What is this?
Protagonist Mirai Kakehashi is a boy unable to find the hope to live. On the day of his junior high graduation ceremony, while his classmates are taking part in the festivities, he's alone. But his battle is just beginning when he receives some salvation from above in the form of an angel. Now Mirai is pitted against 12 other chosen humans in a battle in which the winner becomes the next god of the world. Mirai has an angel in his corner, but he may need to become a devil to survive.
Platinum End is based on Takeshi Obata and Tsugumi Ohba's manga and streams on Crunchyroll and Funimation on Thursdays.
How was the first episode?
Caitlin MooreRating:
As I watched Platinum End, I couldn't help but think of Bakuman., the second manga by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, the writer/artist team behind the hit manga Death Note. There was a profound anxiety in it about being a one-hit wonder, creating a single hit series and then failing to create a single thing audiences wanted to read ever again. While Ohba/Obata have clearly managed to avoid being one-hit wonders, it still seems that they only ever had one idea, because Platinum End looks to be a pointlessly edgy rehash of Death Note, with a few inverted elements. Instead of the arrogant Light Yagami being approached by a shinigami, Mirai is rescued by an angel when he jumps off a building. Both are offered absurdly powerful divine abilities, and end up pulled into murder games of cat-and-mouse.
Here's the thing: I've never liked Ohba/Obata. I wasn't pulled into the Death Note mania in high school (oh dear, I've dated myself), and I consider Bakuman. a dreary slog full of walls of text, self-congratulatory back-patting, and raging misogyny. And so, it is utterly hilarious to me that Platinum End is a creatively stagnant, 4-edgy-5-u piece of ephemera showing that those two never outgrew the 00's emo sensibilities. It's bad.
There are actually some decent moments. Wait, no. There's one decent moment: when Nasse grants Mirai the power of flight, calling it freedom. It's sentimental, but I felt a twinge as Mirai, who has been abused for much of his life, soars over the clouds and his eyes widen at the sight of the sunset from so high up. Able to travel faster than the human eye can detect, he flies to Ireland and South America, taking a break atop an Aztec pyramid. I admit I'm pretty easily taken in by these things, but what can I say? It worked for me.
But then the episode keeps going, leaning straight into bullshit philosophy about how if devils exist, it is only in the heart of man and other varieties of edgy nihilism. It's weird that his second power is to make people fall obsessively in love with him; straight-up mind control would be easier to implement and carry way less baggage. He makes his aunt fall in love with him to learn the truth of what happened to his family and little brother, and then she kills herself out of guilt with a knife. Blood sprays all over the room, and the camera luridly zooms in first on her barely-clad butt and then her corpse's agony-contorted face. Which it goes back to several more times. I didn't count but it was at least five. Oh, and Mirai implies that stealing a 150-yen melon bread is comparable to blowing up a family for the sake of murder. It's ridiculous.
I willingly and gleefully spoiled myself on the ending of Platinum End ages ago, so I know that it's only downhill from here. It's pointless, edgy nihilism all the way down, and its only redeeming feature is how ludicrous it is
Richard EisenbeisRating:
Platinum End leans hard into the tragedy that is Mirai's life in this opening episode. It startswith his attempted suicide and has numerous flashbacks to the terrible treatment he has received growingup. While this can seem a bit heavy-handed, it's important to get us on Mirai's side asquickly as possibleideally while making us despise his aunt and uncle in the process. Ifwe're not by the time he inadvertently makes his aunt kill herself, he comes off as amonster instead of a victim.
It helps that, despite being beaten down, Mirai has retained a moral codesomething heclings to even after getting his own personal angel. He is never really tempted by his newfound power; all hereally wants for his future is a normal lifeand he isn't willing to kill orsteal to get it. A normal life is also Mirai's answer to Platinum End's big philosophicalquestion: What is happiness?
Of course, his is far from the only possible answer to the question. By the time the creditsroll, we see glimpses of two other answers. For one, happiness is extreme self-indulgence.For the other, happiness means dishing out justice as a superhero. I suspect that we'll get a total of 13 answers overthe course of this series, and I look forward toseeing how these ideals conflict with one anotherlikely with lethal results.
