sunniedesi

[sunniedesi]

This is awesome news (and tysm)!! I'm always amazed at how you find listings for these, they're so hard to spot or even find pictures of 😞

No Esuno media will be lost under our watch lol.

Lost Sakae Esuno Manga: "Mail from the Heart"

I have a new inquiry for the Future Diary community, but this is a bit of a tricky one. For those unaware, the author, Sakae Esuno, has done a few other mangas before Future Diary, namely Hanako and the Terror of Allegory and Railway Angel. This last one is actually his first manga and was a doozy to find, given that it had only been published on a 2001 issue of the magazine Shonen Ace Next.

Well... what if I told you there's another story of Esuno's that has been lost to time?

(Sighs) This little gem of a oneshot is called Mail from the Heart (ココロよりメイル), and was published on an obscure edition of Shonen Ace back in 2003. I managed to find one article that mentions it, but the only relevant information it provides is that the protagonist is a maid. And that's... basically all we know about it! Very similar situation to Railway Angel. In fact, I only know about it because I accidentally stumbled upon this title looking for something else in his JP wikipedia page.

So, I'm mainly making this post to ask for any information regarding this title. All I managed to find was the issue it came out in, but that only raised more questions for me. To explain, here's the cover:

This is not a regular issue of Monthly Shonen Ace, but a different edition of the magazine titled "Aim for Ace!" (少年エースをねらえ!). I don't know much about this edition; according to the article I linked earlier, it's supplementary to Monthly Shonen Ace's June 2003 issue (whatever that means). The only issues I could find for it are this one (which is from spring 2003) and a 2014 one which coincidentally has two familiar faces on the cover...

(Has anyone seen this illustration before? It's the first time I've seen it :0. Note that that's Eiji, not Yukki btw. Also, this issue doesn't seem to have anything FD or BO related as far as I could tell, though I could be mistaken).

Anyway, I'm just curious to know if anybody else has seen or heard about this before, whether it be Mail from the Heart or Aim for Ace! If anyone just so happens to have that specific issue it would be ideal... but I highly doubt anyone reading this has it lol. I've only seen one auction site listing for the 2003 issue, though I'm not sure if it's still available. Either way, I don't think I have any chance of getting it myself (not gonna go into details about my personal life here, but given my current living situation, it's nearly impossible for me to ship something from Japan to my where I'm at). So in the meantime, any other possible information is more than welcome, be it about the lost manga, Aim for Ace! or even info on that crossover illustration.

(PS. If Esuno's Japanese wikipedia page is anything to go by, Mail from the Heart would be the only work in his bibliography that has yet to surface, so thankfully this is the second and last time we'll be dealing with an issue like this.)

[sunniedesi]

Yuno doodles ♡♡

These were to test out a new pink pen (which is super cute!), but I'm still not used to drawing in ink. Hence all the scribbles :p

[sunniedesi]

All Future Diary Merch (Part 3)

~~ A comprehensive list

The final finale finally, under the cut!

~ TCG games

While I’ve seen a couple trading card games feature cards with Yuno, or characters who very closely resemble her appearance, Future Diary has only had two official trading card games to my knowledge (both of which I’ve made in-depth posts about in the past):

Victory Spark

Project Revolution

Bushiroad, the company that created Victory Spark, also released other TCG goodies, such as two sets of card sleeves and a card-holder themed after Future Diary.

~ Pachinko and Pachisuro

I’m planning on making a more detailed post about this in the future, so I’ll hold off on the details for now. Like many popular franchises in Japan, Future Diary has two slot machines: a pachinko and pachisuro. You can find many videos of the animation and gameplays on Youtube.

~ Another World

This is another one I’m planning to talk about more in-depth in the future, but Future Diary had a live-action adaptation that was released shortly after the anime. It is titled “Future Diary: Another World.” I’m mentioning it here because it has a few products associated to it:

The Another World DVD/Blu-Ray set. The limited edition set included a special DVD box and 50-page booklet (which also included an Esuno interview).

The show’s theme song in disk form. 

A Deus (live action ver.) keychain. I've seen it before, but can't find the picture for the life of me, so just imagine this exact image with a keyring.

Postcards drawn by Esuno, which feature the leads of the show in the manga’s style.

