Gasai has gone a whole new level of cuckoo bananas. She has taken over an old hotel and has Amano prisoner, as well as all the others.

But Kousaka (Amano's friend) suddenly gets upgraded to an Apprentice Diary Keeper. He busts everyone out.

How? Eighth has the ability to share.

Eighth's diary is a server: anyone who runs a blog on it gets the effect. She sends some of her users to take out Amano.

The defense plan is: if they cut cell service to the area, Eighth's Child Diaries will stop working, and they can take them out.

But it's a fakeout.

The people who have actually come are not Child Diary users, but Seventh: Ai and Mar are lovers whose paired Love Diaries tell them how to protect each other. (They are both Seventh.)

They see this as a lover's duel: which couple's love is strongest?

It's Seventh.

Seventh take Amano and Gasai's diaries and send everyone to the hospital.

Ninth arrives to train Amano for a plan to beat Seventh. This is fake, but if Amano believes it, Seventh will read it in his diary and be fooled.

Amano's father arrives. He has been suborned by Eleventh.

Seventh draws them into a trap, but Gasai recognizes it and recovers their diaries. Eighth's agent destroys the building.

Amano's dad steals Seventh's parachute to escape. Amano's mom confronts him and he kills her.

Seventh die. Amano and Gasai escape with the other parachute.

I'm sure you've all been wondering: did Gasai kill her own parents?

The answer is yes, but by the time that's confirmed you realize that there's a reason she's crazy and it's their fault.

--

Eleventh's agents kill Amano's father. Amano decides to win so he can fix everything.

Amano plays hardball.

He unmasks Eleventh, revealed to be the Mayor. He allies with Eighth to take out Eleventh, then double crosses her.

But right as their victory seems assured, Akise and Ninth arrive. They found three bodies buried under Gasai's house: her parents, and her.

This Gasai is an impostor.

Amano doesn't care.

--

Eleventh hooks up Eighth's diary to a supercomputer and gives everyone in the city an account: his plan is to be the leader of a clairvoyant kingdom.

Nishijima rescues Ninth from Eleventh's men and proposes to her!

Amano's friends team up with Ninth to take out Eleventh's supercomputers.

Eleventh's diary, The Watcher, shows him what everyone else's diaries say.

In fact, Eleventh was the one to suggest Future Dairies as a part of the death game in the first place.

Ninth figures it out.

By editing false information into their diaries, they can fool Eleventh.

But he's one step ahead. His secretary has a diary that records his actions. That one is known to be reliable.

Ninth loses a hand in an explosion. Nishijima is shot dead. Amano's friends are captured.

This is when Amano and Gasai swoop in, armed with submachine guns, to rescue Ninth and move on to the next phase of the plan.

Eleventh seals himself in a bank vault.

When they can't open the door, Ninth turns on Amano, aiming to get revenge for her eye, and for Nishijima.

Amano manages to beat Ninth.

The bank Eleventh is in was owned by Gasai's parents. The vault has a retinal scanner that will only open for Eleventh, Gasai's parents, and the real Gasai Yuno.

Nonetheless, she is able to open it and kill Eleventh.

Bad news: Deus Ex Machina is a load-bearing God. As he reaches the end of his life, reality starts to break down.

Akise breaches the gates of heaven to confront Deus. But Deus says that he isn't even real - he's an Observation Terminal for Deus to keep tabs on the diary keepers.

But Akise disagrees. Observers may only observe, but he's used Eighth's power to give himself a Future Diary, and he intends to use it to save Amano.

--

Akise and Amano's friends betray him and help Eighth escape. Akise fights Gasai to a standstill.

Unable to beat Akise's diary, Gasai injuries herself, leaving Akise in a position where he has to save her, because if he let's her die, Amano will never trust him again.

Meanwhile, Amano's friends give him the bad news: even with the power of God, resurrection isn't possible.

Amano refuses to believe, killing his way through them to get to eighth.

Akise fights Gasai, crushing her diary, but she doesn't die. Why not? A mortally injured Akise tries to put the pieces together. Finally, he realizes what's going on and limps forward to tell Amano.

You can't bring back the dead, but there's more than one way to skin a cat.

(Those who have seen _The Visitors_ know.)

Gasai Yuno has already won the game and become God. When she was unable to resurrect Amano, she travelled through time, killed herself and took her own place.

