Platinum End
a review by Magenta
a review by Magenta
The one thing that keeps me interested in watching more anime even when it seems like I am completely burned out from the hobby is that it will never feel like I have finally seen everything that I could see. Even despite the fact that most anime is either painfully generic or painfully boring, there is always a new boundary to push with this medium. And now, to add to the list of boundary-breaking anime is Platinum End. Platinum End manages to break new ground in places that I didn’t even know ground existed. It reaches milestones that aren’t even in reach of most pieces of media. Wait a minute, I should probably clarify my words. It reaches milestones of horribleness that shouldn’t even be attainable by a written story. It manages to be so bad that it becomes the greatest comedy of all time only to just become just plain bad eventually, like a circle. It is truly remarkable how at every single moment, a story can make the worst possible step.
So, you may ask, what is Platinum End? Well, imaginary reader, your first mistake was to ask that question in the first place, but I will answer the question. Have you heard of Death Note? I shouldn’t be asking that, everybody has heard of Death Note. Platinum End is made by the same author-artist pair, Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, as Death Note and Bakuman. Most people who went in completely blind into this show expected a story akin to the quality of what the two had put out before. But the world stopped making sense a century ago, so that didn’t happen. It isn’t even worth comparing the two since Death Note outdoes Platinum End in every single category. By extension, the only real similarity between the two of them is that they have dark themes and messages. Actually you know what, scratch that. There is one other important similarity between the two, and that is how perfect their first impressions represent the rest of the series that they are attached to. Death Note’s first episode is an absolutely fantastic opener and hook, and is a huge reason why the series got so popular in the first place. Platinum End does this in an even faster time. In just the first two minutes, the viewer is shown the absolutely horrible ride that they are in for.
Just one minute and eleven seconds into the first episode, the main character, Mirai Kakahashi, goes to the rooftop of a building, say “I tried to be happy”, and then throws himself off the building in an attempted suicide. Even before five minutes have passed, there has already been an extraordinarily edgy scene. Now, despite this, this moment can still be somewhat salvaged. If the reasons as to why Mirai decided to attempt suicide was well developed, then to start with something as explicitly edgy as a suicide attempt would be somewhat understandable. However, those reasons end up rather underwhelming. Mirai’s depression before his suicide attempt was caused by what feels like a laundry list of all of the bad things that could happen to a child. His family’s car exploded, killing his parents and his siblings, he got transferred to his abusive aunt, uncle, and cousins, he is bullied at school, and he has to sleep in a storage closet. The whole world is out to get him during his whole early adolescence. The source of Mirai’s misery doesn’t feel believable, since instead of Mirai’s remaining family and the society around him feeling like genuine pieces of the world, they are more just negative monoliths who are bad people just because.
The reason why I am hyper-fixating on just the opening minute of the show as well as the justifications for that minute is that it is a perfect representation of one of the main problems that the rest of the series suffers from. Rather than coming off as dark, from minute 1 up to minute 576, Platinum End always comes off as remarkably edgy. The main difference between a truly dark story and an edgy story is that truly dark stories have enough restraint and self-awareness to use dark themes in ways that only benefit both the quality and progression of the story. Platinum End, like with other edgy stories, dark concepts are overused to make the story more serious, but usually fail to sell that effect. Platinum End is about a death game, it is littered with Christian imagery, and it does toy with the concept of suicide constantly, but does that matter? Dark concepts are only truly dark if utilized by a good story. Platinum End holds a persistent belief that it has this requirement down pat, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. None of the show’s attempts to be dark work, since it lacks the self-awareness to look back and learn from its mistakes. Platinum End’s lack of self-awareness extends far beyond just failing to establish a dark tone. Its lack of willingness to have the slightest bit of self-reflection on its own story is the root cause of most of its problems.
With how it frames every single aspect of its story, it is apparent that it believes that what it is saying holds far more meaning than it does. This can be seen with its attempt at portraying philosophic ideas. Mirai’s main philosophy is, “I want to be happy and make other people happy”. This isn’t an oversimplification, by the way, this is the full extent of his philosophy. It is quite literally the line of thinking of anybody over the age of 4. Despite how overly simplistic it is, Mirai ends up repeating his same happiness schtick to a parodic extent. By the end of the show, the Japanese word for happiness, shiawase, is said 210 times. Yes, I did count that, and yes I really need to find a better use of my free time. The disconnect from how deep this message is compared to how deep the series thinks it leads to multiple scenes that seem to be aiming to have a grand message but end up not saying anything. The moment that encapsulates this the best is when Saki wants to choose the color of her suit. When Mukaido asks her to choose a color, she chooses yellow, because it is the “color of happiness”.
Another example of Platinum End’s thematic failures is its portrayal of morality. Both of the main arcs of the series do this in different ways. In the first arc, this is primarily done through the dichotomy of the red and white arrows. The white arrow is a weapon that some people participating in the God selection process gain from their angels. The arrow instantly kills anybody that it comes into contact with. With how it is used in the story, the white arrow is primarily framed with the question of whether it is okay to kill for the greater good. This isn’t necessarily the best start for creating an interesting moral question, especially because this show is a death game, but it isn’t the worst thing to build off of. Where it starts to become a major issue is when a dichotomy is created between it and the red arrow.
