syrpai

[syrpai]

Back around 2016-2018, a friend and I ran a whole community where we posted Mirai Nikki memes. Most of them were inside jokes based on our personal chats, slips of the tongue, weird translations, fanfics, and other random content. For some reason, people still showed up, scrolled through, and liked the posts, even though they clearly didn't get the context… Peak meta-irony, basically.

We mostly focused on NishiKuruMine, but occasionally mixed things up with TakaYomo, AkiYuki, KuroBacchus, and others. At the same time, we deliberately avoided Yuno and gave her significantly less attention, which you could also call meta-ironic.

These are Russian-language memes, and honestly, they haven't aged well. But I picked out a couple of my favorites that you might be able to understand without needing all the backstory.

I really like this last meme, so I'm just gonna drop it here anyway, even though it's in Russian.

This one comes from the light novel. I barely remember the details now, but near the start of the HOLON arc, Akise mentions how Minene drove him to Yukiteru during the Bacchus fight. Then, sensing danger, she just… left? Like, completely abandoned Akise right there in the chaos. And yeah, we absolutely milked that situation for memes.

And thanks for suggesting this! Had a good time digging these old things out. :)

Mirai Nikki Fandom ... We need more memes (?)

[syrpai]

I have no idea where I got this image from, but here it is. Not exactly HD, but if you zoom in you can make out some words like "Ninth (?) Diary", "Future Diary", and "which," among other things. The Japanese text at the bottom is easy enough to read, though… Just the standard copyright stuff.

upd

Roped my friends into helping out. We messed around with the original image a bit, and ChatGPT ended up pulling a pretty common English description of Minene from the internet, which isn't unusual for it. First off, I'm impressed it even figured out it was Minene and Future Diary without any prompting. Second, it's kinda wild how close the text actually is in some places. I've italicized the bits that seem the most sus, like ChatGPT was trying to force-fit the internet text onto the weird symbols in the image. But keep in mind that this is only a guess!

The Ninth Diary user and the protagonist of the side-story manga, Future Diary: Mosaic. An infamous atheist terrorist, Minene is a young woman who has hatred against organized religion (particular God). Minene's diary is the Escape Diary, which will chart out the best course of actions for her to escape whenever she finds herself in a dangerous situation.

Here's another random inquiry for the Mirai Nikki community. Even though there isn't that much official Future Diary merch, there are a few rare gems we can find here and there, such as this cool Minene inspired T-shirt.

I bring this up because the back of the shirt has a little bit of text at the top that is illegible due to the low quality of the image.

Since there is no better picture of this shirt, it's anyone's guess what's written on there. I imagine it's a description of the exploded view of the grenade... but that's boring! So, I was wondering what text you guys think should go on there. For no particular reason, just wondering...

[syrpai]

sawiud2

And the second one is a clean audio track from Episode 10, where you can actually hear Nishijima and Minene's conversation while Murmur is narrating her shoujo manga in the background.

How should I end this? Um, well… Be good kids and don't go posting exclusive copyrighted content in public places, or you might end up a stinky goblin like me. That's it.

[syrpai]

sawiud1

This post is split into two parts because Tumblr only allows one video per post.

I love collecting all kinds of interesting stuff, marveling at them in solitude, and then stashing it away in some hidden folder only to completely forget about it. Recently, though, someone reminded me of the bonus content that comes with Blu-ray anime, and as I was digging through my folders, I remembered this little gem. Honestly, I have no clue what's already floating around in the fan community and what isn't… So apologies in advance if I'm sharing something super obvious that everyone already knows. I'm dumb.

So, among the Blu-ray extras, you can find two unique audio tracks.

The first one is Go Twelfth's (not sure how to translate that) appearance in Episode 5, but here's the twist: every single voice is performed solo by Kawahara Yoshihisa.

[syrpai]

[syrpai]

dfjfj

Not usually one to post in Russian, but today I'm making a one-time exception. Because, well, it makes more sense given that it's about translating into Russian. Hope you all understand!

