John Bacchus

John Balks is the Eleventh diary owner, and the final owner introduced in the series. The Mayor of Sakurami City, John Balks is actually the creator of the Future Diaries technology and suggested the survival game to Deus Ex Machina. He fused the first Future Diaries together to create his "Watcher Diary".

Personality
Balks is a middle-aged spectacled gentleman dressed in fine clothes and wears a hat resembling a Jewish kippah. Using his position as mayor of Sakurami City, Balks is the most powerful man in the city and his influence is very strong. In his opening scene, Balks convinces the entire city council to agree to shut down Kamado Ueshita's orphanage by crying crocodile tears and blubbering about how he adores every child in the city as if they were his own. Balks is obviously intelligent and manipulative, but can be just as honest.

He is very polite and acts like a gentleman towards Kamado. However, he is perhaps one of the more ruthless of the twelve diary owners, being strategic and using his intelligence to make any situation's outcome be to his advantage. His goal in the game is to help humanity evolve to a higher form of being, having similar beliefs like the Macedonians, Romans and Nazi Germany.

Diary & Abilities
His diary is known as The Watcher. It is an iPad like device that allows him to check the entries of every Diary User, be it a participant or an Apprentice Diary User. This gives him several advantages such as being able to track the position of his foes as well as prepare countermeasures if an entry suggests he's in danger. While very powerful it also has a weakness, as Diary Users can simply rewrite their entries it means that The Watcher is vulnerable to misinformation. It also seems to have some limits as by the time he uses his Diary the only remaining users use electronic devices as their diaries (namely cellphones) although it is said by Deus himself that it can read any diary, so it is unknown how he reads entries on non-electric devices.

Being the Major of Sakurami City he has great power and influence in the city's politics as well as wealthy enough to have his own personal guard. He once used his influence to shut down the Mother's Home in order to corner The Eighth into joining him, which shows he also has great intelligence and is a skilled manipulator. The greatest demonstration of his wealth is with the Holon supercomputer, which has 3 servers and is overall Japan's third most powerful supercomputer. He has his personal guard cover 2 whole floors on his towers and still have a large amount of men to defend him as well as the needed weaponry. He knowingly he would face The Eighth had a jammer attached to his personal car to cut the connection to the Server's Diary and leave the orphans defenseless.

His power is great enough to have access to information and codes only known to Yuno's dead parents, which served to protect him behind a Bank Safe.

MurMur in one chance said he had around 99% chance of being the winner, and is argueably the most powerful of the participants at the time of his full introduction.

Backstory
Balks, wishing to evolve humanity to new heights, met and approached Deus with the proposal to give mankind some of his divine power. His concept was the Future Diaries, which could predict the future. Learning of Deus' approaching demise, Balks' idea would contribute to the survival game Deus had in mind to choose a successor. Deus used his powers to help create the powers of the Future Diaries, whilst Balks developed the actual technology. The two made several archetypal prototypes to test out the powers of the diaries - The "Radar" Diary, which could predict a person's surroundings; the "Searcher Diary" which predicts the actions of certain individuals; the "Organizer" Diary which predicts the actions of groups; and the "Supplier" which gives others the power to predict the future.

Balks formed a fifth prototype, the "Watcher" Diary, in order to watch and record the activities of all other diaries. This effectively made Balks the first Future Diary owner, despite being titled as Eleventh in the survival game.

Enter Eleventh
Balks debuted with the other diary owners during Deus' first meeting of the survival game, targeting Yukiteru Amano as the primary target to eliminate after he killed the Third owner Takao Hiyama. He is present at the second meeting, and other subsequent ones, although he does not make a move in the game until later on, likely observing the other owners until half of them are eliminated.

Balks begins to make his move against the other diary owners, manipulating Kurou Amano into his services by telling him that if he destroys Yukiteru's diary, his debts will be cleared. When Kurou ultimately fails to achieve this, Balks has his subordinates attempt an assassination of Kurou and Yuki. Kurou is killed, but Yuki uses his diary to kill the men, prompting him to play the game after all and target Balks. Balks makes his plans to eliminate Kamado next, convincing the council of Sakurami City to shut down her orphanage after the incidents involving the residents.

At the final meeting held between the last diary owners, Balks suggests to Deus to eliminate Yuki and Yuno Gasai from the game after they have not made an appearance in five days, although Minene Uryu objects. As Deus is about to follow Balks' request, Yuki and Yuno arrive, Yuki revealing Balks' identity to the other owners and vows to kill him in order to avenge his parents. Forming an alliance with Kamado, Yuki and Yuno plan to ambush Balks whilst he is on his way through a country road, guarded by Masumi Nishijima. However, Balks anticipates the attack and uses an EMP weapon to disable Kamado's Apprentice Diaries. Yuki and Yuno then turn against Kamado, killing her orphans, causing her to flee. However, Balks and Nishijima pull over in their car, offering Kamado a ride.

Balks and Kamado make their getaway, Yuki and Yuno giving chase in a car down the motorway. Yuki eventually rams Balks car until it crashes. Yuno confronts Balks, aiming a gun at his head, but Balks merely mocks her as Minene arrives with Aru Akise, carrying with him the umbilical cord of the "real" Yuno Gasai, something which Balks takes note of. He tries to shoot Yuno but Yuki flees with her.