Also, random fact: Nissan was one of the sponsors behind this show (yes, the car company) and they made a series of video adverts featuring this same illustration as an end-card. We only have an image of the ad, as none of the adverts have yet to surface online (yay, lost media). All we know about the adverts is that they followed a short and unique storyline about a girl who gained a Future Diary called the "Diet Diary," as she's trying to lose weight (gotta give it to Japan for inserting weight loss in literally anything, including car comercials).

~ Illustrated Cards/Papers

I left the best for last. And by best I mean the one that drove me the most nuts, because there is a ton of promotional cards for Future Diary. A great portion of these came as “thank you” gifts for purchasing a volume of the manga, others were part of limited edition promos, and others I’m not too sure of their origin. I can't show each card individually due to Tumblr's photo limit, so I created a few lineups to show them together. I hate doing this because it nerfs the little quality these pictures have, but it is what it is.

To start, the guidebook thankfully compiles plenty of the illustrated papers:

The guidebook goes into detail about where each one of these is from (look forward to the TL for that!), but to keep a long story short, these came as "thank you" notes for purchasing a volume of the main series or one of the spin-offs.

In the same vein as that, there are other three cards I've found online which came as "thank you" gifts for purchasing the manga. These don't appear in the guidebook for some reason, though:

The first one appears to be for volume 6 (can't be too sure since I can't read it), the second is for volume 2 and the third for volume 9. Also, the art from the first card is actually scrapped art that Esuno once posted on his blog!

Besides the papers, some editions of the manga also came with bonus poster cards. I think these might've been for special editions of the manga, but I'm not entirely certain:

The first from the top is from volume 8, the second from volume 7, and the third is actually from the special edition of the first DVD volume. The first from the bottom is from volume 9, and the next one from volume 6.

As I mentioned earlier, some illustrated cards were created as promotional material. Such is the case for a famous store in Akihabara called "Gamers," which produced some limited edition Future Diary cards. How many of these cards exist is a mystery to me, but I know of at least these six:

Note: the photo of the Minene card on the top-right has sample text I couldn't remove, so it's not supposed to look like that. Very annoying.

While it feels good to know where everything comes from, we can't always be so lucky. This last lineup I call: who, what and why are you?

If anyone knows the origin of these weird little guys, please let me know! Also, this is certainly not all the illustrated cards and papers that exist, but they're all I can get ahold of. Again, if anyone has more to share, please do.

Bonus: does anyone remember that Lucky Star x Future Diary art? It was actually made into a tosho card!

This marks the end of the merch list. If you've made it through all three parts, thank you! This is one of three larger posts I had planned for a while, but it’s been on the backburner due to the sheer amount of information I needed to parse through. It soon became pretty overwhelming. However, I think I managed to curate everything to the best of my abilities. I know some stuff is likely still missing, but I’m satisfied with having covered most of it. As I mentioned earlier in the post, my other two projects involve diving deeper into the live action and the pachinko. They’re also pretty overwhelming, but hopefully they won’t be sitting in the backburner as long as this one. Till then, toodles (^.~)〜☆

[sunniedesi]

More MurMur and Hanako shenanigans! Love to see it.

About MurMur growing, they are in fact talking about her tail. The word "生える" means to grow, but not in the sense of getting taller, rather something sprouting (like when teeth grow in, for example). Plus, you can see Kanae grabbing her tail on that panel (lol)

There is also something so funny to me about this panel, like you can tell Deus is being turned to toast.

Also Yuno's reaction to being told she doesn't exist.

Girly said 😀 .......

The 'Future Diary' X 'Hanako and the Terror of Allegory' Crossover Short: Part 2 is here!

As previously promised, Part 2 is here.

IMPORTANT NOTES:

This picks up on things directly after Part 1, so make sure you've read that first.

This post starts with the scanlations, then provides the Japanese originals below that.

As with all manga, remember to read text right-to-left.

Scanlation:

Original Japanese scans:

Notes / thoughts / questions / etc. from me:

If you didn't know, a Washlet is a bidet-style toilet or toilet seat attachment as seen here.

Third page, the second panel from the bottom on the left-hand side... I don't really understand what that panel is talking about. Murmur is, if anything, SHORTER than Hanako. So what's "growing"? Perhaps they're talking about her tail... ?? I tried checking with people who know Japanese better than I do on the original, but they had no further info. If anyone reading this can clarify it further, please let me know!

