Platinum End…..oh Platinum End…..reviewing this show was such a pain because there are a lot of high concept things in this show to critique,and as the show goes on,instead of falling apart,it adds more things just to collapse in on itself and make a giant Black Hole of things.And it's honestly exhausting to make a lengthy review after such a frustrating watch but there is just too much to talk about, Yes, it's one of "thoose" reviews.Trigger warning for suicide, religious topics, and long ass reviews.

STORY
First of all, I'm not gonna beat around the bush, I have a chicken pot pie in the oven, the story is dogshit. It's really messy while at the same time being really uninteresting despite its high concept. The most action packed moments happened to be really stupid. I know the person who made this also made Death Note, I feel like the writer was trying to capture lighting in a bottle twice with having a very similar concept with added death battle elements from anime like Mirai Nikki to spice things up, but the writer does such a poor job of utilizing what makes both of these shows work. There seems to be a very very very desperate ass agenda to make everything poignant that overpowers everything else,and it turns the anime into such a slog, dude. Lotta flashbacks, lotta ppl talking about happiness, weak ass characters, and an absolutely whack ass second half.
And then the ending of the show. I will give props to an anime actually having an ending. But the ending is so fucking lazy, it feels like the writer knew he wrote himself into an absolute mess so he just decided to Thanos snap everything he wrote outta existence, character arcs and explored themes be damned..It tries to be profound but it's too dumb to do that, it tries to have a twist but it doesn't even commit to it,so what is it? It's a cop out of an ending that tries to have some implied commentary on death that the show literally contradicted beforehand in the previ- its a mess and that mess is dumped in the trash where it belonged.

ART/ANIMATION/AND SOUND
The animation and art is…well, not great. I get it, the animators tried their damndest to make the art look very clean and beautiful,because the manga for this was illustrated by an absolute legend Takeshi Obata.But they trip over themselves a lot. It’s a very inconsistent show, with really derpy moments,lifeless style, and horrendously ugly 3D that is relied on so much,since most of the battles in the show are done by people in mecha outfits.Mirai Nikki can eat its heart out with their CGI cars.not to mention the sound is really freaking obnoxious, it's one of those new anime with the foley that is ridiculously loud and clunky,and its soundtrack is kinda overkill with the electronic music.And it pains me just how good the OP and ED’s are because they get put in shows like this.

CHARACTERS
Alright, are you ready for some profound characters? Fuck it,I might as well go over all of them.
Tonma sucks, he’s a tool,Shogo and Saburo were literally tools to be used by Maximan AKA Kanade who is a main antagonist but he is waaay too cartoonish to take seriously,His entire character is basically that image of Paris Hilton wearing that “STOP BEING POOR” shirt. And then mix it with Sentai for extra cringe..Hajime is a reason why I think the mechanic of the red arrow is stupid .If you don't know, each contestants gets two arrows, a white one that kills, and a red one that causes the person to fall madly in love. But, the problem is the red arrow being used on a character ruins his arc.His story while not the greatest was alright but then the rest of his character is just being a servant and he makes pea-brained decisions because of the arrows.Susumu is a dumbass,its baffling how a writer who made characters like L came up with a kid so stupid that he almost overdosed on sleeping pills just because he was bored.
For your main characters you have pulls up wiki because i don't remember anyone’s names Saki Hanakago, for about half the show, she does nothing. She is just there to be the main character’s girl. Her personality is very bare bones and really shallow compared to even the supporting characters, I wanna say her suicide attempt added more depth but literally every character in the show attempted suicide became a god candidate. Next is Nanato whose entire character is literally just one big death flag, almost every scene that isn't plot related is just there to say “HEY HE’S GONNA DIE SOON AND IT'S GONNA BE SUPER SAAAAD'' but it doesn't really leave an impact because having a loving family and cancer is just not enough for me to care. I need a character with a personality or at least one that I can fully relate to as a human,but the problem with Platinum End is the super serious tone making scenes more melodramatic or overkill.

The angels themselves are okay,I kinda liked how they are spectators of the actual game,but the flawed rule system was so shit that the entire show completely turned me off by the end.So i didn't care about them.There are others too and some of the charactersare so outlandish,but they are either expendable helpers or people getting killed off because the show is “edgy"

