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So, who wants a fun rabbit hole?

The Future I Saw is a 1999 manga by mangaka Ryo Tatsuki about supposed prophetic dreams. Supposedly many of those predictions would come to pass 15 years after each dream, or else in 15 year cycles (e.g. if something didn't happen in 2001, it could happen in 2016, then 2031, etc.). Purportedly this includes the deaths of Freddie Mercury and Princess Diana, and the 1995 Kobe earthquake, though those are debatable based on the fact they occurred before the manga was published. Or at least, Freddie Mercury's death was. There are currently two chapters translated and based on the foreword they were published in 1995 and 1996, and I don't know what year the Princess Diana prediction was published. I also don't think she published before the 1995 Kobe earthquake since she claimed that dream was only 15 days before.

As an extra note: she wasn't publishing the manga to spefically taut herself as a psychic or prophet. The two chapters that have been translated feel like a pretty standard example of a mangaka recounting some weird or mysterious event in their lives. In these chapters, she specifically focused on the bit about Freddie Mercury, a dream about her uncle's funeral, and a recurring dream of a woman in what she later learned to be an air raid shelter after finding it on a walk. And then the news reported a woman being found murdered there with the same clothes as her dream.

She's far from the only one who I've seen illustrate a story about a wild or creepy coincidence, I'm sure I've seen others also recount dreams that turned out to feel semi-prophetic. She just apparently had enough such stories to compile into a thematic volume, which makes sense since she apparently kept a very detailed dream journal to at least the 1970's. So lots of chances for her dreams to match up with reality.

However, some predictions that did come to pass afterwards, and the reason this manga became viral? The 2011 earthquake, and COVID.

Specifically, the cover included text on a notebook page saying "great disaster March 2011" which she added based on seeing the text in a dream shortly before the deadline. In regards to Covid, she supposedly predicted a great virus would strike the world in 2020 and peak in April, but it wouldn't be too deadly. The not deadly part was wrong... But she also predicted it would come back in 10 years even worse, so... Yeah, let's hope she's not psychic.

Now, to emphasize: a bunch of it is most likely coincidence. I've seen sources claim as many as 12 or 13 of her predictions have come true, but I can't actually find a full list of predictions to gauge the actual accuracy. The only one I can find is this Medium article, but it got the "death as a manga artist" wrong since she did retire around 2000 after publishing this volume. That said, there's definitely confirmation bias going on by people who want to believe she's psychic. She has some very avid believers. And also, again, she kept a dream journal since at least 1976. It makes sense some of those dreams would coincidentally line up with future real world events.

But it's still interesting. It feels rare to have two different big events predicted by a single source, so that adds a layer of intrigue and just a hint of "but what if...?" as you look at the other predictions. Based on the articles I've scoured, the big ones that have yet to occur are an eruption of Mt. Fuji (originally predicted for 2021, now pushed back to 2036 because of the 15 year thing), and an earthquake and tsunami in Kanagawa between June and September 2026.

The one that's currently making news and prompted this writeup: in the 2021 reprint, she predicted a major tsunami would occur in July 2025. So naturally people are saying last night's earthquake was that one. The details don't match up: she predicted the earth would crack open under the seabed between Japan and the Philippines (so the opposite side), that the waves would be worse than 2011, and people thought her descriptions of "boiling seas" indicated a volcanic eruption. But it's still an interesting coincidence that there was, indeed, an earthquake and tsunami in July 2025. And apparently that's good enough for some people to count it as an accurate prediction. Also, July isn't over yet, so uh. Who knows?

For some bonus reading if you want to dive into the rabbithole: There's a full Wikipedia page about that prediction, and the mild frenzy in the leadup to July this year. Most of the information I've shared came from various articles published just this year as a response to the growing rumors about it. That said, a lot of articles also seem to be either AI translated or maybe even AI written or researched with little human oversight, as many wrongly use male pronouns for her. I also haven't seen any articles reference the actual content of the manga beyond the big predictions, so chances are they're all regurgitating information that originally spread from a small selection of articles. So that just adds to the quagmire of iffy information available in English.

