Future Diary "The Live World"

Did you know that back on July 29th, 2012, there was a live concert for almost all Future Diary songs? Well, this little gem in Future Diary history is known as The Live World, a concert held at Shibuya AX to promote the Future Diary anime. It featured not just Yousei Teikoku and Faylan (the artists who made the OPs and EDs for the show), but also the voice actors and singers of the character theme songs.

For those unaware, each Future Diary character has at least one theme song to their name. These songs come from the “Future Diary Inspired Album,” which had two volumes. Yuno and Minene were the only characters to receive two songs each, as well as an extra song with their love interest. You can find the first and second volumes of this album on Youtube thanks to SingerOfW.

All of the character themes were performed at the live event along with the OPs and EDs, except for the 4th’s and 5th’s themes. “The Creator,” a song attached to the pilot of the show, was also not performed at the event. The reason why these three songs were discarded from the concert are unknown; however, I assume it had something to do with time constraints and lower popularity than the rest of the songs. 

The event was recorded and sold as a Blu-Ray with almost three hours of content. The Blu-Ray disks of the performance began sales on November 29th, 2013, along with the sale of the Future Diary Blu-Ray Box. The recording was divided into two disks. It also included two bonus gifts: an eight-page booklet and an additional 9-minute recording of the making of the event. This 9-minute recording has yet to surface online.

There was also a raffle for a free ticket to the event. To enter the raffle you had to get the three volumes of the limited edition Blu-Ray CDs. Volumes 1 and 2 came with application tickets, while volume 3 came with the postcard you were supposed to mail the tickets in.

One of the more important aspects of this concert is that Madness Rain and HAPPY END, the OP and ED for Redial, were first unveiled at the event. Future Diary’s “Next Project” (which we now know as Redial) had recently been announced by that time, and the release of these two songs made anticipation for this project grow bigger. This is evidenced by a blog post I found from a girl who attended the concert, who shared her own thoughts of what she speculated this “next project” to be:

It seems like the ‘next project’ isn’t a ‘Paradox’ story, but an original story; however, since I saw Akise-kun on the visuals of the OP, it can’t be about the first world, so I think it might be related to the third world… (Source.) 

Speaking of blog posts, Esuno also made an entry on his blog talking about his time at the event! The entry reads:

Today I went to ‘Future Diary’ The Live World at Shibuya AX. We were not allowed to take pictures inside so I only have a picture of the entrance (insert photo that wasn’t archived by the Wayback Machine T-T). It was a passionate and fun concert. I enjoyed the performances from a seat on the second floor. Both Kawahara-san (12th’s VA) and Shiraishi-san (Kousaka’s VA) made great MCs, the music and the visuals from the anime were wonderful; a very fulfilling three hours. Thank you to all of the performers, and especially the audience who came all the way in this heat! (Source. Side note: Esuno’s blog doesn’t exist anymore, so that’s why the link is on the Wayback Machine).

The Live World also had some of my favorite Future Diary merchandise. Here’s a list of all the merch sold at the event: 

A pamphlet, neck strap and clear file with the same image as the event poster:

A purple T-shirt inspired by Uryuu Minene, which has an image of speakers blasting on the front, and an image of a grenade on the back:

The event set included a black T-shirt, a drawstring bag, and a waterproof phone pouch (you could use your phone screen even if it was inside the pouch):

A pink sign light:

A pink towel scarf:

A “neck cooler” (a type of scarf filled with cooling beads):

There were also two T-shirts sold, unrelated to the event, made by a company called MARS SIXTEEN. This company makes anime-related goods, like these MN inspired T-shirts. Sadly, there are no pictures of the red shirt, though it is said that it had the DEAD END graphic on the front, while the picture of the 12 diary owners was on the back. The Yuno shirt also came in gray instead of purple:

Bonus: not merch, but here's a random staff shirt I found (terrible picture quality, I know):

Videos of the event can be found on Youtube, namely of Yousei Teikoku’s performance of Kuusou Mesorogiwi, and also all of Faylan’s performances. However, none of the character theme songs played at the event have surfaced on Youtube. 

… That being said, the contents of both Blu-Ray disks have been uploaded to a site called BiliBili (it’s like a Chinese NicoNicoDouga). Here are the links for disk 1 and disk 2. 