But more than Mirai's tragic past and the anime's philosophical musings, the thing I enjoyedmost about this first episode of Platinum End' is our guardian angel, Nasse. WhileNasse seems bright, cheerful, and innocent on the surface and has a humanoid shape, she is a beingfundamentally different from humans. She doesn't seem to be driven by human morality, nor does she have any empathy for humans in general; mind-controlling them or watching them die in horrible ways doesn't even faze her.
In fact, I doubt she experiences or understands human emotions as we understand them in the first place. She has little idea on how to help Mirai attain happiness because she doesn't feelhappiness as he does. She can only guess at what might make a human happy from acomplete outsider's perspective, such as money or the deaths of those that bring unhappiness. Heralien nature makes her a terrifying creatureand one I can't wait to see more of as theseries continues.
James BeckettRating:
A part of me can't help but appreciate shows like Platinum End, which are completely unwilling tocompromise their commitment to a deeply stupid and silly artistic vision. Not only is it chock-full ofneedlessly convoluted mythology and steeped in a deeply cynical worldview, it's also unbelievably,embarrassingly earnest. Despite having roughly the same understanding of genuine human sufferingthat you'd find in the fanfiction of any teenaged edgelord that just got his parents' permission to watchTarantino movies without adult supervision, Platinum End seems confident that it actually hassomething meaningful to say about the nature of good and evil, and what it means to seek happiness inthe world.
This, by the way, is a show that centers around Mirai, a suicidal guy who is rescued from self-annihilation by a naked, sociopathic angel named Nasse, who grants him a bunch of stupid, angel-themedsuperpowers that give him the ability to fly, control peoples' minds, and kill people instantly. Not onlydoes Nasse want Mirai to exploit these powers for his own personal gain as an act of vengeance on thepeople who enabled his suffering for so long, she also presumably expects him to survive the upcomingwar between all of the other weirdos with angel powers. There's a contest to see who gets to becomeGod, you see, and it will doubtless be settled with gallons upon gallons of weird, kinky bloodshed.
That's right, folks: For all of Platinum End's attempts to flail vaguely in the general direction of humanemotions, it's really just a reskinned Future Diary. Also, for all of the criticisms you could easily throw atFuture Diary's, I at least recall that show making an attempt at being stylish. Takeshi Obata has neverbeen my favorite artist, but even a casual Googling of the Platinum End manga gives me the impressionthat the source material might have something going for it, visually speaking. This? This is just theanimated equivalent of plain, room-temperature mashed potatoes. Nasse is the most underwhelmingangelic figure I can recall from recent memory, since her janky-looking ass-cheeks are maybe the singlenotable thing about her design.
The scenes of Mirai flying with his goofy wings are the closest the episode comes to demonstratinggenuine effortand then it all devolves into clich bursts of juvenile ultraviolence, and it's all just sotiring. In worse moods, I might have found Platinum End to be off-putting and crass, but right now theonly response I can muster up is boredom. If something truly, truly outrageous happens that's worthy ofa check-in, feel free to let me know on Twitter. Otherwise, I'll be glad to sit this particular death gameout.
Nicholas DupreeRating:
This one's a show I'd been anticipating for all the wrong reasons. While I've not read all of the original manga, what I have read assured me that whatever entertaining story or character ideas Takeshi Obata and Tsugumi Ohba utilized in Death Note and Bakuman. had completely dried up. So when it was announced that their latest series was getting a full anime adaptation, I was ready to break out the popcorn and watch this awkward, flaming wreck of exposition and edge (edgeposition?) flop on the ground for six months. And so far my expectations have been met with flying colors.