Пипикака

Мое увлечение переводами началось с 2013 года с того... Что я, не знамши японского языка, пихала фанатскую мангу с НишиМине в гугл-переводчик. Сразу видно, перспективный будущий артист цирка. Если вы знаете, что такое машинный перевод 2013 года, вас уже должна была пробрать дрожь. Но мне очень нужно было топливо для слез.

А еще я очень любила русский язык. Ненавижу вопли от людей, из-под палки выучивших в школе наизусть половину письма Татьяны, о его величии, потому что это совершенно обычный язык, такой же, как и множество других. Но такой свой, родной, кривоногий и хромой, который при переводе с любого неславянского языка поскальзывается на банане, делает тройное сальто, сносит твой поселок городского типа, расширяется в бесконечность и приземляется на нос — иногда настолько грациозно в своей неуклюжести, что сердце начинает биться чаще. Впрочем, именно этот язык позволяет мне выразить мысль максимально сочно. А я не выучила письмо Татьяны, потому что быдло.

Позже я стала изучать японский язык, получать удовольствие от его максимально логичной структуры, похожей на головоломку, и потребность в машинном переводе отпала. Примерно в то же время я стала максимально активно переводить материалы по Mirai Nikki. Всю ту же фанатскую мангу (авторы, простите, пожалуйста), песни, отрывки из гайдбука, ранобе (полностью перевела оба тома и горжусь собой, хотя перевод старый и откровенно никакой), хронологию событий, прохождение 13-ninme no Nikki Shoyuusha (мне нравится ирония, заложенная в само существование этого перевода).

И, конечно, легенду... Mirai Nikki Mosaic Keshi. Кусками, разумеется, не целиком. Ведь человек, который переведет Mosaic Keshi от корки до корки, сойдет с ума.

Mosaic Keshi принято бранить, потому что, ну... Ладно, все мы знаем, почему. Но я встану и громко заявлю, что люблю эту мангу. Это настолько плохо, что хорошо. Я искренне посмеялась с шутки про "сына" Курусу, потому что где-то на тридцатой странице твой мозг сам превращается в письку и радуется сотому упоминанию сородича. И грустно, что на автора из-за этого непреднамеренного перформанса вывалилось столько гневных сообщений, что он даже десять лет спустя про них вспоминает. Спасибо за такой деградантский контент, Такеучи-сенсей!

Переводить по Mirai Nikki я перестала года четыре назад. Выгорела, устала, перевела большую часть того, что меня интересовало. Из аудитории у меня был всего один землекоп, который помогал мне локализовать некоторые шутки, поэтому вряд ли кто заметил потерю бойца.

Но сегодня я перебирала файлы и нашла один из первых моих переводов Mosaic Keshi. Решила исправить ошибки и кинуть сюда, чтобы меня случайно не похоронили заживо. Пусть плывет сосиска... Волшебную палочку мне в жопу!

English postscript

Minene-sama is the ultimate fanservice queen in Mirai Nikki. Nobody else gets stripped down and dressed up in borderline fetish gear as often as she does. But mahou shoujo Minene from Mosaic Keshi? Peak perfection. Obviously, I love the character, and I'm happy with these gifts. But I have a pretty childish perspective on this kind of stuff because I just love Minene-sama in different outfits, and the sexual subtext doesn't really bother me. I've been wanting to draw a full-fledged artwork of Minene-sama in this outfit for ages. I even found some rough sketches from 2016, but no finished art. Maybe I'll get around to it someday. But not today.

That's all. Not sure what I wanted to say... Let's just go with: I'm a Mosaic Keshi fan. Laugh it up.

[syrpai]

[syrpai]

[syrpai]

Some kind of muttering

I love visiting Tumblr and seeing how amazing people keep the Mirai Nikki fandom alive. It makes me smile and wonder why I didn't stumble upon this community sooner. To all you wonderful people out there, thank you for existing. You've restored my faith in the fandom after ten years of aimlessly wandering alone.

