The nature of Yuno and Yuuki’s relationship is one of precarious deception on both ends, with one socially inept person entirely dependent on the other, whose mental instability would make Hannibal Lector blush and cease his devouring of a poor man’s brains to clean himself up. As the situation becomes more dire for Yuuki and Yuno grows more and more deranged with each passing episode, Yuuki’s faced with the inevitability of his life ending either figuratively as he’s stuck with Yuno, or literally as he breaks up with her, driving her into a murderous rage. And in no way is that more evident than in this episode, where the two take part in a mock wedding.
It’s been well established since the beginning that Yuuki is a socially clueless, closed off individual with the appropriate emotional maturity of a teenage boy. As the series goes on, he breaks more and more out of his shell in spite of Yuno. He goes from simply standing by and recording everything he can in a diary on his cell phone to actively trying to make friends, who all either want to hurt him in one way or another or throw suspicious glances and sly grins his way. If it weren’t for Yuno hounding him constantly to be her boyfriend, he wouldn’t have the drive to go and make new friends as a way to cope with the threat of being offed at any moment by a crazed bubblegum-haired classmate.
However, we can see that he’s not really all that enthused to be with Yuno, for obvious reasons. Putting aside the fact that she has, or had, dead bodies cluttering up one of the rooms in her house, she doesn’t give him a moment of rest and even takes up an offer to attend a free mock wedding rehearsal given to her by Not-Kaworu. Yet, he convinces himself through the potent power of denial that being with Yuno wouldn’t be a bad thing, despite her continuous counter-denial regarding his prior unease with the dead bodies in the sectioned off room. It’s equilibrium of denial on both ends, one that somehow lends itself to a functional, if strained relationship without either side gaining much of an upper hand.
Taking a look at Yuno and her total disregard for anybody that’s not Yuuki, she still fails to paint a picture of perfect mental health. It says a lot about her displayed behavior when any scene of her staring placidly somewhere with a faint smirk can come across as unnerving, rather than comforting. Despite the assurance brought on by Yuuki asking her out, her health just keeps getting worse as she digs gigantic holes for reasons that she doesn’t remember and stares at him with gormless fascination.
However, I don’t think I can say that it’s an entirely unhealthy relationship. Yeah, Yuuki keeps digging himself deeper by playing along with the charade of their relationship, but Yuno is providing a service by keeping him from being maimed by anybody else. What’s more, as mentioned earlier, she has indirectly prompted him to break out of his shell and talk to new people. And for her, as Not-Kaworu puts it, Yuuki keeps her mentally stable when he’s around her… something temporary, true, but definitely kind of important. Through their mutually detrimental relationship with each other, they’ve found a way to keep themselves from destroying each other. And since their diaries provide perfect coverage for the other, there’s no way that breaking it off until the end of the cell phone-based Battle Royale would be a smart idea, safety-wise. In short, staying together is in both of their best interests in spite of how destructive it is for both.
So for discussion value, what do my readers think? Do you think that Yuuki’s choice to stay with Yuno and proclaim their relationship to the world is a tentatively smart idea? Do you think that their two forms of denial somehow cancel each other out and form something somewhat beneficial for both? Or do you think that their mutual parasitism ultimately do nothing but further the misunderstanding between them?
As for the episode itself, it was pretty telling. Yuuki doesn’t want to be in the situation that he’s in, Yuno is totally oblivious to his silent objections, and we get a neat look at Ninth’s past to prove that she’s not a total monster; just mostly one. Nothing that was really essential to knowing, but it’s good to know that she’s not as one-dimensional as she was made out to be at first.
I don’t think Yuno is as clueless as you think. When Yuki hesitated, she told him that it was alright as she was happy enough that day. That seems to suggest that Yuno is aware that Yuki is playing along but she is satisfied.
I wouldn’t say that she’s oblivious in that she doesn’t know, I think she’s oblivious in that she chooses not to acknowledge that he might be uneasy. While she does have some consideration for his comfort, I think she knew he’d deny being squeamish. So… yeah, she’s all about the denial.
I guess I have a knack for reading these things more from a story symbolic perspective than actual people one, but I see Yuno merely as a symbol of Yuuki’s lack of control over his own life. From that perspective, Yuki staying with her is the worst thing he can do, as she will continuously drag him down with her. On the other hand, it’s only when he has tried to escape from her that changes have started occuring in his life in regards to growing out of his shell.