The red arrow is the other weapon God candidates can gain, and they can make anybody fall in love with its user, although it is effectively mind control in practice. As interesting as exploring the idea of mind control would be, in the story, it ends up effectively as just a plot device that also removes the agency of characters. Whenever there is a potential plot hole in the story, it is always covered up with the excuse of “they just used a red arrow”. The red arrow completely removes any agency that any characters affected by it have, which could be a good source of drama, but it is barely even explored. The lack of agency any character affected by the red arrow has isn’t played up for anything interesting, rather it is just a byproduct of the weapon. On top of all of this, when the red arrow is used by any character, it is always in an immoral way. Mirai, Mukaido, and especially Saki use in pretty screwed up ways, but it is usually mentioned off-hand like it was no big deal. The absolute worst case of this happening is when Saki uses the red arrow on Hajime. It seems like the audience is supposed to recognize Hajime falling in love with Saki as him having a genuine change of heart, but it just ends up coming off as manipulative with all of the ways that the red arrow has been used thus far. Despite all of this though, the red arrow is still portrayed as the good to counter the evil of the white arrow. The final fight between Mirai and Uryuu is a red arrow vs white arrow duel, as well as the red arrow being consistently used by Mirai due to his aversion to killing at the beginning. The evil of the white arrow is recognized, but that doesn’t exempt the red arrow from just being a different evil. It isn’t like this dichotomy is abided by after the first half of the show though. Killing through non-white arrow means is just fine since Mukaido just ends up killing Uryuu with a machine gun anyways. Eventually, Mirai’s aversion to the white arrow is dropped out of nowhere, and he is just fine with using the white arrow against Yoneda in Episode 22.
While the second arc of the series drops the white vs red arrow dynamic, it replaces it for something far more asinine. When Yoneda is introduced to the story, a new question is asked. Is this God selection process even legitimate? To question the main driving force of a story like this could be quite effective under the right circumstances. If the setup to a moment where the God selection process is challenged is good, then a scene where that bombshell is dropped could be great. But none of the events in this story have been what I would call “under the right circumstances” so far, and Yoneda’s speech about the God selection process is no different. Out of nowhere, Yoneda posits that God doesn’t exist because people created God and now God wants to justify that they exist, so Yoneda wants to become God to prove God doesn’t exist. Did you get that? This line of logic has many fairly apparent flaws in it. Even me describing it doesn’t truly sell how idiotic it is. There is a lot of grandiose dialogue in this show, but the exact scene of Episode 19 when this speech by Yoneda is given is so dense with this type of overly elaborate dialogue that it is legitimately nauseating. However, the audience is supposed to take this speech very seriously, as the general public believes all of it, and the main characters each believe at least some of it. It even becomes the entire crux of most of the drama surrounding the back half of the series. Yoneda’s speech was so awe-inspiring that the number of religious people went down by 80%. I am not joking, that is a real plot point.
Yoneda is the Stephen Hawking of this world, but no reasonable person can ever take him as smart. Like the rest of the show, the show postures him as smart but never shows him being smart. He says consistently things that people around him say are smart, but to listen to him speak is to realize that none of his lines come even close to being smart. He even recites the digits of pi while running to truly sells him as a genius. And I am still not joking, that is something he does.
Platinum End is so rife with bad storytelling that focusing on nearly any element of its story can spark a discussion about how much the show falls flat on its face. However, I can’t properly put into words the experience of watching Platinum End. I could go full Nostalgia Critic mode and dissect the plot beat by beat, but some scenes of Platinum End need to be seen to be believed. take this scene from Episode 1 where Mirai’s family dies.
▶ VideoNow, I don’t know how to really describe it. Maybe it is the tonal whiplash of the explosion, maybe it is the way that Mirai flew away from the explosion, but when I first saw this scene, I burst out into laughter. This is the first of many “so bad it is good” moments in the show, and they are plentiful. I don’t want to put every moment that I find to be hilariously funny, because then you may as well just watch the first fourteen episodes, but here are some of the comedic highlights.
In Episode 6, there is a yuri BDSM sex scene, and yes this is NSFW.
This is Hajime’s introduction in Episode 9.
▶ VideoAnd my favorite one, here is a MILF biologist talking about how she would be turned on by her biolab virus killing everybody.
▶ VideoThere are so many more moments like this, but the point I am trying to make here is that the experience of watching this show, especially in the first arc, is an absolute trip. I don’t know if it is a good trip or a bad trip, but it remains to be seen. There are less of these ridiculous moments in the second arc because the level of insanity is pulled back a bit. The second half is more funny to analyze in retrospect, but the actual spur of the moment events are more anger-inducing and boring than funny. But still, in terms of the results of the edge and unearned self confidence that are at the front and center, this is by far the most entertaining byproduct. Platinum End, even when the quality of the writing is at the depths, is still at least a little entertaining. It may have not been for the reasons that were intended, but I can still say that I enjoyed myself while watching this show.
There is still one more thing to talk about. The ending. I refuse to talk about it. I don’t care, this is my review. I know I talked about how much I enjoyed my experience with this show earlier, but I am going to do a complete 180 now. I said earlier that this series was like a circle of badness. This very, very, very, very, very stupid ending is the point when the circle is completed. I don’t think there is anything to add to it, because even anybody watching it completely isolated can see the problems with it. Just imagine if somehow the show got more edgy and more egotistical about its own messages in the final few minutes, and boom there is your ending. I am just amazed at this point.
So do I recommend anybody to watch this show? Well, if you want to watch a good story then avoid this at all costs. However, if you either want to watch a comedy or a show you can learn about the pitfalls of dark storytelling, I would recommend it. They are the two completely opposite things that this show wants to be, but that is the general theme of this whole show. In all of its attempts to be grand, it always ended up producing the exact opposite effect that it was likely intending to produce. This show wanted me to feel sad, impressed, and shocked, but instead I felt hilarity, angry, and bored.
Thank you for reading to the end of the review if you did. If you have any criticisms of how this review was made, you are free to message me or reply to this post to critique what I had to say.
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