Make no mistake, Platinum End is a mess, almost from the word go. This first episode is a five-car pileup of exposition, racing through our jaded, miserable hero's suicide, rescue, bloody epiphany, and drafting into the battle for godhood in the span of a single half-hour. There's no time for anything like character building, or giving our lead and his angel sidekick discernible personalities or goals. Not when we have to clumsily introduce all our supernatural concepts in one go, before diving into a schlock-tastic attempt at shock violence, all interspersed with incredibly rote philosophizing about how maybe...the real devils are humans. Death Note ended up having a lot less to say about the concept of justice than it first insisted, but it at least had strongly characterized leads and an engaging cat-and-mouse game to play with. But here all the robotic musing about the nature of humanity as good or evil is so aimless it almost feels like parody, being delivered apropos of nothing in many places that turn statements about our collective capacity for good or evil into non-sequiturs. Which is just about perfect for irony watching.
If there's any issue with that idea though, it's in the direction and overall production of this adaptation. While this episode does more or less fine in approximating Obata's character designs in close-up, any distance shots quickly leave them as formless mannequins. More distressingly, the direction just doesn't feel like it has a grasp of the material's tone. That's understandable the actual writing for Platinum End is a mess of ideas being delivered with blunt force impact via info dumps, and its attempts at character drama are incredibly clich. But I can't help imagining a version of this in line with the infamous potato chip line from Death Note, cranking up the already ludicrous drama into a nearly biblical level of cheese in a way that's nearly transcendent. Sadly that's not the case, and if the show can't make the source material's bone-dry exposition any more engaging, then even watching to laugh at this show will likely lose its appeal quickly.
For now though, this is looking like just the kind of dumpster fire I like to watch burn. Though if you're looking for an actually interesting or compelling death game? Look elsewhere. You're honestly more likely to get something worthwhile out of The Future Diary than you are here.
More:
Platinum End - The Fall 2021 Preview Guide - Anime News Network
- Voices: Working-class men like Steve Wright don't go to the doctor and that's exactly the problem... - Yahoo News UK - February 16th, 2024 [February 16th, 2024]
- "Superman Defeats Nihilism": Grant Morrison Loved an Obscure Alan Moore Story So Much They Almost Remixed It - Screen Rant - February 16th, 2024 [February 16th, 2024]
- The rise of stay-at-home girlfriends - UnHerd - November 26th, 2023 [November 26th, 2023]
- 'Fargo' Recap, Season 5, Episode 2: Trials and Tribulations - Vulture - November 26th, 2023 [November 26th, 2023]
- What's the matter with Russia? - The Hub - November 26th, 2023 [November 26th, 2023]
- The Killer: The unintentional comedy of the year? - EL PAS USA - November 26th, 2023 [November 26th, 2023]
- Eli Roth's Thanksgiving Keeps A Disappointing 2023 Slasher Trend ... - Screen Rant - November 26th, 2023 [November 26th, 2023]
- Bobby McDonagh: The Rule of Law matters more than ever when ... - TheJournal.ie - November 26th, 2023 [November 26th, 2023]
- A 2023 gift guide: 10 ideas for the music lover in your life - 25 News KXXV and KRHD - November 26th, 2023 [November 26th, 2023]
- Ten Great Sci-fi TV Shows that Promote Reason and Individualism - The Objective Standard - November 26th, 2023 [November 26th, 2023]
- Jonathan Sacks: Are Science and Religion Enemies? - The Collector - November 26th, 2023 [November 26th, 2023]
- An open letter to all of my progressive friends - New York Daily News - November 26th, 2023 [November 26th, 2023]
- The Two Tragedies of November 22nd - The American Conservative - November 26th, 2023 [November 26th, 2023]