I really wish we saw more of Yuno and Yuki's conversation at the end there...

[sunniedesi]

All Future Diary Merch (Part 2)

~~A comprehensive list

More obscure Future Diary merch below the cut!

~ Animate Products

Animate is the largest retailer of anime, manga and video games in Japan, so it’s only natural that it has created some Future Diary merch over the years.

A Yuno tote bag from the Animate Book Fair, 2008

An A4 clear file with original Future Diary artwork, from their 2011 Anime Adaptation fair.

An A3 clear poster, also with original Future Diary artwork, from the same 2011 fair.

~ SOFT Products

SOFT is another retail company, though unfortunately I can’t seem to find any information about the company itself. Either way, they released a plethora of Future Diary merch back in the day:

Future Diary compact mirrors (released on March 31st, 2012). There were two versions: a “12th” and a “DEAD END” design.

Future Diary iPhone 4/4s phone cases (released on March 3rd, 2012). There were two versions: a “DEAD END” and an “Oyasumi, Yukki” design.

Future Diary t-shirts (also released on March 3rd, 2012). There were two versions: a red/ “DEAD END” and a black/ “Oyasumi, Yukki” design. (source).

~ Victorinox Collaboration

Random collaboration alert! Back in 2012, Victorinox worked together with Kadokawa to release two versions of their Classic SD styled army knife: a “DEAD END” model and a “Yuno (Eye)” model. (source).

(Fun fact: the name of the latter coincidentally confirms that the eye we see at the beginning of Future Diary’s OP is, in fact, Yuno’s).

~ Great Eastern Entertainment

Great Eastern Entertainment is a famous manufacturer and retailer for officially licensed products here in the west. They’re actually responsible for creating the largest catalog of Future Diary merch from any company in this list. In fact, if you’ve ever seen officially licensed FD products at any western store (such as Hot Topic), it is more than likely from this brand. Sadly though, most of it is currently unavailable. Given how large and varied their catalog is, I’ll provide photos from their product listings instead of naming them one by one. You can browse through all their listings here.

~ Yuno Gasai Figurines

There are currently three Yuno Gasai action figures:

The elusive RAH figure, released by Medicom Toys

The Yuno Nendoroid, released by Good Smile

The POP UP PARADE figure + limited edition version, also by Good Smile

~ PSP Game

This game is an entire rabbit hole of its own, but I’ll try keeping it brief. The PSP game “Future Diary: the 13th Diary Owner” had its original release back in 2010, as well as its re-release titled “Re:Write” in 2012.

Each release of the game was accompanied by a series of related merchandise, such as telephone and library cards and a Yuno maid poster.

Re:Write also had its own limited edition bundle, which included:

A double-sided pillow case.

The Oyasumi CDs.

A double sided disk sleeve.

A CD with 13 themed PSP wallpapers.

There were two other PSP wallpapers: one which you could download from the official game’s website, and another that you could buy from a company called Happinet.

~ The Live World

This was a Future-Diary-themed concert, which featured music and voice actors from the show. I’ve made in-depth posts about it in the past, so check those out for more information. In terms of products related to this concert, we have:

The Blu-Ray disk recordings of the concert (released back in 2013), which included an additional 9-minute recording of the making of the event, as well as an eight-page booklet. 

A pamphlet, neck strap and clear file, which all featured the same image from the event poster.

Three t-shirts produced by the company MARS SIXTEEN

An event bundle, which included a t-shirt, waterproof phone pouch and drawstring bag, all with the same graphic.

A pink sign light

A pink towel scarf

A neck cooler

I tried compiling everything as best as I could in one image (curse you, Tumblr's photo limit).

Alas, this part has come to an end. Tune in for part 3!

[sunniedesi]

Hanako x Future Diary, Part 2??

According to Japanese Wikipedia, there is actually a second part of the Hanako and the Terror of Allegory x Future Diary crossover story that you can read over here.

In Part 2, they say that Murmur and Hanako somehow do a Freaky Friday mind-body swap. Hijinks are then presumed to (briefly) ensue.

