This Week in Anime

Where Did Platinum End Go Wrong?

Steve
Nick, I'd like to begin with an apology. I know you were probably already prepared to bid your farewells to this show until the day unto dust we shall all return, but here I am exhuming its freshly worm-infested corpse for one final shellacking. All because I needed to know how bad Platinum End's second half had to be for the ANN community to consistently rank it lower than the softcore harem porn starring a guy who refused to have a harem.

If you need a refresher, we had the privilege of covering the first half at the end of last season, so you can catch up with that (https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/this-week-in-anime/2022-01-04/.181189). Or don't! Because nothing that happened there mattered, and this second part does a dogged job trying to do one worse.

That's true. Let's all pour one out for God's strongest warrior.

I, for one, am shocked that a series with this particular pedigree would kill off a major antagonist midway through the series.

Sure do hate it when I "accidentally kill" my imouto because she started talking about boys. Also I look like this the whole time. I'm the victim here.

Here's to you and your normal one, Kanade.

That's the thing, right? And he actually has a discernable motivation, which puts him leagues beyond any of our protagonists. And, for as much shit as I have given and will give Platinum End, I'm really tickled by the fact that they made the evil siscon guy a libertarian. You know Kanade has memorized the age of consent in every country. It all fits together so well.

Look, just because there are glowing people with wings and halos and magic arrows doesn't NECESSARILY mean God exists. I mean, would a loving God have just stood there silently in the sky while one of his chosen children got turned into Swiss cheese?

Actually, considering everything we just mentioned about Kanade, yeah probably.

I don't! I wish we got more of that! At least it isn't boring, and it taps into the ultraviolent tasteless excess that helped make Death Note so damn entertaining. Platinum End's direction still sadly doesn't hold a candle to Tetsuro Araki's over-the-top eye, but indulgences like Kanade's complete disintegration at least scratch at the door.

The debate settings also get more and more drab. At one point half the cast is cooped up in a chrome underground bunker.

Also this series fucking loves holding confrontations in empty sports stadiums.

We do definitely have to lay blame on the story too, which somehow takes the first half's philosophical stiffness and regresses into a full rigor mortis of 101-level diatribes about ontology and free will.

I do kinda adore this kid, though that may just be me sympathizing with any character who wants out of this story.

But you're right, it's a Reddit thread of an anime. And I'll tell you who's not winning any arguments: our hero.

That's not even his plan. He's just going along with Nasse's suggestion. Mirai lacks enough of a conviction about anything to have "plans." He's a cipher devoid of thought or personality, beyond a vague sense that he should disagree with certain people because they happen to be the current antagonist.

A romance for the ages. Positively smoldering.

I was HOWLING at that part. My dude has a Pentium II processor up there. It's the best he can do. I also really love this still from the beginning of that scene, because it's one of the most nonfunctional shots I've ever seen. Impossible to distinguish, nothing being accomplished, featuring two characters who may as well fade into the background.

When you put it like that, I guess I can't be too harsh on them. Saki also makes it out better than any other woman on the show, possibly due to the same fact that Ohba forgot to give her a personality. We have a convenient counterexample with Yuri, who's basically just a greedy one-dimensional butt of jokes.

It's funny, cutting that specific rant out and leaving us with just the story's casual misogyny only ends up making Yuri one of the most likeable characters on the show. Certainly the most relatable.

Come on, Nick, we all know that there's never been a single example in all of history where providing people with additional support and welfare made their lives demonstrably and immediately better. Let's hear what an actual smart person has to say about all this.

Dude gets handed an essay assignment and scribbles "I dunno" before handing it back to the teacher. I respect the honesty. He still gets an F.

Yoneda really drags the whole show down into the mud. And it has less to do with the dude's ideas or ethics and a lot to do with the fact that he just will not shut the fuck up.

I didn't even think about that! Absolutely miserable. He's also, for me, an anime personification of an uncomfortable reminder of my collegiate militant atheist phase. Like, yeah dude, I get it. I read Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris too. You're not special.

Turns out it's easy to win a debate when you just pull numbers out of your ass and nobody there has enough of a brain to question them.

Source: dude just trust me.

Also I hope you're paying attention to that totally real statistic, because it's the ONLY THING in the show that spurs Mirai to actually hold something resembling determination.

And beyond the cringe misanthropy of that, you'd think a story like this, however poorly conceived or written, would be chomping at the bit to finally, in its climactic arc, address some fundamental questions about the concepts of God and religion. How have they helped mankind? How have they hurt mankind? Is it a net good or evil? Does it even matter, in the long run? But no, Platinum End just flattens the debate to "7 million people will kill themselves if nobody becomes God." That's the only thing taken in consideration going into the climax.

It's okay. Mirai finally grew some gonads so he's definitely going to put the needs of the greater goo—

This kid sucks so bad.

Which is a big no-no, so God personally punishes Nasse by demoting her a couple ranks.

A little late for the series to start exploring these kinds of consequences for its supernatural cast members, but at least that raises the stakes a bi—

Oh COME ON

It's just one more grain of sand in a desert of irrelevance. Platinum End, front to back, is utterly bereft of anything that matters, and given the way the series ends, I can only conclude that this is intentional.

I mean I wouldn't go so far as to use the word "trying," because everything in the last episode is insultingly lazy. It's one big "gotcha" for every single character and, by extension, the audience. Posturing as deep but as flimsy as a paper tiger.

Also God kills himself lol.

I guess when you're an effectively omnipotent being you have nothing better to do than come up with weird metaphors about fruit.

Or you've got THIS. Which honestly would be cute in a completely different series that treated both of these characters better. And that's how much I have to stretch to say something nice here.

So here's the thrust of the ending if you don't want to watch it yourself (and you don't). God killing himself causes all life on Earth to disappear, because God created life. However, God himself was created by more advanced beings, who have seeded various Gods on planets like Earth to see if they can grow a creature capable of killing them. Because those advanced beings are immortal, and they also don't know who created them, and it sucks, and they want to die. Everything sucks. Yoneda was wrong. Mirai was wrong. Nothing matters. Fuck you.

It's the final rusty nail in the show's coffin. It's the perfect emblem of its turgid nihilism. And it sorta helps a lot make sense in retrospect: its hero had no convictions, because Platinum End had none. All it had was contempt for itself and for its audience. It is, admittedly, a little fascinating in that regard, but not nearly enough to justify its own vacuous existence.

Yeah, ultimately, I can't pretend to know what was going on in its creators' minds, but from its opening death game dirge all the way to its intellectual forfeit of an ending, it just seems to resent its own existence. What a bizarre way to be.

I've got just the answer for you: