Hello and welcome to Project Nitsuj. Welcome to the second part of Platinum End. Last week, we saw Mirai and the others successfully defeat the siscon Kanade. With the biggest threat gone what does this mean for the remaining candidates? Will they reach a peaceful solution who should become God? Or will someone else fill in the shoes Kanade left? Let’s find out.
Episodes 15-20
Episode 15 starts off with a good twist as we find out someone was controlling Kanade this whole time (the puppet master had a conductor. Still doesn’t take away from the fact that he’s a siscon with a God complex). Remember that kid who ran away during the Kanade fight? It was him. The kid’s name is Yuito, a middle schooler who went to the same school as Mirai, Saki and Kanade. Thanks to a tip from Balta, Yuito discovered Kanade’s identity and shot him with a red arrow completely catching him off guard and making him his bitch. Now that Kanade is dead, Yuito inherits everything Kanade had from the arrows to the secret base (and all the cool gadgets. You might want to do something about the frozen dead girl though). The next day the remaining six angels come together where some of them are concerned as none of the remaining candidates have any drive to kill to become God (probably should have thought of that before you did this whole death game which makes absolutely no sense). Yuito finally makes his move by telling the media everything about the God candidates and how he became one. He came from a normal family where he was lonely because his parents worked late and he really didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life. It turns out he became a God candidate by accident as his angel, Penma, thought he was going to commit suicide via sleeping pills (in short, he jumped the gun. Not sure if he did it on purpose or accident). At first Yuito used his new powers like everyone else to get the things he wanted but started to fear for his life when Kanade started killing people (in broad daylight in front of a packed stadium). Yuito gets to the main point and tells the world to find the remaining God candidates and bring them together so that they can decide who will be the next God. By the way, Yuito’s vote is Mirai.
So in episode 16 the world is all a buzz about the God candidates (but honestly world leaders are just scared that they could be assassinated. Yes, screw the whole God thing, the fact that angels exist, and all the other religions were wrong. My life is more important). We see along with Yuito, another God candidate named Yumi is totally okay with Mirai becoming God. Saki says they should just run away together, but Mirai wants to see this through in honor of Nanato. When school starts back up Mirai and Saki get approached by Masaya and his partner Yumiki, police officers who’ve been ordered to find the God candidates and hand them over, but Masaya refuses to do that as he believes it’s wrong. Saki shoots Yumiki with a red arrow so she’s under her control and Masaya isn’t even mad that his secret girlfriend is in love with another woman (if anything I think it secretly turns him on). Masaya brings them up to speed and tells them how every country in the world wants to use them as assassins especially Mirai. He’s the only one to have been confirmed to have a white arrow which makes him the most dangerous out of the candidates (if he wanted to he could kill us all and there’d be nothing we could do to stop him). So how did Masaya and Yumiki figure out Mirai and Saki were God candidates (no idea, never explained. Moving on)? The two candidates get taken to Masaya and Yumiki’s place for their own safety where after talking with each other agree to cooperate with them. Saki gives Yumiki wings (take that Red Bull) as well as a red arrow so that she can see the angels and they in turn show them their investigation and who they’ve identified as potential candidates. The cops have already secured Yumi and for the rest of episode Mirai helps them investigate the other suspects where their leads are a bust.
At the start of episode 17 Mirai and Saki approach Mizukiyo, a student from their school who was Kanade’s one and only friend. They believe he’s a God candidate as well and shoot him with a red arrow only to find out later he’s not a God candidate. They do however find a God candidate in the form of a young boy named Shuji who is suicidal. His angel is Ogaro the angel of darkness (doesn’t that make her an edgelord?) who gave him wings and a red arrow. Rather than use the red arrow to satisfy his own desires, Shuji used it to assist others in committing suicide (which I’m pretty sure is a crime). He’s a believer in euthanasia and believes that those who wish to commit suicide must have the strong desire to do so (you’re 13, why are you the darkest thing in this anime?). He used his red arrow to kill his grandpa who was suffering in the hospital, his dad who was depressed after his wife cheated and divorced him, his mother who felt guilty after leaving them (and you should whore) and was just about to use the arrow on his brother Osamu before Mirai and the others showed up. They convince him to stop what he’s doing, not kill himself or his brother, and continue to live so that he can give his approval of Mirai or someone else becoming God. He agrees to go with them but says that once this is all over he is going to kill himself without causing a nuisance for everyone (fair enough). Mirai, Saki, and Mizukiyo take the siblings back to Masaya and Yumiki’s place where Shuji instantly gets a crush on Yumiki (I was half expecting him to have a crush on Saki). With Shuji there’s only one more God candidate out there they have to find since Yuri is now under police protection and is in a safe house. Mirai and Saki manage to make contact with Yuito who agrees to a sit-down meeting to decide the next God. Yuri also agrees to the sit down which means all they have to do is find the final candidate. In order to lure out the final candidate they decide that the five of them will send out a message asking to meet with them peacefully (the last time someone pulled that stunt three people died).
