named characters are better off than they were when the series began.
  • Roaring Rampage of Romance: By the end of the series, we learn that Yuno and Yukiteru were once this in another world. When Yuno won the right to succeed Deus Ex Machina in the first world, her first act as the new God was to attempt to resurrect Yukiteru. Needless to say, it did not go well. Everything we know of her in the series is the Yuno who has already long since crossed the Moral Event Horizon by abandoning the first world and creating a second just so she could spend more time with Yukiteru. It is heavily implied though that they fit this trope very well in the first world, before the events of the series and the original Yukiteru's death.
  • Sadistic Choice: In Chapter 55, Yuno forces one of these on Yuki after they, Minene, and Mur Mur jump back in time. Either Yuki hands over the third world's Yuno to be killed, or first world Yuno will kill Yuki's parents.
  • Sakurami Is The Center Of The Universe: Almost every diary holder, who are destined to rule over all of space and reality (and the 6 billion people on this planet in that regard), live in Sakurami.
    • JustifiedDeus Did It. He chose Sakurami because John Balks, its mayor, and Eleventh Diary Holder, asked him to.
    • Also justified that the game has to finish in 90 days, or else Deus dies, and the universe with him. Stretching out even a fraction of the twelve across the globe would likely guarantee a longer game than that.
  • Screw Destiny: These are people with future-predicting diaries fighting to become a god. Of course this is going to happen.
  • Scry vs. Scry: The entire premise. The diaries of the Diary Holders tell them the future in their own unique ways, and the Holders use the information to one-up each other.
  • Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Averted. All diary owners can change their future as well as others' futures.
  • Self-Made Orphan: Yuno. Subverted by the revelation that she was actually adopted, so it wasn't her biological parents she killed.
  • Shades of Conflict: A combination of Black-and-Gray Morality and Evil Versus Evil.
  • Shipper on Deck: Yuki's mom seems absolutely intent on getting Yuno "closer" to her son. Chalk it up to Values Dissonance.
  • Single-Target Sexuality: Yuno's crush on Yuki. Also Akise, both in the spinoff Paradox as well as in the MAIN storyline.
  • Sleuth Dates Cop: Uryuu (9th) has Detective Nijishima, who swings between wanting to help her and wanting to help someone else in favor of her throughout the series. Near the end, he decides he wants to help her because he has fallen for her. He proposes about ten minutes screen time before his death. At the end, she goes back in time and marries him before he was supposed to die, and averts his death.
  • Sliding Scale of Comedy and Horror: Yuno's Yandere behavior can be this at times, especially when combined with Yuki's facial reactions.
  • Snicket Warning Label: Inverted. The series ends on a downer note with Yuki sulking in a void of nothingness and 2nd-world Mur Mur reading the same manga for the ten millionth time. 3rd-world Yuno, while now well-adjusted, still feels that there is something missing. The manga lists some credits, and cuts to a black double-page spread. Then comes Future Chapter One — 1st-world Yuno has managed to sync her memories with 3rd-world Yuno and smashes the time-space continuum open with the Biscuit Hammer, allowing her and Yuki to reunite. 3rd-world Deus decides to not hold a game and instead appoints Yuki and Yuno as the new gods of the 3rd-world automatically, and everyone lives more-or-less happily ever after.
  • Spell My Name With An S:
    • Yuno's nickname for Yuki should be written as "Yukii" if you go off the katakana for it, though Tokyopop writes it as "Yuki" instead. Most scanlations stick to the former.
    • More notably, the Eleventh's name is romanized as John Balks in most of the scanlations and the dub, but Tokyopop and the Niconico subs romanize it as John Bacchus.
    • That cute little girl in the Causality Hall, ムルムル? Most translations and webpages romanize it as "Muru Muru" or "Murumuru", but the opening for the series reads clearly "Mur mur" (in two lines) in the background behind her. Any relation?.
  • Stab the Scorpion: Happens a ridiculous amount of times in the series.
    • One chapter ends with Yuki looking as if he's going to abandon Yuno when Akise reveals that she's not the real Yuno. Next chapter reveals that he let go of her hand so that he could push to the ground to avoid gunfire from the Eleventh Diary Holder.