Before I end this post, I have to talk about the 12th’s theme, performed by his voice actor: Kawahara Yoshihisa. When I tell you my jaw dropped to the floor… this man showed up on the stage, fully decked out in 12th’s costume. Mask, belt, tights, everything. Kousaka’s VA, Shiraishi Minoru, also showed up dressed like a middle schooler. Let me tell you, Esuno wasn’t lying when he called them great MCs, they absolutely stole the show. The backstory of why they agreed to dress up for the concert is in the second track of the Radio CDs, which I talked about on my last post, for anyone interested.

Happy 20th Anniversary to Death Note.

This series has played a major part of my life for the last 15 going on 16 years of my life.

🖤 This is my collection.

-dead end-

♡ Best anime girl ever ♡

Mirai Nikki (Future Diary) - Colored model of Nendoroid Yuno Gasai by Good Smile Arts Shanghai revealed.

Yuno in her cute little chair 🤍

i just finished reading mirai nikki paradox and it's so sweet hh look at them,,

that scene with tsubaki seeing the street for the first time was just>>

despite all the nice stuff he did akise is just as boring of a protag as yuki though lmao

garfield requests from 2020

Future Diary Revolution

Even though Future Diary has pretty obscure merch and spin-offs to its name, most of the stuff related to the show is still relatively easy to find with enough research. After all, even though the franchise is almost 2 decades old, most of its media has been recorded quite thoroughly…

Emphasis on most. There’s actually one piece of media related to this franchise that I’ve never seen any English source cover, and it pains me to say that it is now lost media… or sort of. This is the audition show “Future Diary Revolution,” produced by Kadokawa and sponsored by Newgin (same company that made the pachislot and panchinko for the show), that first aired on the platform “Ustream” (now known as IBM Cloud Video) back on November 16, 2012. It finished airing on April 7, 2013. As previously mentioned, I haven’t found any English sources about this show, or any other language for that matter, except for a Spanish post on Facebook, though I wouldn’t really call it a source as it mistakes the show for being a second season.

Now with that being said, even the Japanese sources are scarce on this one. Currently the only sites that hold information about the show are the official Future Diary site, Japanese wikipedia, the japanese wiki and a blog post from one of the contestants. The information that the first three provided allowed me to understand how the show went, and it was basically an “audition game show” comprising ten stages. Now, what I mean with “audition game show” is that the point of the show was to test out the contestants’ ability at voice acting, singing and presenting to select new voice actors for Kadokawa projects. Each stage had a particular task that the participants had to clear in order to move to the next stage. The contestants would receive a message on their phones indicating whether they were eliminated (a DEAD END) or if they passed (DEAD END Avoided). Also, because of the large number of contestants, the first four stages had to have several rounds in which they divided the participants. We know what these first four stages were like thanks to the official Future Diary site; however, the site stopped providing updates on the tasks after stage 4, and stuck to reminders of when each stage was going to be uploaded to Ustream. The following is a list / description for each stage:

Stage 1 (three rounds with 294 contestants in total): 

First round: Contestants were asked to introduce themselves, what their best and worst traits were, and what they saw themselves doing in the future. From 79 people only 43 passed.

Second round: Contestants were asked to introduce themselves, and tell an anecdote of something good that happened around them. From 105 people only 39 passed.

Third round: Contestants were asked to introduce themselves, and what activity they excelled at. From 110 only 34 passed.

Stage 2 (three rounds with 116 contestants left): Contestants had to read out lines of Future Diary characters and act them out.

Round one: from 36 only about half passed.

Round two, from 40 only 18 passed.

Round three, from 40 only about half passed.

Samples of the scripts they were given:

Stage 3 (two rounds with 58 contestants left): Contestants had to present merchandise from the show

First round: They presented the Future Diary Blu-ray and DVD, as well as the music CDs. From 28 only 19 passed.

Second round: They presented the Gasai Yuno RAH figurine, as well as the book publications (manga, guidebook and spin-off manga). From 30, only 17 passed.

Stage 4 (two rounds with 36 contestants left): Contestants had to choose one song from a pre-selected list and sing it. The men could choose either Yukiteru’s theme, Kousaka’s theme or the 12th’s theme. The women could choose between Yukiteru’s theme, Yuno and Yukiteru’s shared theme, and Minene’s theme.