- Speculating on the ceasefire moment in Gaza - rabble.ca - November 26th, 2023 [November 26th, 2023]
- In Defense of Stigma - The Stream - November 26th, 2023 [November 26th, 2023]
- Pro-lockdown obsessives still long to be told what to do - Yahoo Eurosport UK - November 26th, 2023 [November 26th, 2023]
- 8 signs you're a mentally strong person (even if you don't think so) - Hack Spirit - November 26th, 2023 [November 26th, 2023]
- Trump Gets Fined in Court but Wins in the House - The New Yorker - October 29th, 2023 [October 29th, 2023]
- The challenges to democracy [letter] | Letters To The Editor ... - LNP | LancasterOnline - October 29th, 2023 [October 29th, 2023]
- Standing against the insidious spread of euthanasia | News, Sports ... - The Daily Times - October 29th, 2023 [October 29th, 2023]
- A large chunk of Republicans are quite set on voting for the face ... - Daily Kos - October 29th, 2023 [October 29th, 2023]
- Israel's civic strength in response to the Hamas attacks should stiffen ... - The Hub - October 29th, 2023 [October 29th, 2023]
- No Time to Go Wobbly on Russia - Center for European Policy Analysis - October 29th, 2023 [October 29th, 2023]
- Blinken to Security Council: Where's the revulsion over Hamas attacks - The Times of Israel - October 29th, 2023 [October 29th, 2023]
- Opinion | In Israel and Gaza, Searching for Humanity - The New York Times - October 29th, 2023 [October 29th, 2023]
- Donald Trump to testify in NY AG Case - Daily Kos - October 29th, 2023 [October 29th, 2023]
- Thom Nickels: Demonic nihilism? It's not just on the streets. - Broad + Liberty - August 18th, 2023 [August 18th, 2023]
- Reflections on the Revolution in America | Pavlos Leonidas ... - First Things - August 18th, 2023 [August 18th, 2023]
- Why It's Always Raining In The Movie Se7en: David Fincher's ... - Screen Rant - August 18th, 2023 [August 18th, 2023]
- Poetic Time In The Age Of Acceleration - Noema Magazine - August 18th, 2023 [August 18th, 2023]
- Review: Zilched releases her best work yet in 'Earthly Delights' - WDET - August 18th, 2023 [August 18th, 2023]
- Phoebe Bridgers thinks we confuse sadness with intelligence: Listen ... - Audacy - August 18th, 2023 [August 18th, 2023]
- Called to be a man in Christ, not a Nietzschean superman - Catholic World Report - August 18th, 2023 [August 18th, 2023]
- Why The Last Voyage of the Demeter Sank at the Box Office - MovieWeb - August 18th, 2023 [August 18th, 2023]
- Forget GTA 6 and Red Dead Redemption, I want Manhunt 3 - PCGamesN - August 18th, 2023 [August 18th, 2023]
- Gabriel Krauze: raw writing from the streets of London - RNZ - August 18th, 2023 [August 18th, 2023]
- The Ideal Man According to 7 Different Philosophers - Art of Manliness - August 18th, 2023 [August 18th, 2023]
- Review: In How to Blow Up a Pipeline, nihilism is optimism - Detroit Metro Times - April 29th, 2023 [April 29th, 2023]
- Beaten To Death Review: Disturbing Australian Horror Lives Up To Its Title [Panic Fest 2023] - Dread Central - April 29th, 2023 [April 29th, 2023]
- David Brooks: Joe Biden and the 'battle for the soul of America' l - Baltimore Sun - April 29th, 2023 [April 29th, 2023]
- Ram Jams: Fall Out Boy, New Album and Era - Fordham Observer - April 29th, 2023 [April 29th, 2023]
- Tucker Carlson Is the Emblem of GOP Cynicism - The Atlantic - April 29th, 2023 [April 29th, 2023]
- One Night in Washington, D.C., With George Santos - The Intercept - April 29th, 2023 [April 29th, 2023]
- Reddit study finds interesting facts about typical Blue Jays fans - Jays Journal - April 29th, 2023 [April 29th, 2023]
- Yale Professor Breaks Down Years of Violent Conflict Between ... - The Greyhound - April 29th, 2023 [April 29th, 2023]
- Nietzsche, Friedrich | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy - January 6th, 2023 [January 6th, 2023]
- 30 Religious Terms You Should Know - Daily Writing Tips - January 6th, 2023 [January 6th, 2023]
- The Difference Between Existentialism, Nihilism, and Absurdism - January 6th, 2023 [January 6th, 2023]