Toppling the King
Several nights later, Balks takes Kamado to the city's university where he reveals the Holon III supercomputer. He explains his plan to Kamado - to connect her Blog Diary to the supercomputer, so every citizen in Sakurami City can become Apprentice Diary owners, allowing him to create a superior race of human beings like Macedonia, Rome and Nazi Germany tried to do. Minene, who is spying on the conversation, calls him a maniac and tries to throw a grenade at him. Balks immediately catches it and tosses it back, causing Minene to flee. However, Minene and Nishijima are able to destroy the computer terminals, believing they have defeated Balks. That is until a policeman speaks on Nishijima's radio, claiming his phone is telling him of his future, Holon III actually possessing two more terminals.

Learning Balks is keeping the other two Holon terminals in conjoined twin buildings, Minine plots to blow them up and then to kill him. She learns of the abilities of Balks' Watcher Diary and his past from Deus, and initiates Operation Starling to defeat Balks. Teaming up with Nishijima, Hinata Hino, Mao Nonosaka and Ouji Kosaka, Minene leads the group up the two buildings, each of them adding false entries into the Future and Apprentice Diaries to confuse Balks and his men, misinformation being the Watcher Diary's weakness.

However, with help from his assistant Kurosaki, Balks is able to deduce Minene's plan and plays a claymore mine in her path. Minene is caught in the explosion and loses an arm, whilst Nishijima is gunned down by Balks' men. Hinata, Mao and Kosaka are also caught. However, Yuki and Yuno arrive and split up to eliminate Balks and Kamado, the latter hiding in the terminal room in the southern tower. Yuki contacts a news crew to send a message to Balks via a helicopter, instructing him to commit suicide, but Balks is able to reverse the situation and dismiss the news crew. Yuki and Minene race to stop Balks, only to witness him and Kurosaki disappearing into a bank once owned by Yuno's adoptive parents.

Balks and Kurosaki seal themselves inside the bank's vault behind a door made of solid steel. Yuki and Minene try to figure out the password, Yuki managing to stage his own future to follow Kurosaki and learn the password to the vault, correctly identifying. He successfully enters the password, Balks shooting Kurosaki dead so Yuki cannot get anymore details. Using the password and a security key, Yuki opens the vault door only to discover there is a second vault door between him and Balks. Yuki and Minene get into a gunfight and run off, leaving Balks safe until Yuki returns with Yuno. Balks continues to believe that Yuno is an impersonator, knowing the only way to open the second vault door is through a retinal scanner that only works for Balks himself, Yuno's parents, and the real Yuno.

Balks speaks to Yuki over an intercom system, mocking Yuki and his parents as being useless "samples" of the superior race he wishes to create through the Apprentice Diaries. Balks advices Yuki to escape through the underground waterway, continously mocking him for being a crybaby. Minene returns, having been shot by Yuki and is close to dying. Stumbling into the gap between the vault doors, Minene produces an explosive which will detonate when her heart stops, planning to blow apart the doors to allow access to Balks. Minene destroys her diary and activates the bomb, blowing open the first vault door and dies. However, it is revealed that the second vault still remains closed. Balks mocks Minene's failed sacrifice, and a despairing Yuki is dragged away by Yuno.

Yuno places Yuki in the underground waterway, and disappears. In the vault, Balks prepares to leave but notes Yuno's diary entry mentions her planning to kill him. Balks turns around, only to see the second vault door opening. To his horror, Yuno is revealed to have used the retinal scanner, revealing her to be the real Yuno Gasai after all. Balks only has time to register his disbelied as Yuno runs at him, armed with a sword, and swiftly decapitates him. Yuno later tells Yuki she killed Balks when he emerged from the vault to cover up her own deceptions. Balks' dream eventually ends with Kamado's death several days later, and the destruction of the world.

In the anime, after Minene's failed attempt to blow herself up and the vault door, Yuno sends Yuki off to destroy Holon III whilst she waits outside the vault. However, Yuno opens the second vault door using the retinal scanner and shoots Balks through the head with a gun.

The Third World
Balks appears in the third parallel world when Yuki, Yuno, Minene and Muru Muru perform a time leap back two years into the past. Balks witnesses the explosions at the elementary school, having already designed his early Future Diaries. Telephoning Kamado at her orphanage, Balks informs her he is cutting off the council's funds to the orphanage for the sake of the future. Balks ends the call, telling Kurosaki changing the future is necessary, having read Yuki's Future Diary and learnt of his death in the future, impressed his technology could show the diaries of a person from another world. Balks visits the third version of Deus and reveals that he is cancelling his Future Diary project, thus, cancelling out the survival game of the third world.

Two years later, after the original Yuno's suicide, Balks can be seen in the company of Kamado. They walk down a street among other characters, possibly a couple due to Balks' happy expression, or they are merely working together to make Sakurami City a better place.

Trivia

 * John Balks is named after Bacchus, the Roman god of wine.