Round one: from 15 only 10 passed.

Round two: from 21 only 12 passed.

Stage 5 (22 contestants left): From 22, only 13 passed.

Stage 6 (13 contestants left): No one was eliminated.

Stages 7, 8 and 9: numbers on these last stages are unclear to me, as the chart on the wiki says that zero people participated in stages 7 and 8, and that in stage 9, only five people passed out of zero… which clearly doesn’t make sense. What we do know is that by stage 10, only five contestants remained.

Stage 10 (5 contestants left): Out of the five, only one winner was selected.

The winner was Kotoe Kawasaki; however, all of the five contestants left were chosen to participate in the Ustream 2013 spin-off of Lucky Star titled: “The Miyawaka Family’s Hunger.” Kotoe won the role of Hikage Miyawaka, a main character in the show. It’s unclear to me whether she won something else for being first place, but as far as her IMDB and MAL profiles show, this was her only voice acting gig. As for the rest of the contestants, here are the roles they got (real name on the left, character on the right):

Madoka Sowa - Yukina Utsumi

Kanae Iwasaki - Erika Koike

Karin Oda - Daisuke Mizushima

Natsumi Yamada - Marina Koizumi.

Despite not winning first place, all the other girls went on to work on one or more shows after this spin-off. Though I want to focus on Kanae and Natsumi here, because we do have a little more insight on them. The blog post that I mentioned earlier was from a contestant named Saya Kamide, who as far as I know was eliminated on stage 3. From her blogs, I can gather that she aspired to be a voice actress for Kadokawa, though moved on from voice acting on 2014. With that being said, the blog post about Future Diary Revolution introduced the two other girls mentioned before, and it also gives us a little more insight on stage 1. Here’s the translation of her post:

Yahoo (・∀・) ♪ It’s me, Kamide, Kamide Saya ヾ(´ω｀＝´ω｀)ﾉ(hello, hello).  Today I participated in Future Diary Revolution (｀･ω･´)!  We made our own name tags, and I put on my numbered bib as I was told hehe. ↑ And there (pointing at her photo), that’s my smug face （ ´,_ゝ｀）. And here’s a little introduction for my fellow war buddies, who participated with me ☆. First war buddy ☆ “Put some love to your ponytail ♪” It’s Natsumi Yamada (*･ω･)ノ Lately we’ve been spending a lot of time together, so I think I’ll soon be able to master an impression of her (ﾟ∀ﾟ) Ahaha. My good friend ☆ Koyoshi Team “Fluorite” In her idol activities☆ (tl note: not sure what this means, it might be referring to a team she participated in within an idol show.) It’s Kanae Iwasaki (*･ω･)ノ Kanae-chan, it’s been a long time since I last saw her, and she’s become so pretty that I didn’t know who she was at first. She’s a good one（´∀｀*). ・‥…━━━☆・‥…━━━☆・‥…━━━☆・‥…━━━☆ There were so many participants >< I felt like I was about to burst from the start… *sigh* We did a 30 second interview… Kamide: “Nice to meet you” my heart was beating so fast (*’-’*) Judge: “Please introduce yourself in one sentence.” Kamide: “Σ(=ﾟωﾟ=;)I’m… I’m like squid! The more you eat me… rather-! Just like dried squid, the more you get to know me, you get a better taste of who Saya Kamide is! (I’m the one eating myself alive *sighs*). Judge: “What’s the nicest thing that happened around you recently?” Kamide: Oh, a-a good thing?! … Ah! A new manga from a certain publication with a bu-butter (I’m screwing over my words)… butler protagonist is out! Judge: “Do you like manga?” Kamide “Yes! I love manga, anime, and the internet!” (I got a sprout of confidence all of a sudden haha) Judge: “You spend a lot of time at home?” Kamide “No!” (I-it’s not like that! (((( ;ﾟдﾟ)))) Judge: “Do you like outdoor activities?” Kamide “Yes! Come to think of it, I recently climbed a mountain!” (´∀｀) Judge: “With how many people?” Kamide: “… I was alone, actually” (Ah, I’m making it worse!!) Kamide: “Since there were no lights around, the stars and the night sky looked so beautiful! The city lights looked like a river, and the sky like a planetarium!“ (That was the time for my excuuuuuuuuse haha) Judge: "Thank you. Please wait on the 3rd floor.” Kamide: “Thank you very much.” *Judging ends* hehehehehe ↑ Why do I feel so worn out? I tried to collect my thoughts, but then… oh god, I felt like it went terrible ( ・Д ・) Though fortunately all three… brilliantly cleared stage 1 .｡ﾟ+.(･∀･)ﾟ+.ﾟーーー!! I’m a miracle haha That’s right: “The future can change if you believe in it.” That was a line in the story… right?! Σヾ(￣0￣;ﾉ I’ll believe in the future and do my best next time!! (￣∠￣ )ﾉ And there’s one week left till Ani☆yume. Please support Future Diary and Ani☆yume (tl note: Ani☆yume is a Japanese idol show by Kadokawa. If you’re familiar with Kpop, I believe it’s kinda like the show “Kpop Star.”) 