Still, like I said, it's kind of fun to look at and wonder. It's almost certainly just coincidence, but it's also the kind that leaves you wondering if maybe, just maybe...

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I’m going to bring up examples from a variety of mediums, so I couldn’t really fit this just under ~books or ~tv. Sorry about that.

Lately I’ve been thinking about just how much I love fiction with a good plot device, and I’ve been wondering what it is that makes these devices such great vehicles for telling an interesting story.

Death Note is the first example that comes to mind for me. The “plot device” (and I may not be using this term correctly) if the titular item, which is a notebook where, if one writes a name of a person, while imagining their face, along with a time and date, and then a set of realistic circumstances that lead to that person’s death, then it will occur as written. If nothing other than the name, time, and date are written, then the person dies of a heart attack (after 40 seconds, if I remember correctly). The main character was the right kind to have acquired the book, because it enabled the story to be told in the manner that it was. I think the author illustrated this well when, at the very end, another character, not nearly as intelligent as the previous owner of the Death Note, quickly got done away with.

Code Geass is probably one of my favorite animes of all time. It combines a lot of genres into one. The titular “geass”, however, particularly the one that the main character acquired—which allows him to give a one-time order to any person who looks in his eyes, which the person will see through no matter what—is also an excellent plot device.

*The Lake House, a 2006 fantasy romance film, staring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. It’s not a masterpiece or anything, but I can’t forget the whole plot device about the mailbox that allowed the male main character to send letters to the female main character two years into the past.

Dreamless is one of my favorite webcomics of all time. It’s crazy for me to think that this beautiful, entirely-colored webcomic was made available for free all the way back in 2009. I wish more people knew about it. The plot device, which is brilliant, revolves around a man and a woman who were born on the same day at the same time, but he in Japan, and she in the USA—a few years before the outbreak of WWII. From the very day of their birth, they were “connected”. Whenever they fall asleep, they begin to “see through eyes and hear through the ears of the other” until they wake up. If they both happen to be sleeping at the same time, than they see darkness but still hear surroundings. They became aware of this at very young age, learning each other’s languages and falling in love with each other since they were children. The time zone difference makes it relatively easy for them to observe each other’s lives as one sleeps and the other goes about his or her days. They embark on a quest to figure out how to meet each other, in the midst of a brutal war waged between their respective countries.

Severance is a show that everyone is talking about right now, so I don’t need to explain much to you, right? The plot device here is a chip that is implanted into people’s brains, and makes it so that their memories are split in two, based on location. At their work place, the character’s memories from the outside world are “shut off”, and they only remember what they experienced on the inside. I’m almost done with season two and this show is what prompted me to write this thread. I’ve been loving it.

Black Mirror is a show that I need to give a shoutout to, because many of its most famous episodes are centered around a very specific plot device. For me, the most impressive of these, was the one where they had these chips that basically recorded everything that they saw, and it was a normalized thing in society. I think that it was episode three. Episode eight was also interesting. It was about a society in which people’s social status was determined by their online social media rank.

I had an example in the back of my mind of a piece of fiction with a great plot device that I felt was not properly made use of. I’m sure that there are others like that, and it’s a bit sad when that happens, because there is a great idea right there, but it was wasted. I totally forgot about it though. Maybe you can think of some bad examples yourselves?

Edit: I remembered a different one, In Time, a 2011 movie about a society where people don’t age, but rather have their life spans written on a digital countdown clock on their arms. The way that people used their lifespans as currency that they could exchange was a neat idea. I didn’t watch the movie, but I read from other people about it, and it seemed to me like the concept wasn’t properly explored. Maybe I should give it a chance.

And maybe you can also think of some other good examples, plot devices in books, shows, movies, manga, anime that really blew you away. I’d be curious to hear about them because I’d like to look into them if it’s something that catches my interest.

As for what makes a plot device interesting for me, here are some points:

• It is a concept that is easy to grasp or an object the functions of which are easy to understand.
• It has strict limitations that the plot revolves around and the characters repeatedly run up against. These limitations are explained very early on in the story.
• The plot device and its origins gets gradually explained over the course of the piece.
• The story is largely centered around a small group of individuals.

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