I have been mostly ignoring Murmur for my summaries, which is bad, because she's just made a Comic Relief/Serious Player turn.

This is God Gasai's Murmur, not Deus' Murmur. She knocks Amano into a bottomless pit and crowns Gasai the winner.

Except Deus has left a ringer.

Never trust anyone who dies offscreen!

Deus had imbued Ninth with half his power, but locked it away. She comes flying out of nowhere to rescue Amano.

Gasai and Murmur time leap, and Ninth and Amano follow.

The calendar resets to two years in the past.

Amano interferes to report Gasai's parents' abuse of her to the police.

But God Gasai arrives to take her own place, and she's grabbed some insurance: Amano's parents.

Ninth and Amano flee with young Gasai.

Ninth tells Amano he's better make up his mind who he wants to save.

Ninth calls Fourth to warn him about his son's heart disease.

Gasai would fall for anyone who allowed her to cling to them. Amano would fall for anyone who protected him.

Clearly the right way to solve this is to seal him in an illusionary world where she doesn't exist.

Causality ripples in a way that helps the Future Diary users.

Twelfth's vigilantism let's him catch Third.

Sixth's parents aren't killed and her cult doesn't go evil. Fifth's parents don't join.

Eleventh sees the end of the game in his prototype diary and tells Deus.

God Gasai confronts her younger self. But the younger Gasai is still innocent, and hopes that her mother will recover from her depression. She has not yet given in to despair.

God Gasai hesitates just long enough for young Gasai's parents to arrive and protect her.

Amano rejects the false world and breaks free to confront Gasai. He tells her to kill him so she can be the God of the second world. But she can't do it and kills herself instead, leaving Amano the winner.

Well, "winner".

We see all the diary keepers in the third world, living decent lives. Better than they had in the second world, anyway.

And we see God Amano, sitting in the void after ten thousand years, pining for the love he lost and cannot ever have again.

But are there OVAs?

Of course.

On called simply _The Future Diary OVA_ predates the series and is basically a <we should totally have an anime> proposal covering a few scenes from the first few episodes. Nothing noteworthy.

You want _The Future Diary: Redial_

The Third World Gasai is having déjà vu and memories that don't make sense.

She goes on a quest to the spirit realm and retrieves the fragment of Second World Gasai's memories, then breaks through the dimensional barrier to be with Amano again.

This is 50% happy ending delivery and 50% fan service (of the return to the characters you love sort, not the panty shot sort. Well, mostly.)

So, what's my takeaway?

I really enjoyed it. The stakes started high and just for higher. They ratcheted up the tension without ever breaking suspension of disbelief, even when we got to the time travel and godly powers level.

I appreciate that the streaming delivery (on Hulu, at least,) kept the post-credits shorts. So many of these get cut off in this day and age.

So, let's get serious: despite having Amano as the alleged narrator, this is really Gasai's show.

We as the audience are left asking, <what's up with her?> It's not immediately clear if she's crazy in a real way, or just in whatever way is convenient for the plot.

But in the end, it all makes sense, and that's great.

People praise _Bakemonogatari_ for its interrogation of the Tsundere stereotype and what it would take to make a person behave like that. _The Future Diary_ does something similar for the Yandere.

Also, it has the stones to say it's going to make you root for the Yandere, which is shocking.

Now, there's no way that Amano and Gasai's love can not be fucked up. But even so, you want them to have some happiness.

Gasai won't be winning any Best Girl contests, but she might just win the most sympathetic Worst Girl contest.

Amano is a little bit of a wimp. But that's fine; his nervousness in the face of having to kill is perfectly normal and serves as a great comparison toward Gasai's willingness to go in axe-first.

Death Games are fucked up. It's worth acknowledging that.

Special shoutout for Akise's gay infatuation with Amano. Special anti-shoutout to the way they played it coy for the whole show up until the kiss, leaving people who are allergic to get romance to justify it to themselves by pretending he only did it to drive Gasai over the edge.

And with a set of Twelve Diary Keepers, you have to ask who the favorite is. I think I liked Seventh best of the intermittent keepers. (I'm disqualifying the recurring Fourth and Ninth from this contest. They were also great.)

This is one of the few anime where the main couple is confirmed to fuck.

In keeping with the trend, anime labeled "romance" prevent their main couple from having a successful romance, where young teens who are busy murdering people can still get together.

* grumble *