Japanese Wikipedia claims this this second part was eventually included in later Japanese reprints of the collected Volume 2 of Hanako, so... I guess that's now the next thing I need to get my mitts on so we can scanlate it.

Mind you, the Wiki page doesn't provide any source links for these statements. So I could just be throwing money away.

But dammit, we MUST know.

[sunniedesi]

All Future Diary Merch (Part 1)

~~A comprehensive list

Despite being a cult classic anime and manga, finding official Future Diary merchandise feels like looking for a needle in a haystack. That is, incredibly difficult to come by in a sea of redbubble and bootlegs. This is partly due to its age, but also because most merchandising is both Japanese-exclusive and released in limited quantities. For this reason, it’s quite difficult to gauge just how much merch has been created and how much of it is still available to us few fans still active to this day. So, for the sake of curation, here’s a comprehensive list of all officially licensed Future Diary merch (that we know of at least).

A little disclaimer before we begin: this list is subject to change, as I’m always making new discoveries whenever I look deeper into this rabbit hole. If anyone knows of more merchandise that isn’t included in this list, please let me know so I can update it. On the other hand, this post is going to be very dense and likely feature multiple parts due to Tumblr's photo limit, so I'll keep my descriptions very brief. If there's any relevant information related to a product, I'll link it and call it a day. (so be prepared to see a lot of links to some of my previous posts here). 

With all that fluff out of the way, let’s dive in:

~ Magazine Goodies

Magazines often feature little goodies and gifts (or at least they did back in the early 2000’s), and Shonen Ace wasn’t an exception to this. According to Future Diary’s official guidebook, there were three special FD gifts included in different editions of Shonen Ace:

A supplementary manga cover (from the February 2011 issue of Shonen Ace)

A Yuno phone pouch (from the Spring 2008 issue of Ace Assault)

A comic box (from the June 2011 issue of Shonen Ace)

~ Raffle Goodies

Besides these magazine goodies, Shonen Ace also did many fairs where they would sell volumes of their popular series and raffle limited edition products. These raffles were advertised in the obis of the first four Future Diary volumes, which is where most of my product images actually come from. Once again, according to the guidebook, these products were:

An mp3 player + earphones (from Kadokawa’s Spring Comic fair 2006, featured in volume 1) I believe only 10 units exist of this piece, though I could be wrong. The ad for the raffle said that of the 300 participants, 140 would also receive a metal strap (a.k.a phone charm), though we have no pictures of what that looks like (source). 

A jacket/windbreaker (from a raffle featured in volume 2). Sadly, no more information is available for this product.

A wall clock (from Kadokawa’s Spring Comic fair 2007, featured in volume 3). I also believe only 10 units exist of this piece.

The complete crossover of Hanako and the Terror of Allegory x Future Diary (also from the 2007 Spring Comic fair). Of the people who weren’t lucky enough to receive the wall clock, 190 received the crossover instead. 

The meditating Yuno t-shirt (from Kadokawa’s 13th anniversary fair, featured in volume 4). Only 50 units exist of this piece. Of the people who weren’t lucky enough to receive the shirt, 200 received a signed, colored copy of the artwork from the shirt.

~ Kadokawa Extras

Besides raffles and magazine goodies, Kadokawa has made other miscellaneous products featuring Future Diary for special events:

A fan from the Kadokawa Manga Festival - Summer 2009, which happened to feature Yuno.

A Christmas Yuno x Yukki bookmark from the Kadokawa Manga Festival - Winter 2009. 

A Yuno Keychain sold for Shonen Ace’s 25th anniversary.

Sakae Esuno’s crossover illustration for Kadokawa’s 30th anniversary.

~ Books

Besides the manga releases, there are other Future Diary related books, such as:

Fragments, the guidebook.

Future Diary's ecchi parody: Mosaic Keshi.

The original Future Diary sample booklet, which included just the first chapter of the manga.

The two light novels.

Bonus: despite never receiving a standalone release, I’ll mention it here: the Tantei Akechi x Future Diary crossover story.

Extra bonus: there are two clear files that were given as bonus gifts for purchasing some of the manga volumes (I don’t know where else to place this so here they are).

~ DVD/Blu-ray Bundles

The limited edition sets of each localization of Future Diary include plenty of interesting bonuses worth diving into. I’d like to note that I might be missing some information here as the contents of these bundles are a little tricky to research, though.