But anyway, that's not the point. Seeing how my feed is overflowing with posts has inspired me to write something of my own. I decided to gather a few fun facts and details that I find intriguing but perhaps not widely known. You might already know some of these, but I'm going to share them anyway. Cause I love to geek out… Sorry in advance!

Fact 1: Filament isn't about Yuno

The single "filament" was released on February 8, 2012. In the lead-up to this, Yui-sama - the vocalist and lyricist of Yousei Teikoku -appeared as a guest on the online show "Lantis no! Anison Tuesday!!" to promote the upcoming release. The show is your typical Japanese variety program: lively, full of laughs, and Yui-sama constantly making witty remarks with her signature stone-cold expression. The most interesting part comes toward the end.

At one point, Shiraishi Minoru (Kosaka Ouji CV ❤) asks Yui-sama what thoughts she had while writing the song. Her response:

This song is dedicated to one of the key characters of Mirai Nikki, Akise. The lyrics are about him. I can't go into too much detail, but I tried to capture his unspoken feelings and hidden thoughts in my own way.

But it seems Asread either didn't notice this or chose to focus on the main fan-favorite Yuno, so the video highlights her. The fact that no one noticed this divergence between the creator's intent and the final product says a lot about the similarities between Yuno and Akise. Or perhaps it speaks to the limitless freedom of artistic interpretation.

Fact 2: Favorite Characters

This is fairly well-known, but it made me think deeply when I first learned about it, and I realized it's pretty obvious even without direct confirmation.

Esuno Sakae's favorite character is Uryuu Minene, which he mentioned in the guidebook and at the Lucca Comics 2012 conference (very cautiously and vaguely, unlike in the guidebook). Sorry, Esuno, but you didn't exactly hide it, constantly making things easier for your favorite…

Another one of his favorites is Houjou Reisuke. But I'll stop here so you can wait for the guidebook translation from other wonderful people and read all about it yourself~.

Murata Tomosa's favorite character is Kurusu Keigo, as she mentioned in a promotional review of pachinko machines. For some reason, her choice made me really happy (maybe because Kurusu is one of my favorites too).

Fact 3: Gundams

As you may know, a certain percentage of the Murmur's Section is an adaptation of omake from the manga. And the one I'm talking about here is no exception.

In the Murmur's Section 12, Kurusu tells us about an incident from his childhood involving a figure of a mecha from the anime Gundam, which indirectly inspired him to become a detective. In the manga, he starts his story with:

When I was a kid, I wanted a plastic model of Zaku Recon Type.

The conversation then proceeds exactly as shown in the anime. You might think, what's the big deal? Well, here's the thing.

Let's revisit the same moment in the anime:

When I was a kid, I wanted a plastic model kit badly. It was a Gyan.

Interesting. Why did Zaku from the original become Gyan? It's understandable when a studio changes some details during adaptation to fit the runtime, but here Kurusu goes out of his way to express his love for Gyan, even at the cost of extra screen time. Why did the poor Zaku get swapped out by Asread?

The issue isn't with Zaku but with Gyan. To uncover the reason, we need to check the role list of Tanaka Masahiko (Kurusu's CV), where we quickly notice…

That's right, Tanaka voiced a character in one of the Gundam movies, M'Quve. If you're familiar with the Gundam universe, you should have already figured it out. But all I know about Gundam is that it has big robots. Beep.

Looking up the character, we finally find what we're searching for.

It turns out that Kurusu's CV, Tanaka Masahiko, once voiced a character in Gundam who, in turn, piloted a Gyan. So how could Kurusu love Zaku when he has his own beloved robot?

Fact 4: The Kansai Dialect in Hinata's Family

One of Hinata's traits is her Kansai dialect. I won't delve into the details since most of you probably know what that is.

What's interesting is that in the park flashback, Hinata's mother and Tsukishima Karyudo also speak in Kansai dialect, emphasizing their closeness and familial ties. However, during the game, in the few moments where Tsukishima Karyudo appears, he speaks in Tokyo dialect. Right up until his last conversation with Hinata. Tsukishima teases his daughter and mocks her entirely in standard Japanese. But then, at the very end, when he asks Hinata not to become as bad an adult as he is, he suddenly switches to a warm, gentle Kansai dialect. And it's just…

I don't know if this nuance was conveyed in the English translations, but I wanted to mention it because it really hit me hard when I first noticed it.

Fact 5: The Suggestive Billboard

At the end of episode 12 of the anime, Yukiteru tries to call his father to pick up a telescope… with a pawn shop ad in the background. Someone on the background art team clearly has a sense of humor.

Fact 6: Tired Artists and Their Deadlines

In the episode 6 of the anime, Yukiteru meets his mother at Sakuraimi Station. The station itself is modeled after the real-life Sagamihara Station (相模原駅) in Kanagawa Prefecture, where most of the anime's action takes place, based on other clues. In the TV version, it seems the poor artists were in such a rush that they forgot to change the name on one of the stands. This was fixed in the Blu-ray release, but I imagine for seichi junrei fans, this mistake was a treat.

Fact 7: Choroi

Choroi (ちょろい) is the line Yuno says as she brings an ax down on one of Omekata's followers in chapter 7 of the manga. It translates to "a piece of cake," but there's something memorable about this "a piece of cake." To simplify, it became a meme among Japanese fans that was cut from the anime, causing a flood of "choroi" on forums. Eventually, we got our "choroi" in the Blu-ray. Choroi?

Fact 8: Kanagawa?

As I mentioned earlier, it's generally accepted that the anime takes place in Kanagawa Prefecture. At least because that's what it says on the police cars. However, there's one exception. On the postal delivery that Reisuke receives in episode 7, it says とうきょうと, meaning Tokyo Metropolis.

Fact 9: Miura Azusa?

I've seen posts about this even in English, but yes: many people recognized Miura Azusa from THE IDOLM@STER on the Bridal Fair poster in episode 10.

Fact (?) 10: I still want this art in high resolution

I found this piece of art when I was young, naive, and just beginning to learn Japanese, driven by a desire to read fan-made manga and fanfics about NishiMine on Pixiv (yes, that was my motivation to learn the language), so I have no idea what it was originally attached to. Japanese NishiMine fans were raving about this art, so you've probably seen Minene in that red dress. I don't know much more about it, but I still love it dearly.

Conclusion

I'm sure there were plenty of other amusing facts that I've come across over the years, but as soon as I decided to gather them all, most of them scattered to the corners of my memory. So I probably forgot a few more interesting tidbits… But oh well. At least I've managed to collect these ones in one place now. And as everyone knows…!

[syrpai]

Uryuu Minene

[syrpai]

Here came a very interesting question, which I answered in the comments in a half-asleep state in bed, not vouching for my own adequacy. But now I'm awake, and I want to dig into the topic in more detail!

So, what kind of reading does Murmur brighten up her everyday life? In a nutshell, it's monthly manga magazines, of course, in the shoujo genre. Forgive me if I now state the obvious, but a manga magazine is essentially a collection of new manga chapters whose authors are contracted to publish in it. You can find dozens of different works inside, so you can't say Murmur reads any particular manga.

Such magazines are published at different intervals: once a week (週刊), once a month (月刊), once a quarter (季刊), and so on, which is often indicated in the magazine title itself (週刊少年ジャンプ, aka Weekly Shounen Jump). But the most famous format for manga is probably the weekly and monthly magazines. Like I said, here we're dealing with a monthly magazine, as you can tell from the spine. Murmur is holding issue 12 (December).

Mirai Nikki, by the way, was also published in a monthly magazine.

The screenshot from the original post does not show it, but around Murmur a whole mountain of these monthlys, and some issues are duplicated, and even in a different design. The magazine is called シュシュ (Shushu), which literally translates as a scrunchie, but in this particular case I would lean towards the original French word chouchou, which in Japanese I would translate as お気に入り (favorite). This title smells so much like shoujo manga. But I don't know French, relying more on Japanese sources, so correct me if you're fluent in the language, I'd really appreciate it.