Episode 18 opens up with Yuri escaping from the government thanks to the others. From there the episode becomes slow but still interesting as things on the surface may seem straightforward and slow, but it’s hinted that there’s more to this selection than what the angels are letting on (and I find it quite interesting. It’s obvious that each angel has their own personal goal they’re trying to achieve through their chosen candidate. What it is I can’t say, but the person they choose wasn’t at random it was on purpose. Although, I have to admit it is quite strange that all their candidates live in Japan). We finally do get to meet the final God candidate, Yoneda. A young scientist who is the youngest man to win a Nobel Prize and out of all candidates he’s probably my favorite. Unlike everyone else who accepts the situation they’re in he questions it. He questions the whole concept of angels and God. It’s interesting to see someone address this elephant in the room. While he’s not interested in becoming God he is interested in who will become God. The next day, the group exposes themselves to everyone hoping to get Yoneda’s attention, but he refuses to go. Instead he sends his angel, Muni, the angel of destruction to meet them (and out of all the angels this is the angel that is the ugliest of the bunch). As they talk, the prime minister sends the air force to capture everyone which Yoneda doesn’t like this and calls up the prime minister himself to tell him to stand down (yeah man. If they wanted to kill someone they would have done it by now).
In episode 19 Yoneda finally makes his appearance before everyone as a God candidate where he brings to light something everyone hasn’t thought about. The God that they’ve been so called to believe in is a fake God. He goes on to talk about how he himself wasn’t a believer in God but after becoming a candidate he now believes in God. However, the fake God that he’s talking about is the one created by human imagination (https://youtu.be/NaSd2d5rwPE). A collection of energy that draws power from people who believe in God. Yoneda believes that this fake God created this selection in order to gain more power to prevent itself from disappearing. Yoneda says God doesn’t exist but the others have their doubts about this statement and Mirai finally says he’ll become God in order to give those who believe in God, hope. As they talk, Yuito acts like an idiot and goes up to people pointing guns at the group where one of the gunmen panics and shoots the idiot to end the episode (oh this is going to cost us).
At the start of episode 20 Yoneda puts Yuito out of his misery and inherits his arrows and wings as everyone flies away. Shuji goes with Yoneda who starts to become somewhat of an antagonist for the series. He shoots Shuji with a red arrow and gives him a white arrow at the request of Ogoro who tells him that the special angel is Nasse. In a reveal that I didn’t think about or notice before, Nasse is the only angel that has physically touched Mirai. The other angels haven’t touched their candidate because they can’t so the fact that Nasse can do this means she has some sort of special power that she herself doesn’t know about (or she knows about it and is just playing the fool). We get to know some more about Yoneda such as how he’s a guy who wants to help humanity and doesn’t want to let them down despite the fact that he’s someone who doesn’t like interacting with people because it stresses him out. It stressed him out so much that he became a drug addict and just when he was about to OD, Buni appeared before him (and I’m sure he didn’t know whether he was staring at an angel or the grim reaper). Yoneda doesn’t care about becoming God he just wants to know what happens after death and tell the world about it to prove his theory which is the only thing that matters to him.
Episodes 21-24
Not much happens in episode 21. Yoneda uses a red arrow on the prime minister and has him make an announcement telling the other countries to stop trying to kill the other God candidates because the last one standing will become God by default (and given what we’ve seen so far you don’t want that). Yoneda prepares a place for all of them to meet and continue their conversation (before they were so rudely interrupted) which he promises to broadcast to the world. The day of the meeting comes with Masaya and Yumiki joining them as it turns out Masaya was “friends” with Yoneda in high school (granted they only spoke to each other for a total of five minutes, but that counts for something, right?). We find out Yoneda’s ultimate goal is to kill himself and the other God candidates so that nobody becomes the false God. Mirai also has a plan and it involves killing Yoneda if they can’t reach an agreement with him.