    • Subverted later in the twin towers when Minene points her gun at Yuki. Turns out there was just a mook behind him. She then explains that she will kill him if the plan fails, and nearly does. Ends up truly being Double Subverted once she doesn't go through with shooting him and instead helps him to reach Eleventh.
  • Stalker with a Crush: Yuno. In one of the more disturbing chapters, right after the hero and audience think she's not so bad, the girl drugs the hero and chains him to a chair. Of course, this is after we learn that she killed her parents.
  • Stalking is Love:
    • This series loves playing ping-pong with this trope. The status of it by the end seems to be "Stalking is love, but only because you're as crazy as her now."
    • In Chapter 57, Yuki states that he fell in love with Yuno because "she was always by his side".
  • Star-Crossed Lovers: Yuki and Yuno have no future together, since one of them needs to die to complete the Survival Game and prevent the world from ending. At the end, Yuno kills herself to ensure Yuki lives, but her memories are given to an alternate version of herself from the third world, and she becomes a god and reunites with Yuki.
  • Stealth Insult: Yuno does this during the second fight with Sevenths after recovering her and Yukiteru's diaries. She comments that the diaries that were put on display by Sevenths were obviously fakes and that only an idiot would mistake them for the real ones. Yukiteru's father made that exact mistake moments earlier.
  • Suicide Pact: 1st-world Yuki and Yuno decide to do this, as neither could stand the thought of killing the other to become god. Subverted in that Yuno fakes her death, attempting to bring Yuki back to life by becoming god. Unfortunately, in the Future Diary universe, it is possible to bring a person back from death but the god's power can only bring back the body, not the soul of the person. All the god gets is an empty shell should they attempt it. Yuno is not pleased at this last bit of news, to say the least.
  • Supernatural Phone: The series has almost every major character having and using a supernatural cellphone or similar device that can tell the future in various ways.
  • Superpower Lottery: The Future Diaries. There are vast differences in their ability to predict, each with its own weaknesses.
    • The First's is one of the strongest but still has the weakness that it doesn't predict his own actions.
    • On the other hand, Second has the weakest diary, only predicting one person's actions. But she links up with said person — First. Their diaries complement each other and together are much more powerful than either one individually.
    • Then there is Fifth who can only make three predictions a day.
    • Fourth's can only predict crime cases.
    • Let's not even get into the Eighth's Diary and what it does and gives to Akise.
    • Ninth's is constantly updated with escape routes. It fits well with her survivalist personality.
    • The undeniable winner of the lottery is Eleventh, who can see other diary users' diaries.
  • Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Each diary has its own strengths and weaknesses, thus, one diary's strength can be another's weakness and similarly, a diary strength can balance another's weakness. An example is how Yukiteru's diary predicts things around him, but does not predict things about him. Coupled with Yuno's diary (which predicts everything Yukiteru does), the two diaries make a near perfect prediction of future events. Another example is when Twelfth pointed out that Tsubaki's Clairvoyance Diary trumps Minene's Escape Diary, since Tsubaki's diary predicts a wider scope than Minene's.
  • "Take That!" Kiss: Tsubaki and later Akise plant one of these on Yuki when they think they have Yuno cornered. Unfortunately for them, Yuno doesn't like that one bit.
  • Taking the Bullet: Nishijima takes a grand total of eight bullets for Minene and dies. If both of them had survived, Minene would have married Nishijima and gave up being a terrorist. Tear drops...
  • Taking You with Me: How Twelfth wants to finish Sixth. Yuno kills him.
    • Also when Yuno was fighting Kurusu and his goons in the hospital.
      • Subverted in the fact that Yuno probably didn't know that the grenade she used was only a flash bang. Nobody ended up dying.
  • Talking Is a Free Action:
    • Oh, so much. "Yuki! There's a mine one meter in front of you! Go to the left!" Doesn't sound ridiculous, until you realize that he's sprinting forward, and Yuno's shouting directions to him. And it's commented that he's a good runner, too.
      • The anime makes this more believable: "Yuki! To the left! ... Now the right!"
    • Texting is also a free action. Most of the diary holders have lightning-fast thumbs.
    • Reading seems to be a free action too, since in various occasions characters are shown being able to predict their opponent's moves by reading their diaries. During fist-fights. Between one blow and the next one. Yes, characters close in on their opponent, then, while the opponent is dealing a blow, look at the diary, read the next move and dodge accordingly. They are able to do all this in the time a punch takes to be dealt.
  • Their First Time: Chapter 52, the long-awaited HAPPY END. Twisted later, as Yuki confronts Yuno on Akise's message and she goes Ax-Crazy, literally trying to kill him with an axe while still dressed only in underwear.
  • There Are No Adults: Vastly averted. Although the two main characters are school age, others are not, and the school-aged kids' parents end up central to the plot. That is to say, dead most of the time.
  • There Are No Therapists: Considering most of, if not all the characters, can be classified as mentally unstable if not outright insane, you think half the cast would be in an asylum by now.
  • There Can Be Only One: God has apparently decided that if he's going to die anyway, he might as well see people fight to the death first. And what better way to chose a successor? Subverted in the end, as 3rd-world Deus permits both 2nd-world Yukiteru and 3rd-world Yuno to succeed him.
  • Too Dumb to Live:
    • Tsubaki, did you just kiss Yuki in front of Yuno?
    • The police officer who got shot by Yuki. He confronted an extremely frightened teen with a gun in an enclosed staircase. So what does he do? Fires a warning shot.
  • Took a Level in Badass: After his father is killed, Yuki retaliates against his would-be assassins using the knife which took his father's life, his darts, and blocking gunfire directed at him by using one of the assassins as a meat shield.
    • Yuno takes a level during the fight with the Sevenths, when Yuki's praise gives her the motivation to block half a dozen thrown knives in an instant.
  • Tsundere: Mur Mur pegs Minene as one as she watches the Dating Catwoman antics between her and Nishijima. While Minene insists that she's not going to follow some "shojo manga formula", she can't seem to shake Nishijima off of her, culminating with him proposing, getting her uncharacteristically flustered.
    • In Chapter 56, Yuno's feelings for the 2nd-world Yuki are very confusing, so she plays this trope with her unique style:
    Yuno: No, no no no! I've already abandoned this Yukki! I don't like him or anything. Not only that, I'm the one trying to kill him right now!
    Yuno's phone screen: Yukki said that he'd even die for me. I'm so happy!
  • Unbuilt Trope: While Yuno is the Trope Codifier for yanderes in anime, she's also not really a straight example of one. Rather than being driven to insanity by lovesickness for Yukki, her mental illness exists entirely separately from her relation to him and is the result of a really particularly awful Trauma Conga Line; Yukki is the target of her obsession because he's the one stable influence in her life and the only person to show her any real kindness, not as a direct result of said mental illness, and the show creates a constant tension between her genuine love for him and her Ax-Crazy tendencies rather than directly tying the two together. If it weren't for the fact that this is the show that popularized the trope, it would qualify as an outright deconstruction of the idea.
  • Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Eighth. She is a gigantic, Pillsbury Doughboy-like woman roughly three times the size of the children she takes care of. No one seems to notice this, beyond a one-shot joke.
  • Villain Protagonist: Oh, and how. The female lead would kill anyone, as would the male lead, later.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: Given the nature of the game, every diary holder must be willing to kill in order to survive. If they win, they gain godlike powers. It's easy for them to justify some pretty extreme behavior with the knowledge that they'll be able to reshape reality afterward. Of course, not every diary holder necessarily has good intentions...
  • What the Hell, Hero?:
    • Yuki calls Yuno on her claim that she locked and chained him up in her room and tried to kill his friends because she loved him.
    • In Chapter 50, Kosaka calls out Yuki on his cowardly decision to kill all of his friends rather than face the Awful Truth they were trying to tell him. He is later called out on this again, this time by Yuno of all people. This time it sinks in.
  • Why Can't I Hate You?:
    • Chapter 56 has an inversion. Yuno desperately tries to get Yuki to hate her so that she can kill him with no regrets, up to and including killing his parents in front of him.
    • Played straight when she finds out that she still loves him. She goes even crazier than before.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds:
    • Yuno Gasai. By the time the 3rd-world rolls around, people will want to give her a big hug.
    • Tsubaki becomes one of these when her tragic past in revealed.
  • Year X: The series is set in 20XX.
  • You Are Number 6: At the beginning of the game, the diary holders are aware of each other, but their identities are obscured, so it's easier to refer to one another by the order in which they received their diaries.