Still, what about the contents of the magazine? Well, it's more complicated than that. On the cover of the magazine we have some manga called 明日から私はな生生[?] I can't make out the last kanji, and with it the whole point, but the whole construction translates as "Starting tomorrow, I [???]". Nihonjo Jouzu can probably figure out exactly what it's about, so I'm looking forward to their more meaningful comments. There's a chance that it's not even a title, but just some sort of near-quote with a touch of pathos. Just the way we like it.

On the back you can discern the cryptic announcement of something new (期待の新作 or highly anticipated new release) for December 15. The kanji on the green background are hard to read, but the vertical lettering begins with the characters 初監. The last one looks like a flower (花), but I think it is something else. This thing is called, as you can guess, Bitrhday Tra[???]. I'm curious what variations of words beginning with tra- come to your mind. Because all I can think of is trash, how sad. English Jouzu.

What exactly this new project is about is not entirely clear. Is it a new manga in this issue of the magazine? Unlikely, because the December issue of the monthly magazine probably came out in early November (Japanese magazine numbering is specific, I won't go into that, try searching ;3). Is this the manga that's coming out in the next issue? Weird, but then why the date when you can just write the issue number. Is this an anime based on a manga published in this magazine? No TVアニメ放送決定, everyone's favorite full-page caption. Like I said, a cryptic announcement.

If you've already tried googling the magazine and the mentioned titles while reading it, you probably haven't succeeded. Because, apparently, they're all made up. Murmur's favorite characters and plot twists can only be guessed at, based on the Mosaic. :)

I’ve been trying - and so far, failing - to identify the manga that Murmur is reading in this scene.

Does anyone know it or otherwise have the ability to identify?

[syrpai]

hiya! I was looking @ ur posts and noticed the booklets posts. you mentioned that they were common among western fans but i have never seen them before. do they come with a specific future diary blu ray or DVD??? also i know that masumi and minene are married but i have never seen a ring on either of their fingers not even in redial. or am i js blind?

Sorry for such a late reply!

Yeah, I guess my assumption about the popularity of this kind of stuff among western fans was wrong. Being neither Japanese nor a westerner I really don't know that segment of the fanbase very well, so my bad!

My answer would depend on what kind of booklets you have in mind. But I assume we're talking about these. As I mentioned, they came with the Redial set, which included the manga and the OVA DVD. So the booklet is an insert from the DVD box.

And about the rings… Well, I guess they just don't wear them all the time. It's just a tradition, not an obligation. Minene only has one working hand, Nishijima has a crazy job where he eats katsudon in the interrogation room and drives schoolchildren home like a cab driver. That has its own logic to it.

This is of course just a hypothesis, don't take my answer as the ultimate truth. :)

[syrpai]

Random dere-Minene scribble.

[syrpai]

I once had a post with Minene in white dresses that didn't include one drawing. I didn't like it very much initially: kinda out of character Minene, uncomfortable pose, and so on and so forth. But okay, so much time has passed, let it be.

[syrpai]

Mirai Nikki booklets! (Part 2)

Let's start with a heartfelt confession: I only have two booklets left. In some volumes they were simply missing, in others they were nothing interesting and promoted other Shonen Ace titles. By that time Mirai Nikki had already lost its sense of novelty among readers, so no surprise there.

For this reason I will not write a lot, this post is more for fans of big and pretty pictures.

Vol. 9

Volume 9 of the manga hit store shelves in November 2009, and meanwhile Mirai Nikki 13-ninme no Nikki Shoyuusha was being prepared for sale, which was expected in January 2010. From here we get a nice little promotional booklet with a synopsis and a description of the characters and game mechanics.

To be honest, I'm not much of a fan of the game's main story, but the extra stories and merch like CD drama, pillowcase and other stuff hold a special place in my heart. Amano Rea making a game about Murumuru and mochi, what on earth could be more charming? That's why I was so fascinated by this flyer.

Redial

This time it's not the manga, but the DVD. I posted just one spread of this, but it's actually a little booklet of 8 pages, including the cover. The content is standard: synopsis, characters, and a few backgrounds as a bonus (some of which you can get a close look at in the Redial manga pages in Part C).

