Last episode on Mirai Nikki, the survival game was nearing its end – a good thing, too, because so was the world. All the diary holders save Yukiteru and Yuno were killed, and even the interloper Akise Aru was fatally wounded. But before he dies, he seems to have something to tell Yukiteru about Yuno. What could it be? What evidence does he have that she’ll betray him, after all this time, after all the sunk costs he’s expended following her lead, what would he believe? Let’s find out in episode 23 of Mirai Nikki.
…thirty minutes pass…
Don't look at me like that!
So I was pretty close to the mark with my speculation after last episode, until I gave it up because I couldn’t figure out the motive. The motive still hasn’t been stated, but maybe we can figure it out if we think some more. There were a few minor mistakes I made in my analysis, let’s start with them. First, I had figured Yuno had been reasonably sane the first time, and she had cracked from the psychic stress of seeing Yukiteru die, or of killing her time-clone. If it was the abuse that drove her crazy, and she killed her parents the first time around, that would mean that Future Yuno would not have killed this timeline’s iteration of her parents, and she wasn’t lying when she claimed she hadn’t. So that makes more sense than my version of events. Second, I had figured that Yukiteru had died during the course of the first game, rather than at the end. That doesn’t change much, only I don’t see why she had to fake her suicide, rather than just telling Yukiteru “hey die real quick so I can bring you back to life”. Well, maybe she thought he’d freak, I could understand that. Third, I noticed that Akise Aru and John Bacchus didn’t appear in the brief glimpses we got of the first game, so it’s possible the reason she was surprised by them was that she didn’t have to fight them the first time. But the attack by Minene did show up, as did the Marco/Ai pairing. Shouldn’t she have known not to trust her classmates during Minene’s attack? Shouldn’t she have known the secret of Marco and Ai’s diary?
It seems that Akise Aru was wrong to be so frantic last episode – it’s been several days and Yuno hasn’t killed Yukiteru yet. But she finally has started trying. Would she have started trying if it weren’t for Akise Aru’s message freaking her out? Well, she probably brought that axe to bed with her for a reason, so let’s say “yes”. She was planning to kill him, but she wanted to spend as long as possible having hot end-of-the-world sex with him first. That’s understandable. But why kill him? Because he refuses to kill her? That makes logical sense, better for one of them to survive than neither, but that doesn’t seem like how Yuno would think. Last time she killed him, she was going to bring him back to life, but she knows she can’t do that this time. Maybe she’s only attacking him now to goad him into killing her in self-defense? That’s not consistent with a sudden surprise attack, though. To pull that strategy, you would want to puff yourself up and make yourself seem threatening, announce that you are about to betray him and start trying to murder him, while placing more emphasis on blocking escape routes than on frantic attacks. It’s possible that she’s just not strategic enough to think of that, especially now that she’s having to deal with situations she hasn’t “pregamed”. All her cleverest moments were shown to have analogues in the previous timelines, after all…
But actually it would make some sense for her to want to become a god. Last episode I asked “what’s she going to do with the power of space and time that she couldn’t have just done the first time around?”, but what if she just does exactly the same thing? Kill Yukiteru, say “sorry Yukkii”, go back in time and start the game over. Only this time she knows even more future stuff, so she’ll be able to be super cool in all the fights, she’ll know that Akise Aru is her biggest threat and romantic rival, and she’ll be able to take care of him ahead of time. Then, Yukiteru will never have to find out that you can’t raise the dead, and he’ll happily go along with the plan to kill her and then reset everything. And by the time he realizes he can’t, it’ll be too late, he’ll already be a god. I guess the disadvantage of that plan is that Yukiteru could pull the same nonsense Yuno did, and go back in time to try to save Yuno. And then we’d be caught in a loop.
Well, that’d be a good way of skirting the rules, wouldn’t it? They can’t be together because one or the other of them has to die, or the survival game can’t end. But they can get around this by just not letting the survival game end! Yes, there’s a time limit, but when they reach it, they just quickly kill one or the other of them and start the game over. Actually, Yuno can implement this strategy unilaterally, which she’d probably have to because of how cowardly and squeamish Yukiteru is. So Yuno kills Yukiteru, loops back, does all the same stuff again but better this time, finishing with more time to spare, which means more time for apocalyptic lovemaking before she has to murder him again and start over. She can probably save Yukiteru’s parents, too! It’s Groundhog Day, it’s Endless Eight, it’s the best possible reason I can think of for Yuno to chase Yukiteru down and murder him with a fire axe.
Bonus Image Corner:
lol irony
Yuno offered her throat to your knife, are you telling me you won't do the same for her?
A screencap from an entirely different sort of show.
suntzuanime 