In episodes 22-23 The group arrives to talk with Yoneda where they leave to allow Yoneda and Mirai to talk alone. Their conversation is boring and is just the two talking about their ideals. Yoneda realizes that he can’t convince Mirai to join his side so he has no choice but to kill him. Shuji holds down Saki and threatens to kill her unless Mirai allows himself to be killed. Not wanting to lose Saki (you freaking hypocrite) he prepares himself to get shot only for Nasse to pull him out of the way at the last minute and that was a big mistake as she gets demoted down to a second-rank angel for interfering and violating the rules. This causes Mirai to lose his white arrow and he has to choose between a red arrow or wings. Mirai chooses to keep his red arrow which means he can’t fly by himself anymore. Back with Saki and the others they play with Shuji’s mind saying he won’t kill them because they wish to live and since killing people who don’t want to die goes against his ideals he won’t do it even if he’s ordered to do it. Yoneda gets ready to shoot at Mirai again only this time Saki saves him (stop playing with my emotions and somebody die). The others arrive where Shuji gave his white arrow to Yuri who fires at Yoneda from behind, but he gets saved by Nasse (because potatoes. Very dumb illogical potatoes). By rescuing Yoneda, Nasse gets promoted back to special rank which means Mirai gets his wings back and white arrow back. Yoneda meanwhile is in a state of shock that he was saved by an angel not once but twice and after more pointless dialogue admits defeat and decides to kill himself but Shuji doesn’t want that and says he’ll become God to confirm his theory. The others have no problems with this and thus Shuji becomes God (we just let an emo kid become God. It’s like a tumblr fanfic without the pregnancy and Evangelion symbolism). Shuji erases the memories of the God selection from the world (Thank Shuji, the less I know the better) and everyone decides to keep their memories except for Yuri who wants to forget this whole experience and live the good life (shallow until the end). Shuji then heads off to Heaven where he gets infected by the creature while the others head home.
In the final episode Shuji can feel the creature infecting his body and mind (scene here: https://youtu.be/GNlocweb5R0?si=kXWuRfqJK0dIfNNI). In time Shuji and the creature will merge as one. The creature gets revealed to be God who doesn’t know if he came first or if he was born into existence by humans after they were born. Back on Earth, things have returned to normal. Yoneda got to keep a red arrow and spends his time studying it with Yuri as his assistant who he uses as a guinea pig. Mirai and Saki are dating and eventually get married as the years go by. Back in Heaven, Shuji has his Evangelion level of discussion with God until he kills himself (you turned an emo kid who was suicidal into God, what did you think was going to happen? I’m surprised he waited this long to kill himself). With God dead so is humanity and everyone begins to vanish ending the anime on a WTF Evangelion ending (scene here: https://youtu.be/QnvNLCOcbnA?si=9jaZRmQ9uLy5dUwW).
Final Thoughts
And that was Platinum End. What the hell? This anime really is all over the place. I really do feel like the anime lost a lot of its steam after Kanade died. I didn’t want him to win but he made things interesting. Once he was gone the anime just wasn’t as entertaining as it was before and I found myself speed watching the remaining episodes not really getting invested in the characters or caring about who won at the end. We got scientific thoughts about life, Mirai being a hypocrite, angels not making any sense, and it’s all boring. How is a battle to become God so boring? I also wish all the candidates had their own special powers. The white and red arrows run their course very quickly and what was up with that ending? I haven’t seen an ending this out of nowhere since the End of Evangelion. I honestly don’t know which one is more bonkers. Anno has an excuse because he had a mental breakdown, but what was Ohba’s excuse: I wrote myself into a corner and decided to go out in a blaze of WTF? This is no different than Death Note’s ending.
The animation is nothing special and the music can sound grand and epic when it wants to be, but honestly it doesn’t feel warranted for the most part. The fighting is also lackluster as it always comes down to people just firing arrows at each other. The fact that nobody is rarely on equal footing makes the fights predictable and even when they are on equal footing it’s just boring and predictable. Again, I wish the angels gave their candidates special powers instead of just giving them all the same arrows.
Final Score
The final score for Platinum End is a 3/10. It had a decent first half but lost all of its momentum and suspense with Kanade dying and giving us an empty second half where you don’t care what happens next. I’m not sure if the manga is better or the same but check it out if you want. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time on Project Nitsuj.