The ones that stick out are the “antagonists”.Gaku and Shuji are so annoying I have to dedicate a whole paragraph to them, which is a bad sign.
The one character I did relate to is probably Yuri Temari because she’s just using her powers to get a bunch of material desires and I relate to that since honestly why would anyone wanna be God if they can just use a red arrow and shoot the manager of Disneyworld and ride the Rockin Roller Coaster forever. I know materialism is bad but who cares.She gave off that vibe,and I liked it. Her character isn’t well written though.Even in the wiki, half of her character section is just blank.
And finally, the main character Mirai Nikki, oops I mean Mirai Kakehashi. He is basically a walking trope, and that trope happens to one of my least favorite tropes. The Delusional Pacifist. Despite the fact that he is dealing with literal murderers and people actively trying to kill him, he doesn’t want to kill ,because that is a no no. Give me a break,if anything he should’ve been desensitized to death since his parents literally blew up and he saw his step parents die in front of him( this happens in the first couple of episodes btw).I don’t get it. I understand not wanting to kill, but he is actively in dangerous situations;he never sticks up for himself because he doesn’t want to kill. UGH i really fuking hate this trope, this isn’t Care Bears,you do realize humans will do anything for survival, they don't all turn into killing machines because they kill one person out of fear. A Better way of handling this trope is to have him actually kill someone but make the kill really traumatic ,that way later on, he doesn’t want to kill. Not because its the wrong thing to so, but because he doesn't want to go through that trauma again, but no. They don't do that.

Getting back to the antags because I have some beef with them.
LONG ASS RANT PART
‘My biggest problem with this show especially at the end is that it is way to smart for its own good. The show really loves to rely on logic and philosophy to impress its audience and at the same time it makes leaps and bounds to keep its plot going like a stone skipping across a pond. Some of its biggest logic jumps being having the power to fly without the population seeing you, having the military turn you into a biological weapon when they dont even know your powers, and probably the biggest logic leap is assuming a huge population of people across the world would end their lives out of depression just because one individual from Japan says that God isn’t real.It gets so convoluted, it contradicts its own worldbuilding to get across its crusty ass talking points. Ironic enough, Despite the fact that these talking points deal a lot with an atheistic viewpoint, they come across in this anime as so “preachy”.It’s like one of those cheesy Christian films but the exact opposite if that makes sense, probably doesn't, but its two sides of one religious coin. It's not the bluntness of them that get me, its how nonsensical they are in the context of the story itself. And it shows the writer was playing the game of “how to lose your audience in 24 episodes or less”. Its rough man. Mirai Nikki would never….

Honestly this problem plagued another anime that came out a couple years ago, Babylon. No, not that Fate anime, the other Babylon by Geno, the one that dealt with suicide, and went on like a month hiatus. The one problem Platinum end had was the same problem that was basically the kiss of death for Babylon,instead of getting the plot rolling, it focuses on its heavy topic which is a part of the plot and assumes that is enough for moving a story forward. And its not, it just isn't. There is so much talking, so so so so much talking and monologuing about broad concepts.

Death Note didn’t do anything like this, Death Note made its characters and actions speak for themselves and let the audience come to their own conclusion on morality .For example,having someone with a savior complex use his screwed sense of judgment and weapons of mass destruction (the death note)to create a “new world”.Is it good or is it bad?

There is no right or wrong answer, it's more layered such as reality is, and that makes Death Note more profound. Platinum end on the other hand just regurgitates all its philosophical viewpoints through very weakass characters. Some examples being the pretty boy narcissist who thinks poor people should die, an edgelord child who thinks dying solves everyone’s problems, a pacifist mc who has flashback after flashback about happiness, and the final villain who is ridiculously smart and set up a theory about this world that even the own show doesn't want to fully commit to. Their whole characters are based around these lofty generalizations on humanity that aren't profound or intelligent and since the show takes itself more seriously than a Shinkai film, it just feels like a lecture session rather than an anime.They don’t even feel like characters, they feel like messengers there to spit out the most bland nihilistic ideals over and over and over, the only that changes is the wording. It’s just vomiting word salad everywhere to make up for the fact that its plot isn't going anywhere.

SIGH-___-

I’m tired, so very tired, by the end of the show, I wanted to platinum end my own life.All sense of enjoyment is gone because the story takes itself so seriously but at the same time its own story is very flawed,this feels like a rough draft of a story that was adapted, Its such a pain to review this show because its not a garbage fire,but just a very annoying, boring, angsty,show with a lot of dialogue from uninteresting people and flawed plot.I can’t think of many moments I liked in this show to be honest,I wanted to hate watch it, but this show is no fun to watch at all. I'm not lying, the fact I binged all of Death Note for the first time before finishing the final episode of this show is very telling. Was there anything I liked? I can't find much, it's very ugly to look at, and very boring to sit through, the story is a mess, the sound is obnoxious, characters are poorly written, and I yearned for death every time someone opened their mouth, Ah screw it.

Overall-2/10

I'm sorry if this review is not as lively as my others, but man, Platinum End is literally putting me on the verge of another anime burnout…luckily the Spring 2022 season is pretty lit. But yea dude, every person who dropped this show is absolutely right to do so, it's just lame man, very lame. This show feels like something Onision would write honestly.