The complete Japanese Blu-Ray box included the following bonuses: a 16-page booklet, pilot episode, the MurMur Corner specials, the promotional TV commercials and videos, audio cast commentary for every episode, box sleeve and disk sleeves with original designs, and the CD soundtrack.

The Japanese Blu-Ray/ DVD had individual volumes (9 to be exact) which were also accompanied by limited edition bundles. These bundles included similar bonuses: an 8-page booklet, video specials and commercials, cast commentaries for their respective episodes, a box/ disk sleeve, and one of two character trading cards.

Volume 1 of the Blu-Ray/ DVD also included a mouse pad with an original design for its limited edition, while volume 6, 7 and 8 included one of the three Radio CDs for their limited edition sets. (source).

Bonus: if you bought the Volume 1 Limited Edition set from HMV, you would receive a poster of Yuno in an HMV uniform. There's also a Tsubaki version, though I'm not sure what volume that's for. If you bought it on Amazon, you would receive a special sticker set.

The German Collector’s Limited Edition: comes with the box, booklet (same one as the Japanese), memory cards of all the diary owners, pins of Yuno and Yukki and an embroidered patch with the name of the show. (Note: the French Limited Edition also contained the same booklet).

The Collector’s Limited Edition Set (UK): included a 28-page artwork booklet.

SelectaVision Blu-Ray Collector’s Edition of Future Diary: comes with the CD box, complete series and extras (total of four disks), soundtrack CD, a small container with Tsubaki’s face, 9 large postcards of the manga covers, a doble-sided poster, sticker set, trading card set, a replica of Yukki’s beanie, and a 40-page booklet. What else can I say, ole 💃

Side note: I’m disappointed that the LATAM version never had a physical release. Not only did we miss out on similar bundles, but the dub is now incredibly difficult to find since it wasn't moved over when Funimation passed to Crunchyroll. The castilian dub is also surprisingly good in comparison, which is something I don’t normally say (castilian dubs don’t have a track record of being very good, sorry).

Lastly, the US Limited Edition Box included three extras: a filler box and two Valentine's-Day-themed postcards.

That's it for part 1. Tune in next time for more merch insanity!

PS: for some reason every time I try editing my drafts for this they get posted. I had to delete the first version of this because Tumblr's playing tricks on me. So now you're getting this post earlier than expected xd.

[sunniedesi]

I repainted a bootleg sonny angel to look like Reisuke Houjou. My mom originally gave it to me for Christmas thinking it would look like the picture on the box... which it sadly did not. I've had bootleg sonnies before, and yeah, they never look quite right, but this one was rough. I think it was originally supposed to be a dinosaur, but it was missing the spikes on the hat, leaving a huge hole on his head T-T not to mention the scuff marks and poor paint job. The poor baby was in dire need of a makeover. Thankfully, he now gets to live the life of an elite little menace with a 200 IQ!

[sunniedesi]

Hi! My name is, Pokemeu. I was wondering if I could get your permission to use the translated script of Future Diary the 13th Diary Holder: Recoded. I'm trying to revive the translated project so hopefully it can be used on emulators and PSP-2000 models and higher.

Please let me know what you think!

Thank you for your time.

Pokemeu

Omg yes! (and I guess this goes without saying, but please add my credits for the script >_<)

I've tried to translate the rom multiple times, but I'm incompetent when it comes to coding. I think the furthest I got was accessing the hex code for the diary entries before my brain turned to mush... so that's why there was no rom hacking on my part and just the scripts lol. I have notes of my previous attempts as well as a bit of info about how the person who was originally working on the project went about it, so if you need help with anything please let me know. And if you get the project going, please update us if you can. This project is very near and dear to me, so I would love to see it finally completed 🥹

[sunniedesi]

Growing up, I had one of those paper fashion books where they'd give you the stencil of a doll and you could draw clothes for her. Normally, you'd use the stencils and prints provided in the book to create the fashions... but thirteen-year-old me was in her peak otaku phase and had different plans.

Behold, Deus and MurMur paper dolls! lol.

