Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Platinum End
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jdnation
Posts: 1998 |
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Still haven't watched the recent final 2 episodes, but I did finally read the final manga volume.
Commenting on the anime so far, despite the issues with the source material, I feel the overall direction and production of the anime still did a disservice to what could've been at least entertaining. There are moments in the manga that are totally 'Jojo's' level of exaggeration, especially with Yoneda counting numbers etc. that should've been directed with Jojo style, but instead we get a really ho-hum depiction. So a more over-the-top style could've helped the show, but that'd take effort, and probably even the studio didn't want to devote the resources to this story, but then why make it at all other than the most easy cash-in on creator clout? Ditto for the time when our main lead answered "I would do nothing" to the question of what he'd do if he were to become god. There is an important significance to this answer that should weigh more heavily on the mind of the reader/viewer, but the anime directs this is the most deadpan get-it-over-with manner... There was no salvaging the story considering the source material, but they could've had something entertaining with maybe a more loose OVA adaptation with better production values. Ultimately, Platinum End seems like a similar theme to the ending of the Death Note manga (The anime softened it a bit). The writer is obviously atheist/agnostic and seems to want to explore this topic of death and the afterlife and the value of life, but doesn't seem to really grasp the wealth of information and philosophy out there and also wants to invent their own universe to do it in too so there can be fun manga battles. This is no impossible, but given that like with Death Note, it seems the creator was making it up as they go, what eventually worked for Death Note, didn't seem to work out for Platinum End. It's not that the ending concept itself is bad, but it doesn't pull together nor leave anyone satisfied, and feels really abrupt, and even the character traits of some of the angels are not well foreshadowed. Overall, it's not a good show. The manga is better if you had to choose which version to digest if you really wanted to. It starts out rather fun and intriguing, but I think it would've been better served as a simple entertaining superficial but fun battle royale shonen story rather than attempting to dig deeper into the philosophy of any of its themes. Just defeat the competition, get the girl and end happily, or tragically, but in a way that at least satisfies. Perhaps the issue was that the writer created a problem by limiting the candidates to only attempted suicide participants. These would then have to be developed on and that gets into both tricky and limited territory in terms of characterizations where some just feel unjustified or poorly explored. Could've been better if that pool of candidates was expanded to include just generally unhappy people who had a bone to pick with the state of the world that aren't all suicidal but might actually care enough to focus on what they feel the problems of the world are, whether poverty or politics or war or just bullying etc. So Platinum End, by limiting this to just extreme cases of suicides tripped right out the starting gate. |
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Zhou-BR
Posts: 1422 |
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I agree with the post above. The source material is disappointing and often problematic despite some interesting ideas, but it could have still gotten a much more entertaining and effective adaptation by a director willing to go for an over-the-top tone, even veering into camp if necessary. Even that nihilistic troll ending could have worked somehow.
As for the last paragraph, I believe Ohba only came up with the idea of making all God candidates suicidal as an excuse to make them all Japanese, thus keeping the God selection process from causing a world war, but yeah, it did make for a rather narrow array of personalities to work with. |
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MaxSouth
Posts: 1363 |
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The review of the finale mention's Future Diary, but its author's newest manga Big Order has also turned into a failure about as disastrous as this one, judging from the community score.
This shows just having great ideas like Death Note or Future Diary do not made their creators great in general. There is a lot of luck/jackpot in their success, even though without their work and talent, obviously, not even infinite amount of luck would help, so this truism does not negate their deserved success works, even though with those specific works, only. |
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