Link for the original post:

http://blog.livedoor.jp/sayakamide/archives/1720045.html

Also a little fun fact about Saya, Kanae and Natsumi is that they all seem to still be friends (I found their Twitters while looking up information about the show and they all seem to follow and retweet each other). But even more interesting, I realized that Kanae and Tomosa Murata (Yuno’s VA) also appear to be friends currently, since Kanae appears in some of Tomosa’s photos on Twitter.

As far as this show now being lost media… the Ustream link provided by the official Future Diary website is now down, and when I try to run it through the Wayback Machine, I can see the page, but even with a browser that supports flash I’m unable to view the content of the video. I could be wrong, but I believe that it is not possible to run flash content on the Wayback Machine, because the snapshots don’t preserve the actual code for it to run. I’ve had first-hand experiences trying to play old Disney flash games from the Wayback Machine under a flash emulator, but it always returned a blank screen, just like the Ustream videos. I also tried to see if it was possible to recover Ustream videos in any way, but from the looks of it, the platform doesn’t store deleted content for more than 30 days. In other words, the episodes are lost… 

save for one.

The official Future Diary site kept the videos for the second round of the second stage of the show, though they were also in flash format. Just like the other episodes on Ustream, these ones returned a blank screen every time I tried to run them with my flash emulators, so I had to get creative. Eventually, after downloading a new browser and an old version of flash, I managed to get the videos to work. They’re now uploaded on my youtube channel as a single video. It doesn’t have subtitles, but I think it’s pretty clear what’s going on. The contestants go up, say a few lines from the script they were given, and at the end they receive a message of whether they passed to the next stage. It may not be much, but hopefully this is enough to preserve the memory of this very obscure show.

Below is the Ustream link in the Wayback Machine (you can’t see the video or anything relevant for that matter, but I thought I’d link it anyway)

https://web.archive.org/web/20150630165221/http://www.ustream.tv/channel/%E6%9C%AA%E6%9D%A5%E6%97%A5%E8%A8%98%E3%83%AC%E3%83%9C%E3%83%AA%E3%83%A5%E3%83%BC%E3%82%B7%E3%83%A7%E3%83%B3

And here’s the link of the official FD site’s entries about FD Revolution (the link is of the show’s initial announcement, but on the left-hand side you can see the rest of the entries from latest to newest. Also, they’re all in Japanese, but translating the pages to English with Google is enough to understand them.)

http://www.future-diary.tv/revolution/121109revolution.html

What is. Happening here. (This is the cover for the 3rd chapter of the Mirai Nikki Mosaic Manga, without the text)

Why is Karyuudo dabbing. Why is Yomotsu sitting like a monk.

John Balls is looking like he's stepped in dog shit??

And, WHY IS KAMADO KNOCKED OVER? AND WHY IS TAKAO SITTING ON HER SO DISRESPECTFULLY?! KEIGO IS SO NONCHALANT LOOKING AS TAKAO IS SHOWING OFF HIS DIARY!??!??? (presumably)

yuno

s

Yuno!!!!!

(Sorry I haven’t posted in a hot minute I’ve been at ✨art school✨)

Yuno Gasai

I love this show and she is absolutely the best character in it.  Done as a gift for someone!

Just finished future diary ^^

Who are you texting? Why are you smiling? Who is making you happy besides me?