I used to be obsessed with making as many original designs as possible, though I sadly never completed the book (there's still three dolls waiting to be painted </3). I also never did any inspired by Yuno or Yukki, surprsingly enough. But I did do one loosely inspired by Yui from Yousei Teikoku, and also a Pierce the Veil one, which is probably my favorite because of all the little easter eggs.

I wasn't beating the weird kid allegations.

[sunniedesi]

Sigh... so, this information appears on the Japanese wikipedia for both Future Diary and Hanako and the Teller of Allegory, but it also appears on the atwiki (which is the Japanese version of wiki, and in my experience, also a more reliable source). From the information available on both sources, it seems that there is in fact two parts to this crossover, but they weren't released equally:

Part 1 had three releases:

Its original release on Shonen Ace's issue of May 2007, which is most likely the source for the scans that are available online.

A standalone release (more on this later).

And according to wikipedia, it was included in the completed version (完成版) of Hanako and the Teller of Allegory, volume 1.

Part 2 had two releases:

The standalone release.

And again, according to wikipedia, it was included in the completed version (完成版) of Hanako and the Teller of Allegory, volume 2.

This is important to know, because in case part 2 is real, it would explain why it is more difficult to find. It's not hard to find raws of Shonen Ace's issues if you know where to look, especially considering that this same issue included a chapter of Future Diary. It wouldn't surprise me if an FD scanlator came across the crossover while trying to get this chapter, which is why I'm assuming the scanlations of part 1 originate from there.

The other sources are a bit trickier to get, starting with the standalone release: only 190 copies exist of this version, as it was made exclusively for a raffle. Here's a very pixelated image of what the cover art looked like:

Given that this is incredibly difficult to find, it only leaves us with one feasible source for part 2: the completed version of Hanako and the Teller of Allegory, volume 2. It's important to note that I'm only referring to the kanseiban (completed version). For context, manga can have different release styes: tankobon, bunkoban, kanseiban, etc. I'm not going to get into the details, but basically, tankobon is a "standard release," while kanseiban is a "completed release," as in a more polished, cleaner version. Hanako had both a standard and a completed version, but only the completed one contains the crossover as far as the information in wikipedia is concerned. And I can also attest that the standard version doesn't have it (I have the raws and it's not there).

In fact, I believe the completed version is exclusive to both a Japanese and a physical release, as its covers are different from the ones in Bookwalker, which has the standard. For comparison, left is volume 2 on bookwalker, right is volume 2 of the completed version.

Besides the difference in covers, the completed version only has 3 volumes, as opposed to the standard version that has 4. Anyway, if we want to find part 2 of the crossover, this is probably where we should look for. So, if anyone owns the kanseiban and is able to verify, please let us know!

Hanako x Future Diary, Part 2??

According to Japanese Wikipedia, there is actually a second part of the Hanako and the Terror of Allegory x Future Diary crossover story that you can read over here.

In Part 2, they say that Murmur and Hanako somehow do a Freaky Friday mind-body swap. Hijinks are then presumed to (briefly) ensue.

Japanese Wikipedia claims this this second part was eventually included in later Japanese reprints of the collected Volume 2 of Hanako, so... I guess that's now the next thing I need to get my mitts on so we can scanlate it.

Mind you, the Wiki page doesn't provide any source links for these statements. So I could just be throwing money away.

But dammit, we MUST know.

[sunniedesi]

Rare Future Diary Merch Art (Part 3!)

Time to finish the t-shirt trilogy! As I mentioned in the last part, the two designs that were left to cover were the DEAD END Shirt and The Live World Deus Shirt. I’ll start with the latter, since it’s the quickest to explain. This design was made solely for the Live World Concert, being featured in three concert-exclusive items: a shirt, a drawstring bag and a waterproof phone pouch. The logo itself portrays Deus Ex Machina sitting in his dilapidated throne with the name of the concert written above. We don’t have any product images of the actual items, though we do have flat mock-ups of what they were meant to look like:

Like the previous designs, I redrew the logo from the flat mock-ups to upgrade the quality. Due to the grainy nature of these images, my recreation is probably not very loyal to the original design, but I don’t really mind since we have nothing else to compare it to :p

The DEAD END shirt was perhaps one of the trickier designs, not so much due to its complexity, but because I had to get a little more creative with it. You see, there’s barely any information about this product online. The one website that advertised it back in 2013 only showed a flat image of the design that is meant to go on the back of the shirt, while claiming the front is supposed to have a “DEAD END graphic.” What this graphic looks like, we have no clue!