  • Younger Than They Look: Other than Yuki, none of the middle school characters actually look like they're in middle school. Particularly the girls.

The anime features the following tropes:

    Anime Tropes 
  • Adaptation Expansion:
    • The anime includes some parts of the Mosaic spin-off.
    • Takao Hiyama (The Third) also got a bit more screentime to better illustrate his presence in the first episode.
    • Some things from the manga are reworked to make more sense (such as averting the Talking Is a Free Action described above, and changing a room filling up with concrete into a room filling with gas).
    • Some content is added between scenes from the manga (such as Yukiteru's futile attempts to inform Kurusu about the dead bodies in Yuno's house).
    • In the anime adaptation of Yukiteru's and Yuno's second battle with Seventh, there is an added scene of Yukiteru's father asking Yukiteru to give him his cellphone and promising to buy him a new one after his debts are erased, indicating that he didn't know that breaking the phone would kill Yukiteru. In the manga it wasn't made clear whether he knew this or not.
    • Also expanded is the Seventh's past together, with a story from their high school days, leading to Rape as Backstory for Ai and Interrupted Suicide for Marco. It also adds more to Marco's reason for not leaving Ai in the tower, despite him also being injured.
    • The anime also expands on Yuno's family situation and the reason why her mother's depression led her to take such abusive measures. Apparently Saika felt she couldn't fulfill her role as a wife to her husband for being unable to conceive a child, and felt neglected herself as she had trouble dealing with his long work hours and business trips. He also either missed or ignored her phone calls to him while he was away. Coupled with this was the fact that she also felt like a terrible mother to her adoptive daughter as well; she believed that neither of them loved her or wanted her in their lives. She demanded so much of herself that she started pushing equally high demands on Yuno as well, taking out her own feelings of inadequacy on Yuno in the form of abuse.
    • The time spent in the 3rd-world in general, from the other characters' lives to the fight scenes between the last survivors of the second world, is expanded upon.
    • The Redial OVA shows what happened leading up to Yuno finally reuniting with Yuki.
  • Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: A new scene is added with Yukiteru's mom bonding with Yuno over naked baby pictures.
  • Art Shift: Weirdly done with some Medium Blending at the end of Episode 5 in Mur Mur's ending segment with Twelfth; the art is suddenly some crudely made clay figures in stop-motion, with some slightly bizarre 2D animation spliced in between. It's because Twelfth is blind.
  • Bittersweet Ending: As opposed to the manga's ending, the anime doesn't explicitly show Yuki and Yuno ever reuniting (at least until the Redial OVA). But it still shows the repaired lives of the 3rd-world characters.
  • Bland-Name Product:
    • Kosaka's phone, which is shaped like and obviously is an iPhone, is apparently an iBone.
    • In a scene where Yuki is buying drinks, he attempts to get some Dr. Papper.
  • Censor Shadow:
    • A fairly obvious one once Yuno starts smashing heads in Episode 4.
    • There's also censor steam in Episode 20 when Minene showers.
    • Of course, the DVD release totally averts this with all gore and boobs visible. note 
  • Cue the Rain: It begins to rain right after Yuki's father Kurou dies in episode 18.
  • Death is Cheap: The Stinger for the first episode has Mur Mur attempt to deliver Third's diary, only for him to err on the side of caution and destroy the phone (which seems to be monitoring his criminal activities in painstaking detail) before she can properly explain the natures of the diary or the game. This happens several times and she keeps rewinding time to reverse his death.
  • Depending on the Artist: The anime features a noticeably different artstyle than the manga's, the characters look slightly older than their manga counterparts, also many expressions taken directly from the manga are more extreme: Yuno's shots in particular got a tad more lustful towards Yukiteru, and crazier towards everyone else.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: The anime shows Third carrying out one of his murders and teaching Yuki and Yuno's class before the point at which he was originally introduced in the manga. Minene also shows up early in her disguise from Mosaic.
  • Evolving Credits: Combined with Freeze-Frame Bonus, the end of the first opening with all the diary users rotated will show Dead End labels for those that recieved them at that point.
