Hoshino Arata (Okada Masaki) is an Year 3 university student who is quick to give up, thinks that things will work out on its own future and doesn't want to do any thinking or planning with regard to his future. His buddy Moriguchi Rui (Hongo Kanata) knows Arata very well but still wants to give him a gentle push from time to time so that he can become more enthusiastic about doing something. One day, Rui accidentally damages Arata's mobile phone and in exchange, gives him a limited edition Chronus smartphone which the latter accepts gleefully since he's been dying to get one but to no avail. Apparently, the Chronus smartphone is a product made by the company where Arata's father works.
The next day, Arata is startled by the fact that he starts receiving entries on the application "Mirai Nikki" (Future Diary) which lists events that are going to happen e.g. news reports of a serial killer lurking around in Tokyo and how the TV station got the name wrong. However, when he gets the answers to a surprise test later that day, Arata forgets about how weird the Mirai Nikki is as he starts to enjoy the benefits of knowing things in advance. As he is trying to copy the answers to his test paper, he is stopped by Furusaki Yuno (Gouriki Ayame). After the test, Yuno pesters Arata and freaks him out by showing how much she knows about him. Arata just thinks that Yuno is a weirdo and tries to get away from her as soon as possible.
When Arata gets home, he bumps into his father Kuro at the gate and the latter is carrying a luggage bag. Arata automatically assumes that his father must be going back to the office to work overnight again and thinks nothing much of it. Kuro tells him to take some time to consider his future and make sure that it should not be given to anyone else to decide for him. Arata then fails to notice that anything is wrong with his mother until he sees the notification on Mirai Nikki that his parents are getting a divorce. Just as Arata thinks that this is the biggest shock of the day, he finds another surprise waiting for him from the Mirai Nikki that he's about to die the following day. As the events mentioned on Mirai Nikki have all come true so far, Arata wonders if he's really going to die and is on tenterhooks. He tries to contact Rui since the latter is the one who gave him the Chronus phone in the first place but to no avail.
As the countdown to Arata's impending death continues, Arata finds a message on the Mirai Nikki that Rui is at a observatory and rushes there to find him. However, he finds that it is a trap set by the serial killer who's been killing all those who have the Chronus smartphone and tries to run away from the killer. Yuno suddenly appears in front of Arata and helps him to ward off the attacks as she got updates on Arata's status on her Chronus smartphone as well so she was able to know that he was in danger.The two keep running away from the killer based on the notifications on Mirai Nikki but are soon cornered. Just as the killer charges towards Arata with his knife, Kuro rushes to stop the killer and ends up dying in place of his son. It is then when Arata notices that updates regarding him appear on his father's Chronus phone too and that he had seen that his son was in danger so rushed to the observatory to save up. In frustration, Arata smashes Kuro's Chronus phone screen and this results in Kuro's body disintegrating and disappearing into thin air.
Just then, Yuno notices Rui running off to somewhere else and that he doesn't stop even when Arata calls out to him. When Arata and Yuno follow Rui, they find that he rushed to the observatory to save his younger sister Haruna (Fukuda Mayuko) who had been abducted by someone a few days ago. Rui apologises for getting Arata and Yuno into this mess but explains that he had no choice since the kidnapper forced him to give four Chronus phones to the two of them and another two unidentified people (for now). Suddenly, the screen in the planetarium comes alive and the four of them see a video from someone who calls himself Deus. They find out that Deus got all of them involved in a survival game where the people who possess Chronus smartphones must kill one another in order to survive at the end and earn a chance to change his/her future...
First thoughts about this drama: Somehow, I don't look at Okada Masaki in the same way as when I first saw him in HanaKimi. He didn't have a leading role then but I think his acting was quite natural and he seemed to fit his role then. His recent works like Seinaru Kaibutsutachi and Mirai Nikki just don't provide the same amount of excitement for me. In Seinaru's case, he had his moments of brilliance but it's hard not to notice that he was overshadowed by his more-experienced seniors most of the time. In Mirai Nikki, he has to bear the responsibility of being the lead and frankly speaking, Arata's character isn't exactly likeable. It may be too soon to write him off in any way especially since he's still so young and I'm only into the first episode of Mirai Nikki but if Arata doesn't shape up soon, I might find it difficult to like him in any way.
As for Gouriki Ayame, I think she performed better than I expected. True, Yuno can be rather irritating especially since she hangs around Arata like a stalker and it's not clear why her Mirai Nikki contains updates about Arata since she isn't related to him in any way (unlike Arata's father). However, I think she earned some points with me with her spunky performance towards the end of the episode when Yuno stepped in to help Arata. At some angles, Gouriki looks very much like her senior from the same agency i.e. Ueto Aya so it's no wonder that people are calling her Ueto's successor. Her action scenes look rather decent too and I like the strength shown in her eyes when Yuno protected Arata. I just hope that the drama will show more of Yuno's character rather than project her as a one-dimensional stalker of Arata.
With regard to Rui's explanation as to why he had to "distribute" the Chronus phones to other people in order to save Haruna, I'm not entirely convinced that he has nothing to do with this. It feels weird that he doesn't have the phone himself and yet he has to implicate others by giving them the phones. And there's something not quite right about Haruna which I can't place my finger on right now but I guess I will find out soon enough. On a side note, it's great to see Fukuda Mayuko again in a drama and I must say, she looks absolutely gorgeous now! She seems to have matured a lot since the last time I saw her in the movie about promises to a dog (that one where she played the younger version of Tanaka Rena) but I'm not complaining. There's only one thing which I'm wondering about, Hongo Kanata looks rather young himself (he was born in 1990 while Fukuda is 4 years younger) so at first glance, I really thought that he and Fukuda look more compatible as lovers rather than siblings.
Coming back to the story, it looks like whoever Deus is, it isn't apparent yet if the holders of the Chronus phones were selected by random or picked specially for whatever reason that Deus wants them dead. If it really turns out that only one of them can survive, it would most certainly come down to Arata and Yuno at the end. As to how that will work out, I guess I can only find out by continuing to watch this drama.
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