- Philosophical skepticism - Wikipedia - January 4th, 2023 [January 4th, 2023]
- Simon Critchley - Wikipedia - January 4th, 2023 [January 4th, 2023]
- 'World is Crumbling. An Email Doesn't Matter': 2022 Was the Year of Nihilism. How Do We Move On? - News18 - December 23rd, 2022 [December 23rd, 2022]
- Moscow accuses West of legal nihilism RT Russia & Former Soviet Union - December 12th, 2022 [December 12th, 2022]
- Wordsworths Challenge to Darwinian Nihilism | Evolution News - December 12th, 2022 [December 12th, 2022]
- I Fear My Pain Interests You by Stephanie LaCava review numb nihilism ... - November 19th, 2022 [November 19th, 2022]
- Editorial: In the Face of Climate Nihilism, What Can One Do to Not Lose All Hope? | Opinions - The Link - October 8th, 2022 [October 8th, 2022]
- Cardinal Mller Reasserts the Dangers of Nihilism The European Conservative - The European Conservative - October 8th, 2022 [October 8th, 2022]
- The Midnight Club Is a Teen Horror Show Thats Actually Scary: TV Review - Yahoo Entertainment - October 8th, 2022 [October 8th, 2022]
- Hiltzik: GOP cruelty counts on the humanity of others - Los Angeles Times - October 8th, 2022 [October 8th, 2022]
- Screen Grabs: A revisionist Western that still shines bright - 48 hills - 48 Hills - October 8th, 2022 [October 8th, 2022]
- Russian Roulette: How Ukraine Can Win the Game (Part 1) - Kyiv Post - October 8th, 2022 [October 8th, 2022]
- What 20 Years of Putin's Own Words Tell Us About Russia's Subversion of International Law - JURIST - October 8th, 2022 [October 8th, 2022]
- 'Triangle of Sadness' Review: Hazardous Levels of Smug - Vulture - October 8th, 2022 [October 8th, 2022]
- In China, Only the Party Tells History - Foreign Policy - September 29th, 2022 [September 29th, 2022]
- The Infinite Nihilistic Jest of Brian Ennals and Infinity Knives - Yahoo Entertainment - September 29th, 2022 [September 29th, 2022]
- No Laughing Matter: Bodies Bodies Bodies Is Too Cynical to Be Much Fun - Erie Reader - September 29th, 2022 [September 29th, 2022]
- Oliver Jeffers Gets Perspective With Meanwhile Back on Earth - TIME - September 29th, 2022 [September 29th, 2022]
- Talkin' About My Generation: How Boomers Became Deaf, Dumb, and Blind To The Inspiration and Innovation of Rock and Roll - MetalTalk - September 29th, 2022 [September 29th, 2022]
- 'Cult of the Lamb' and the bleating heart of nihilism - Catholic News Service - September 22nd, 2022 [September 22nd, 2022]
- The Infinite Nihilistic Jest of Brian Ennals and Infinity Knives - Spin - September 22nd, 2022 [September 22nd, 2022]
- This cosmic horror game will force you to trust characters to survive - Polygon - September 22nd, 2022 [September 22nd, 2022]
- Belief in God can help us find a purpose in life that we are currently lacking - David J Nixon - The Scotsman - September 22nd, 2022 [September 22nd, 2022]
- "Date Night" by White Lung - Northern Transmissions - September 22nd, 2022 [September 22nd, 2022]
- Lyrically Speaking: What is Bob Dylans All Along the Watchtower actually about? - Far Out Magazine - September 22nd, 2022 [September 22nd, 2022]
- Pinocchio (2022): Disney wished on another wrong star - Campus Times - September 22nd, 2022 [September 22nd, 2022]
- The Complicated Legacy Of 'Rick And Morty' - The Federalist - September 22nd, 2022 [September 22nd, 2022]
- "Soul and Things" - Baltimore Beat - September 22nd, 2022 [September 22nd, 2022]
- Ukraine Holds the Future: The War Between Democracy and Nihilism - Foreign Affairs Magazine - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- Hedgerow Theatre Company Dives Into The Darkness With Martin McDonagh's THE PILLOWMAN, October 5-31 - Broadway World - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- The skate punk brats of the '90s are back to ruin our lives again - Cult MTL - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- Kurt Russell's Best Movie Was A Critical And Box Office Disaster - Giant Freakin Robot - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]