  • Expendable Alternate Universe: Discussed by Minene and Yuki when they both travel to the third Alternate Timeline. Minene says Yuki must invoke this trope if he wishes to succeed. Yuki insists on protecting the third Yuno from the second Yuno, and that enables Earn Your Happy Ending.
  • Foot Focus: The first opening contains a shot of someone walking toward the camera, leaving a trail of bloody footprints in their wake.
  • Freeze-Frame Bonus: In the anime a lot of diary entries can only be read if you pause. The more important ones are usually read out or explained by the characters, but there are some funny unmentioned ones.
  • Gas Chamber: In a surprising change from the manga, Yuno traps Akise, Mao, and Kosaka in a room which is filling with gas. In the manga, she filled it with concrete.
  • Gratuitous German: The opening song's chorus has "Ein, zwei, drei".
  • Gratuitous Japanese: The end sketch at the end of episode 23 in the English dub has Yuno engaging in this.
    Yuno: It's so nice to see you, Yukki-san. Do I look... sugoi?
  • Gratuitous Latin: The first opening features a rapid firing-off of the names of the Dii Consentes, the twelve Roman gods and goddesses that were considered to be the highest deities. In the manga, the twelve diary holders (each already a potential god) are named and themed after one of the gods with Bacchus added and Neptune replaced with Pluto (then again, Minene Uryuu also references Neptune).
  • Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Disregarding the first few episodes, the episode titles all seem to be related to the natures of the different diaries — so generally cell phone-themed, but "Handwritten Input" for the Sixth and "Voice Memo" for Twelfth also appear.
  • If Jesus, Then Aliens: When Mur Mur tells Reisuke that he's been chosen for a Future Diary, Reisuke says to her "If there's a God, it's not strange for there to be aliens, right?" and refuses to participate in the game until she shows him an alien.
  • Karma Houdini: The girls who arranged for Ai to be gang raped simply because they didn't like her and thought she was pretentious.
  • Lethal Chef: In the first Stinger of the anime not taken from the manga, Murmur manages to send Yukiteru and his mother to the hospital with her miso soup.
  • Magical Security Cam: Justified in that it's employed by the universe's god. The bigger mystery is why he's watching Yukiteru sitting on the toilet.
  • Meet Cute: Minene and Nishijima in the tenth episode in the anime version, which only vaguely alludes to their true first meeting.
  • Mood Whiplash: Each episode has a comedic stinger after the credits. This makes for quite a contrast compared to the often shocking and disturbing endings that episodes can have.
  • Nobody Poops: Averted even earlier than the manga.
    • Yukiteru is shown on the toilet in one episode. He is being filmed by the god's security cam.
    • Minene is also shown using the toilet. She keeps calling Nishijima, who is cleaning the room, a pervert.
  • Ominous Latin Chanting: There is a little in the OVA ending music. It's also applied liberally to the series' opening song.
  • Out-of-Genre Experience: The episode where Yuno meets Yukki's mom is a Breather Episode and an example of this, because it mostly plays out as a lighthearted comedy episode.
  • Pixellation: Used to censor any outstanding examples of gore. The DVD/Blu-Ray releases, however, remove this. It's not pretty.
  • Potty Dance: In Episode 10, Minene does a one-handed version of this.
  • Precision F-Strike:
    • Ninth screams "FUCK YOU!" to Fourth in the English dub during episode 11.
    • Later on, Yukiteru gets one towards Yuno in the English dub, when he's trying to stop First Yuno from killing Third Yuno and repeating the cycle. She asks him why he keeps interfering with her plan, to which he yells "BECAUSE I LOVE YOU, YOU CRAZY BITCH!"
  • Shout-Out: Strangely, the second opening seems to reference The Smiths. Part of the lyrics go "The girl with the sharp thorn in her flesh/I meet you at your story/Behind the hatred there lies/a murderous love". This would appear to be a reference to the opening lines of "The Boy With The Thorn In His Side", which go, "The boy with the thorn in his side/Behind there hatred lies a murderous desire/for love". It's really odd.
  • Smurfette Principle: When the five Twelfths are shown, there is only one female — who wears pink. She also happens to be the most muscularly built, for some odd reason.
  • Spit-Trail Kiss: Tsubaki's Forceful Kiss got upgraded to this just for extra levels of Squick.