Now, I could’ve just googled a graphic of the DEAD END phrase, slap it on a shirt and called it a day, but the perfectionist demon that eats at my brain would’ve called me many names if I did that. On one hand, it would look sloppy, and on the other, it wouldn’t even match the back design. So… yeah, I created my own. My sanity be damned. Firstly though, this is the flat design that we originally had:

And this is my recreation:

I'll be honest, this is my least favorite graphic of all the shirts. The concept is cool, the font of the text is nice and the silhouettes could make for an interesting idea, but the overall composition looks strange to me, especially with the random blood splatters and the wall of text. Regardless, I'm trying to remain as loyal to the original as possible, so I decided against rearranging the elements in my recreation.

As for the front design, since I wanted to remain loyal to the original motif, I decided to keep the theme of the gothic letters and exaggerate them a bit. I still can’t decide whether it’s just right or if I went a bit overboard with the details, but I’m pleased enough with the result:

And lastly, for shits and giggles, here’s a mock-up of what the shirt would look like with this design:

[sunniedesi]

New Official Future Diary x Big Order Art

Recently, there's been a Reddit post circulating around the Future Diary community showcasing some never-before-seen artwork at a recent exhibition. I initially didn't think too much of it, since I'm aware there's plenty of older Esuno artwork that's been lost to time and has never seen the light of day on this side of the globe. That said, it was brought to my attention that it could be one of the lost artworks that appeared on Esuno's defunct blog, which made me want to look further into it.

Now, the artwork is currently being displayed at an exhibition in the Animate Ikebukuro store. According to the description of the Reddit post, the exhibition is part of a sale held in celebration of Shonen Ace's 30th anniversary. So, I went into Animate's official website to read more about it, and there's a ton of artwork being sold as part of this promotion. Here's a clean version of the FD art displayed on the site.

Interestingly enough, it seems all of the artwork featured was made solely for the 30th anniversary sale. Which made me think this crossover artwork might actually be recently drawn by Esuno!

I reverse searched the image to see what else I could find, and sure enough, there is one auction listing that confirmed my suspicions.

If you look carefully, it says 30th in the back! So it is safe to say, this is Esuno's most recent Future Diary artwork! Strangely enough, he hasn't posted anything about it on his twitter, but the trademark from the image in the official site confirms that this is his original artwork.

A few things to note is how much his art style has changed since Future Diary. The style we see in this artwork is much closer to the style in Detective Akechi is Berserk and his adaptation of Reign of the Seven Spellblades. So seeing his older characters in this new style is very interesting and refreshing! Also, did anyone else notice Yukki's eyes are brown instead of blue? I wonder if this was done to differentiate him from Eiji (or maybe Esuno forgot Yukki's original eye color? T-T).

Lastly, I believe this was a limited time sale (a.k.a. it's over now), but knowing that it happened only a month ago, we might start to see some resellers in the future. So, in case you're interested in buying this, look for stuff like 未来日記 BIG ORDER アクリルスタンド少年エース30周年 (Future Diary Big Order Acrylic Stand Shounen Ace 30th Anniversary) (kinda sounds like a wish listing lmao)

Anyway, if you need me I'll be in the corner of my room fangirling about this.

[sunniedesi]

Happy (fanon) birthday to the yandere queen herself!

Fun fact: the majority of sites that have information about Sakae Esuno (the author of Future Diary) mention that his birthday is on November 17th. I feel like that is a big reason why Yuno's fan-appointed birthday falls on November 16th.

Another less fun fact: I actually had forgotten that today was Yuno's birthday until tomodachi life reminded me lmfao

(Look Yukki also came to celebrate! And Akise is the one wearing the mask, the little weirdo.)

[sunniedesi]

Rare Future Diary Merch Art (Part 2!)

