Platinum End

Episode 17

Content Warning: This review involves lengthy discussion about suicide. I promise to do my best to be sensitive about the topic, but reader discretion is heavily advised.

I don't really have a way to accurately communicate my reaction to this episode through text. If I had the time I'd try making a recording of an exasperated sigh, then slow it down until that defeated exhalation spans 20 minutes. But at the moment the only real option I have is to try to explain why this episode sucks so hard, even by the incredibly low standards of this show.

This has never been a good or smart or sensitive show, but it's mostly skated by in terms of anything offensive, by virtue of being too incompetent to care about. There's been plenty of things in this show that I could have harped on for being horrifically insensitive. The incredibly gross and exploitative way the only queer character is portrayed comes to mind. But focusing on any of that window dressing felt like kicking turds at the base of the shit mountain that was this story's main plot. But now, with Metropoliman out of the way and no clear villain left to spur things on, the most insulting parts of Platinum End are taking center stage, and the result is one of the surreal and insulting episodes of television I can remember.

The topic of suicide has been baked into this show since its beginning, but it's rarely been the actual focus. Yes, every character was chosen when they were on the brink of taking their own lives, but it's only ever served as cheap and fast backstory. That's already mildly crummy – suicide is an incredibly sensitive, personal topic, and turning that all into cheap drama for paper-thin character motivations sucks, but it's by no means a creative decision unique to Platinum End. On top of that, you have the explanation for why all the God Candidates have to have been suicidal and from Japan: because apparently, in the eyes of God, Japan having a high suicide rate despite a relatively high quality of life, means that the people who want to die must want to change the world the most. Implying any suicidal people in poorer countries...just don't? I guess? It's stupid as hell justification for what's ultimately narrative convenience: it's just easier to tell this story if all the characters speak the same language and live in the same city. But this show is too stubborn to admit that, so we get a poorly considered hand wave instead.

Again, I largely overlooked that because it wasn't pertinent to what this show is trying to accomplish, and I'm trying to at least have some good faith for these reviews. But with the introduction of Shuji to the cast, I now have to grapple with the myriad insulting and insensitive ways this narrative and its characters engage with the concept of suicide. And not “just” suicide, but youth suicide, with some euthenasia on top to really finish off this shit sundae of a storyline. Not only are three of our thirteen formerly-suicidal Candidates children, but now we have one of them who is solely, totally defined by his desired to take his own life and facilitate others doing the same. I'm not exaggerating either. Every single conversation this kid has revolves around how he wants to kill himself, how he should be allowed to because it's not illegal, and the only way to stop him from doing so at any moment is if our cast of blankfaced ciphers can continually convince him with facts and logic that he shouldn't.

It's a miserable experience, and I'm still struggling to articulate exactly why. A big part of it is that this is a topic that is viscerally difficult to talk about cogently, because it is such a dark, difficult, and personal matter. So seeing this show, which can't even cobble together a coherent answer for why killing other people is wrong, having a Reddit-level argument about it is just uncanny. There is no warmth, no discernible humanity in any of the reasons the cast give for Shuji to keep living. Mirai says it's wrong, and bad, and people should want to live, which is the most comprehensive argument he's come up with for anything, and it still sucks eggs. Saki says nothing, basically being present so Revel can explain things to the group. As you can imagine, this duo doesn't exactly inspire Shuji to keep living.

But you know who does? Metropoliman's asshole friend, Minamikawa, who likes creeping on middle school girls. Remember him? Through a terribly contrived series of misunderstandings he gets roped into Mirai's search for the God candidates, and manages to stir Shuji's heart by explaining how Metropoliman was an awful monster who probably hated his guts, but man he was still kind of nice sometimes, so now the guy's real sad that he's dead. So if somebody could be sad about that piece of garbage's death, why, who's to say some hypothetical stranger might not be mildly sad about Shuji's death? To say that's not a compelling or emotionally effecting point would be to call Antarctica a bit chilly. Yet somehow it's the first thing that sticks to Shuji, allowing them to convince him that killing himself would be bad because – and I'm not being facetious here – it would be inconvenient to other people.

This plot point was doomed from the start. There was never any hope that this show would somehow turn it around and manage to cover a topic this sensitive with any level of nuance or emotional complexity. Countless people who have lost a loved one to suicide know how unlikely it is to simply talk somebody out of a depressive death spiral. Platinum End was not going to be the show to somehow crack the fucking code for suicide prevention. But it's still amazing how nearly every single choice this episode makes is the wrong one. It's miserable in a way I still don't fully know how to articulate, and has well and truly obliterated any good will I tried to preserve for this mess.

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Platinum End is currently streaming on Crunchyroll and Funimation.