  • Spoiler Opening:
    • Strongly so, but at the same time it's very vague and you might only see the importance on hindsight. Yuno killing a copy of herself and then the two joining hints at her origin in this world. The first opening also foreshadows every diary owner, shown in shadow with a sequence of items relating to each one.
    • The second opening is also very much a spoiler, but for a slightly different reason: Faylan's lyrics are absolutely filled with huge spoilers of the story.
      • And anything colored blue (after the title card) in the second opening is destined to die/cease to exist. It includes most of the diary owners (except First, Second, and Ninth), Yukiteru's four friends, explosion flames that represent Ninth's terrorism, and the candle flames that represent the Eighth's foster children. By contrast, Ninth is grey-colored, Yuno has her hair tinted with real color, and Yukiteru who is the nominal winner, is the only fully colored one at all.
  • The Stinger: Comedic sketches and bits of trivia not shown in the show proper close episodes of the anime.
    • Also, the final scene of the anime after the credits, which leaves the whole ending rather ambiguous. Rather than include the whole epilogue where Yuno manages to break through the wall of space-time to see Yukiteru, the last message on Yukiteru's phone changes from "Yuno died." to "Yuno came to see me." This is followed by an announcement of another new project for Future Diary, which turned out to be an Adaptation Expansion of the Happy End.
  • Teens Are Monsters: Apart from the already messed-up protagonists, there is Ai's backstory: some of her female classmates set her up to be gang-raped. For no real reason other than the fact that they didn't like her.
  • Totally Radical: The English dub can sound like this sometimes. For example, in Episode 12, Minene holds a hospital hostage, and just before she lists her demands, she says...
    Minene: Give me swag, you get hostages.
    • Another episode has Yuki say "fail", outdated internet slang that has largely fallen out of use in The New '10s.
  • Wrongful Accusation Insurance: Yukitero and Yuno end up shooting policemen during their escape after Fourth frames them for murder, has them arrested, and tries to kill them at the police station. When the situation is resolved, their role in the chaos that ensued isn't revealed to the media and they aren't charged with any crimes. (The policeman Yuki shoots is stated to have survived, but no such revelation is given for the ones Yuno had shot.)

The live action drama features the following tropes

     Mirai Nikki: Another World tropes  
  • Chekhov's Gun: Haruna has a tazer which she uses to defend herself and Arata during their visit to Chronus. This tazer also leads to the death of Rui.
  • Chekhov's Gunman: Whoever locked Arata, Megumi and Yuno into the warehouse disappears without a trace. It's Haruna.
  • Death by Irony: Megumi death is caused by their inability to trust another player
  • Dreaming the Truth: Arata eventually starts remembering how he and Yuno met.
  • Driven to Suicide: Kibe decides that they won't be anyone's pawn. They then destroy their diary, rather than be subject to the rules of the game.
  • Expy: Most of the characters are expies of the manga cast, most notably Yuno is pretty much the same characters minus the pink hair and now nineteen.
    • Averted in Arata's case. He is meant to be like Yuki, but actually has friends, is very apathetic, takes a surprising interest in Yuno and takes a stand against the serial killer.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Arata's father Kurou, a fellow diary holder, is stabbed by the serial killer, to save his son.
    • Rui runs in front of Haruna to prevent them from killing Arata. Unfortunately, Arata's savior is forced off of the bridge they were all on in the process.
  • Insane Troll Logic: Kurou's diary shows him that his wife would be killed by a burglar soon. So what does he do to save her life? DIVORCE HER AND ABANDON HIS FAMILY! Instead of, say, just telling her to stay inside the house that night. That'd have been too easy.
  • Love Makes You Crazy: Episode 2 has shown Yuno has these traits, forcing Arata to tie her up temporarily.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Haruna gives this to Arata, claiming that he sacrifices everyone else, rather than take responsibility for his actions and his status as a player in the game.
  • There Can Only Be One: It has not been said how many diary holders there are in the drama but the rule still stands that the last person standing shall be the winner.
  • You Don't Look Like You: Deus appears in the show as a talking, purple, sun-shaped emoticon. Although this may be a mere representation since he is God.

Alternative Title(s): Mirai Nikki

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Future Diary OP 2

"DEAD END".

How well does it match the trope?

5 (2 votes)

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