In case you haven’t seen my last post on this topic, I’ve been working on recreating rare art only seen on obscure merch from Future Diary, namely T-shirts. The first post focused on a T-shirt that was part of a raffle, which featured a design I fondly call “meditating Yuno.” This time around, I’m working on the designs of four shirts that were sold in the Live World Concert. I recommend you read that post first if you want more context. To make things easier to explain here’s a list of the shirt designs I’m referring to:

Purple/Gray Yuno Shirt (Brand: MARS SIXTEEN)

Rock Minene Shirt (Brand: MARS SIXTEEN)

DEAD END Shirt (Brand: MARS SIXTEEN)

The Live World Deus Shirt

As you can see, three out of the four shirts were made by the brand MARS SIXTEEN. This brand no longer sells those shirts nor has any images of them available, so we can only rely on the very few, poor-quality photos found on some older Japanese blogs. The fourth shirt isn’t associated to any particular brand and was made/sold exclusively for the concert. The first two highlighted shirts are the ones we’ll be covering on this post, leaving the last two for a separate part.

Firstly, we have the Purple/Gray Yuno shirt, which features a stylized view of a cityscape on the front, and a unique graphic of Yuno on the back. We can see none other than Tomosa Murata (Yuno’s VA) wearing the gray iteration of this T-shirt in a recording of The Live World concert.

As I mentioned earlier, finding images of these designs was pretty difficult. In terms of this design, I only had a flat image of the Yuno graphic, which I upscaled and redrew for better quality. The cityscape design I only managed to find in listings of the shirt, which I took as reference and completely redrew. It was probably one of the more complex designs of the bunch, so hopefully the final result turned out decent. Here’s the front (I made two purple versions because I couldn’t decide which one I preferred).

And here’s the back design

Next, we have the Rock Minene shirt. This is a purple top inspired by Minene, which has a graphic of speakers blasting on the front along with the title of the series, and an exploded view of a grenade on the back. It also features a small graphic of Minene and the text “9th” on the sleeves. A large amount of the cast wore this top in the concert, as you can see by the following images.

I fortunately had flat images of every graphic, though I still had to redraw them because the image quality was very, very low. The design of the exploded grenade on the back had a little text attached to it, which due to the grainy pixels was difficult to read. Our little community over here came to the rescue and helped me figure out a text that’d match the original. Very special thanks to @syrpai for coming up with a paragraph that looks very similar to the original (I only had to tweak it a bit to fit the frame). With all this yapping out of the way, here are the results:

Lastly, we have the design of the sleeves. Minene’s silhouette goes on the left sleeve, while “9th” goes on the right.

[sunniedesi]

Here's another random inquiry for the Mirai Nikki community. Even though there isn't that much official Future Diary merch, there are a few rare gems we can find here and there, such as this cool Minene inspired T-shirt.

I bring this up because the back of the shirt has a little bit of text at the top that is illegible due to the low quality of the image.

Since there is no better picture of this shirt, it's anyone's guess what's written on there. I imagine it's a description of the exploded view of the grenade... but that's boring! So, I was wondering what text you guys think should go on there. For no particular reason, just wondering...

[sunniedesi]

Rare Future Diary Merch Art

If you're familiar with my posts, you might've seen me mention one specific t-shirt a couple of times in the past.

This Yuno t-shirt is perhaps one of the rarest pieces of merchandise once available for Future Diary. The shirt was part of a raffle and only a very limited quantity was manufactured. As a result, we don't have any listings or images of it, meaning this illustration card drawn by Esuno is the closest we've gotten to a proper image of the shirt. I personally love this graphic and would kill to have it on a t-shirt. So, I've been looking around for any methods (ai, resizing tools, etc) to upscale and recreate the graphic from this image, none of which yielded quality results.

So... as per request of my nagging Future Diary brain worms, I said fuck it and made it myself. It's not perfect, but it's probably the closest we'll get.

In case you're curious, this illustration of Yuno comes from the 3rd volume of the manga, where she's meditating to figure out where Reisuke's diary is. I tried looking up where the circle and symbols where from, but found nothing close to it, so I'm pretty sure it's just a made-up sigil wheel. (Hopefully I didn't invoke any demons by drawing it lol)

I found over the years that it is very difficult to clean and upscale images while retaining their quality. I've tried such methods before for other graphics (also Future Diary shirts) and they never came out quite right, so I think recreating them myself was not a bad approach. I might do this for other FD shirts, but I don't think it'll be as easy as this one, since a lot of official FD merch has original art that is not seen anywhere else. It's worth a try though, given how difficult it is to find even images of the official FD merch.