The fact that Kurusu is among the characters is amusing. As the description says, Kurusu does not appear in Redial itself, which raises many questions in view of the absence of 3rd, 8th, 10th, and even 7ths (I offer my condolences to Ai, she tried so hard) in the booklet. Esuno mentioned in the guidebook that he likes ossan-characters (I'm not sure how to express it accurately in English, like… old guy?..), based on which the Fourth appeared, and Murata Tomosa (Yuno's VA) once said that the Fourth is her favorite character, hmm… Perhaps the answer is hidden somewhere among these facts.

Bonus

And finally, the holy grail of my collection! It's an illustration card signed by Esuno for Volume 9 of the manga.

The caption reads,

"Thank you for purchasing Volume 9 of Mirai Nikki! This volume is full of 9th and Nishijima's appearances, but where will they go from here… I hope you enjoy it!"

No, Esuno, I didn't enjoy it. T_T As a NishiMine fan, I cried into my pillow all night. But as a Minene fan, I absolutely adore this card… Huh.

Bonus (?) 2

While talking about the T-shirt in the first part of this review, I completely forgot to mention one nice thing! In addition to the signed Minene card, Esuno drew many more like it, among which is the card with Yuno in that very shirt! You could get it with Volume 4, and you can see it now in the official guidebook.

At this point my little booklet review comes to an end! I hope I was able to show you something new and interesting.

And it's time for me to get back to what this account was created for, which is to draw some funny jpegs (I tell a lie, it's pngs). Bye-bye!

[syrpai]

Mirai Nikki booklets! (Part 1)

I can hardly believe it myself, but I've been a Mirai Nikki fan for 10 years now. Wow!..

Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of merch since they never released the Minene figure I've been expressing my love through drawings, fanfics, and translations. That's why my main material pride is my almost complete collection of manga in Japanese.

Why isn't it complete? Well, for some reason none of the stores (all this stuff was bought in Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka) had Mosaic Keshi… I humbly suggest that the store shelves just couldn't handle a ton of wee-wee jokes. What is also missing here is ranobe, which I like so much, but I guess it was on another floor. Anyway, regrets aside, I can still reread these things on BookWalker, let's get back to the topic of the post.

I've been thinking about this for a long time, but some of the volumes in my collection contain promotional booklets, and I thought it would be interesting to share them here. And, of course, to talk a little about them.

Vol. 1

Around the same time as Mirai Nikki, Shonen Ace magazine began publishing Segawa Hajime's manga Ga-Rei. In honor of this, in the first volume you can find a cute booklet with annotations for both manga and an announcement of a lottery where themed MP3 players and headphone sets were raffled off. Extremely rare item, like most Mirai Nikki merchandise. You can drool over them in the official guidebook too.

Also, the 140 people who were not lucky enough to get an MP3 player and headphones received a special metal strap. Alas, the booklet offers no pictures.

Vol. 2

Is the MP3 player a relic of antiquity to you? Then let's jump into another time machine!

This booklet asks us to enter a password in a certain section of the Shonen Ace website to get the machiuke. Machiuke (マチウケ) means nothing, but standby image or phone wallpaper. The password can be found on the obi (a strip of paper looped around a book) of the second volume of the manga (the right one) or in the December issue of Shonen Ace magazine (the left one).

Vol. 3

Vol. 4

You can never have too much lotteries, so here's another one. This time it's 50 T-shirts, and as a consolation prize, 200 people received shikishi with this picture and Esuno's sign.

If you've been following Esuno's blog in the years when it was still functioning, you've probably seen a picture of this T-shirt. I think you can even find it in the Web Archive.

Vol. 5

An advertisement for Ace Assault, a special issue of Shonen Ace magazine. That's where Mosaic and the first two chapters of Paradox were published. The spring 2008 issue came with a phone pouch. It smells like '00s and I absolutely like that! uwu

On that note, I'll end with the first part. There is not much material left, so I hope to write it up soon. Have a nice day and sweet corn!

[syrpai]