In short, I’m with Minene on this. Yuki staying with Yuno will only lead to his destruction, and trying to convince himself otherwise will just worsen the problem.
Like it or not, his attempts to break away from Yuno have made Yuuki a bit more social… if needy. Still, it’s difficult to fault him for wanting to keep his life safe, even if it is in Yuno’s hands on a small screen. Of course after the whole matter is settled and it’s just the two of them left, he will have to make the choice between letting the person who doesn’t give him any breathing room give him even less breathing room, and somehow losing her… and either way, because of how deep he is in this shit, it isn’t going to be pretty.
As for her leading to his destruction, I can see that. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that she has some kind of ulterior motive as well, and not just her diary being entirely useless if Yuuki’s dead. And that motive isn’t good.
You see the thing with this anime is that you basically know Yukki and Yuno are going to have to kill each other in the end, the steps building up to this point are just to set whether or not Yuno will kill Yukki, or kill herself. If the anime was not set up the way it was, this would be a decent conflict, but with the numerous hints in the ending and intro, you pretty much know what’s going to happen.
The moment when It says “happy end” it changes to dead end right after showing a picture of Yuno. In the ending the hints are even more obvious, as it shows every diary holder dissapearing, including Yuno. Considering how obvious these hints are, it could be possible the creators will throw in some twist at the end, but I doubt it.
Unfortunately, they did set up that inevitability, unless Yuuki helps Yuno get her mental groove back and the two somehow get out of the game together after everybody else is gone.
It isn’t likely, but it’s certainly possible.
Somthing just occured to me, originally deus ex or whatever his name is was portrayed to have been created by Yukki. But perhaps Deus actually was the one who created him, probably to be his sucssesor as the god of space and time. The survival game could have just been a way for Yukki to gain enough confidence to be a god, Yuno is just a tool that helps Yukki gain this self confidence that will inevitably dispose of itself.
haha this anime is great, it’s been along time since I’ve had an anime to speculate over like this.
So in other words, it’s kind of like a more homicidal version of Scott Pilgrim, where everyone exists to somehow help him reach adulthood/a sense of self worth. I can see some credence in this.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Deus Ex Machina created Yuuki and somehow centered the entire game around him, since everybody seems to be gravitating toward him as it is. And yes, it’s a damn fine anime. As tempted as I am to read the manga, I think I’ll resist and continue to speculate on what will happen next here. It’s certainly proving itself quite the trip.
Great post on the very peculiar relationship between Yuuki and Yuno. I feel that in normal circumstances, Yuuki should be as far away from Yuno as possible–but the fact that he’s in the middle of a deathmatch kind of makes Yuno a necessity. I suppose this relationship wouldn’t exist at all if it weren’t for the future diaries, and I do wonder if this whole thing was just Deus’s way of getting them together for some reason. (He ships them?)
Yuuki’s biggest concern with Yuno is the pile of corpses he found at her home, but the thing is–we don’t know the circumstances behind all that. Mirai Nikki is all about flipping things around on us, and it may turn out that Yuno had a legitimate reason for killing whoever those people are. (The reasoning better make really good sense though, if that’s the case.)
At the start of the series, I had assumed Yuno’s nice side was just an act, but it seems she may legitimately have some sort of split personality. I wonder if she’s just not aware of her crazy side, or if she has forced her murderous acts out of her memory as Akise suggested (however that works). I suppose if you tell yourself something enough times, you start to believe it…
Exactly, the circumstances presented to Yuuki aren’t exactly normal. While he could still win the survival game on his own, having Yuno around, despite her obviously unhinged personality, is probably the smartest thing he can do to keep himself alive.
Judging from how eager Mur Mur was to make Ninth’s little scuffle with Third out to be a Shoujo manga, that wouldn’t be the most shocking thing I could imagine, and it would liven things up a bit.
If the OP is any indication, a split personality is something almost guaranteed on Yuno’s end, or a dissociation of some kind. Either way, people do have the mental power to manually suppress anything and throw themselves into a denial loop, so I think she completely forgot about the bodies since Yuuki’s reaction was somewhat threatening to her. No matter what, I’m interested to see where their relationship goes from here, and whether Yuuki will continue to muster up the bravery to slowly break away from her as she insists on getting closer to him.