Big Order Review: The Mirai Nikki Spiritual Successor That Swings for the Apocalypse

A boy wished to rule the world as a child. The wish came true and destroyed civilization. Now everyone wants him dead. He's still the protagonist.

Quick Take

• Sakae Esuno's follow-up to Future Diary — similar DNA, more explicitly power-fantasy
• The escalation is relentless; the twists accumulate in ways that require total commitment
• 10 volumes complete in English — fully available

Who Is This Manga For?

• Future Diary fans who want more of Esuno's specific flavor of chaos
• Readers who enjoy power escalation manga that doesn't flinch from its premise
• People who can engage with a morally compromised protagonist without needing him to be likable
• Anyone who enjoys supernatural action that commits fully to its world-ending stakes

Content Warnings & Age Rating

Age Rating: T (Teen) Content Warnings: Violence, character deaths, apocalyptic destruction, morally complex protagonist

More intense than a typical T-rating suggests. The stakes are genuinely world-scale.

Yu's Rating

Category	Score
Story Depth	★★★☆☆
Art Style	★★★★☆
Character Development	★★★☆☆
Accessibility for Non-Japanese Readers	★★★★☆
Reread Value	★★★☆☆

Story Overview

Eiji Hoshimiya wished, as a child, to rule the world. The fairy Daisy granted his wish — along with the wishes of nine others who all received world-altering "Orders." The result: civilization as it existed was largely destroyed.

Ten years later, Eiji lives trying not to use his power and being blamed by most of the surviving population for what happened. Then the Daisy appears again, and the other Order wielders come into conflict with each other, and Eiji is drawn into a conflict over whether the world can be rebuilt — or whether someone will use the Orders to end it entirely.

The series follows Eiji as he reluctantly accepts that he has to use his power, assembles an improbable group of allies (including people with excellent reasons to want him dead), and escalates toward a confrontation with forces that operate on a genuinely apocalyptic scale.

Characters

Eiji Hoshimiya — The complication is that his wish did cause everything that's wrong with the world. He knows it. The story doesn't let him off the hook. His arc is about whether someone responsible for catastrophe can do something worth doing with that responsibility.

Rin Kurenai — Introduced as an assassin with every reason to kill Eiji. Becomes something else. Her transition is the series' best character work.

Gennai Hiiragi — The antagonist whose Order makes him an interesting foil to Eiji's — different visions of what ruling the world means.

Art Style

Esuno's art is kinetic and expressive — excellent at conveying the confusion of overlapping Order effects and the physical impact of large-scale abilities. Character designs are distinctive. The apocalyptic environments are rendered with consistent attention to scale. Some readers find the visual busyness overwhelming during peak escalation sequences; others find it appropriately chaotic for what it's depicting.

Cultural Context

Big Order was Esuno's attempt to work in a more explicitly power-fantasy mode after Future Diary's psychological-horror approach. The "wish granted with catastrophic consequences" premise draws on a long tradition in Japanese fantasy (from fairy tales to contemporary light novels) about the gap between what you ask for and what you actually want.

The political structure — Order users as de facto rulers of territories — creates a medieval-fragmentary-state setup that allows for the kinds of alliance and conflict dynamics common to feudal-era historical fiction.

What I Love About It

The way the series commits to Eiji's responsibility for the original catastrophe. Esuno doesn't retroactively soften it or reveal that it wasn't really Eiji's fault. He wished for it. It happened. The story is about what comes after owning that, not about absolution.

That's a harder line to hold than most wish-power manga bothers with.

What English-Speaking Fans Say

Compared unfavorably to Future Diary by most readers, which is somewhat unfair — they're doing different things. The escalation is either enjoyable or exhausting depending on the reader. The complete 10-volume release is consistently cited as a reason to try it over ongoing series in the same space.

Memorable Scene ⚠️ Spoiler Warning

The sequence where multiple Orders interact in ways that create genuinely unpredictable consequences — where even the characters with the most information don't know what's happening — is the series at its most characteristically Esuno. The chaos is the point.

Similar Manga

Title	Its Approach	How Big Order Differs
Future Diary	Survival horror with a morally compromised protagonist	Future Diary is more psychologically focused; Big Order is more action-forward
Code Geass	World domination through exceptional ability	Code Geass is more politically strategic; Big Order is more power-escalation focused
AntiMagic Academy	Supernatural powers and institutional conflict	AntiMagic is more grounded; Big Order is more explicitly world-scale

Reading Order / Where to Start

Read Future Diary first if you can — understanding Esuno's sensibilities helps calibrate expectations. Big Order doesn't require it but benefits from context.

Official English Translation Status

Yen Press published all 10 volumes in English. Complete and available.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Complete 10-volume story with resolution
• Commits to its premise's consequences more honestly than similar series
• Rin's character arc is genuinely effective
• The escalation, if you're in the right mood, is relentless entertainment

Cons

• Not as psychologically layered as Future Diary
• Escalation can become overwhelming and incoherent in later volumes
• Eiji is a difficult protagonist to engage with emotionally
• The power interactions become hard to track as Orders multiply
• Readers expecting Future Diary levels of psychological depth will be disappointed

Is Big Order Worth Reading?

For power-escalation manga fans and Future Diary completionists, yes. Don't expect Future Diary. Expect something that commits to its own chaos and mostly follows through.

Format Comparison

Format	Pros	Cons
Physical	Art reads well in print	10 volumes requires space
Digital	Convenient	—
Omnibus	No omnibus available	—

Where to Buy

Read the first volume. If it doesn't hook you, put it down. It'll hook you.

Start with Volume 1 →

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