There is a category of story that I've seen in Japanese media that I haven't seen in American media. I'm not sure that's because we don't make it, it's more likely that I simply don't consume enough American media to be aware of our version of it. This is the kind of story wherein we see humanity at its worst. We see senseless cruelty, we see betrayal from every angle, we see how a vicious world breeds vicious people (I think it might be exclusively japanese because it's so very Buddhist). Bokurano is the series that, prior to Mirai Nikki really encapsulated the genre for me, but Higurashi no Naku Koro ni comes close (especially without its second season to explain everything).
Mirai Nikki means "The Future Diary," and it is about Amano Yukiteru, a boy who, under odd circumstances, suddenly finds his diary of everything he sees (which he keeps on his phone) writing itself, and ahead of time. He quickly learns that he is not the only person with such a diary, and then is informed by the God of Spacetime (who he thought had been a figment of his imagination) that the twelve diary holders will be fighting to the death for the right to become the next God of Spacetime.
He also finds out about Yuno, a pretty, smart girl in his class who has been keeping an obsessive stalker's diary of everything Yukiteru does... which is now one of the Future Diaries. She swears she will help, love and protect him, and her diary of everything that happens to him happening in advance makes that very easy... but it becomes immediately apparent that she is unhesitatingly violent, amoral and occasionally psychotic... and what will he do when, at the end of the game, one of them has to die? Not to mention that he doesn't have any feelings for her at all.
The story revolves around the survival game (think "Battle Royale"), and Yukiteru and Yuno's relationship. The body count is high, visible and brutal, and numerous other very bad things happen or are threatened to happen, but the characters are fascinating studies in psychology and emotion, and truly amazing to watch.
I really want to give it an A rating because I enjoyed it a lot (even the weirdness of the ending), but A's are reserved for shows I can recommend to anyone, and I definitely cannot recommend Mirai Nikki to anyone who has a trigger for rape, throat slitting, stabbings, children being killed, child abuse, dismemberment, eye torture, cold-blooded murder, murders of passion, deep betrayal by family or emotional abuse. All these things are treated with gravity, but they all happen, to one extent or another, sometimes performed by the people whose side we are on.
If you're interested in a very dark story about, ultimately, love, Mirai Nikki is very, very good. But if anything this dark or disturbing might bother you, you should probably skip it.
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