Platinum End (Japanese: プラチナエンド, Hepburn: Purachina Endo) is a Japanese manga series written by Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata. It was serialized in Shueisha's Jump Square monthly magazine from November 2015 to January 2021. The series follows Mirai Kakehashi, a student who attempts suicide but is rescued by his guardian angel, Nasse, who not only has vowed to protect him, but bestows him special powers as he is also one of 13 candidates chosen by different angels to take the role of God, who is to retire in 999 days. Platinum End is licensed by Viz Media in North America. An anime television series adaptation by Signal.MD is set to premiere in October 2021.
Mirai Kakehashi is a young student fed up with a life of abuse from his uncle and aunt who raised him since his parents' death, but is saved by a Guardian Angel called Nasse after attempting to commit suicide. Upon learning from Nasse that his foster parents were responsible for the deaths of his father and mother, Mirai uses the powers she bestowed him in order to confront them and enact justice. However, Mirai's ordeals are just beginning as Nasse soon after informs him that God will retire in 999 days and thirteen candidates to replace him were selected including Mirai himself. To make matters worse, not only can Mirai not refuse to take part in the contest to decide the next God, but among the other candidates there are those capable of anything to win, including killing all the Competitors as soon as possible.
Characters[]
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He was raised by his abusive uncle and aunt after his family were killed in a car crash. The abuse he endured resulted in him trying to commit suicide by throwing himself from a tower block, but he is saved by Nasse. Using the arrows he discovers that his uncle and aunt murdered his family, he accidentally kills his aunt and then makes his uncle turn himself in. Upon learning of Metropoliman's plans, Mirai joins forces with Saki and Nanato to stop him, not only to protect themselves, but to prevent him from becoming God as well.
Mirai's angel. All angels bestow special abilities on their hosts and based on their rank, the abilities they bestow vary. Nasse is a special-rank angel, granting Mirai all three angel abilities including wings which grants Mirai the ability to fly, a white arrow that allows the user to instantly kill anyone it hits, and a red arrow that allows the user to make whoever it hits fall in love with them for 33 days, though not if the target is already under the influence of another user's red arrow. Her main desire is to make Mirai happy. Despite having a cute face, she has the habit of making some cruel remarks.
Saki is Mirai's classmate, his love interest, and coincidentally, a God candidate as well. Once she learns that he does not intend to kill her, Saki teams up with Mirai to deal with Metropoliman. Saki and Mirai were once childhood friends, but after his parents' death, Mirai became the target of bullying from his classmates and Saki did nothing to stop them out of peer pressure. She witnessed Mirai's suicide attempt in the beginning of the series, and out of guilt, she also did so by trying to drown herself on the sea, leading her to meet Revel and become a God candidate.
Saki's angel. He is rather calculating and manipulative, a trait that is considered by Nasse to be the reason why he was relegated to be second-rank angel, thus capable only of bestowing Saki with the red arrow. Once he decides to become more useful to Saki, Revel decides to study the knowledge of the heavens, in order to increase his rank and grant wings to Saki, but fails. However, when Revel sheds tears at not being of further use to Saki, God promotes him to first-rank and bestows him the title of "Angel of Emotion", as no angel had shed tears for a human before. This rank raise grants him the ability to bestow wings onto Saki.
The main antagonist of the series who intends to become God by any means necessary, including killing all other candidates. He is the grandson of the principal of the prestigious Joso Academy and wishes to become God in order to bring his dead sister back to life. So far he had killed four other candidates using the alias "Metropoliman" and had claimed their wings and arrows, becoming even more dangerous upon realizing that several arrows can be combined to increase their range, and that the arrows and wings he obtained can be bestowed to other individuals to do his bidding.
Tonma Rodriguez (ロドリゲス 頓馬, Rodorigesu Tonma)
A God candidate who is a failed comedian. He uses his red arrows to make women fall in love with him so that he can have sex with them. He is the first God candidate to be killed, being murdered by Kanade as Metropoliman.
Two God candidates who disguises themselves as different versions of Metropoliman when Kanada asks the God candidates to attend a gathering at a baseball stadium. They are friends who want to help each other after doing badly in their exams, and are saved from committing suicide by their guardian angels. However, the gathering is a trap and both are killed by the real Metropoliman.
Chiyo Nakayama (中矢間 知代, Nakayama Chiyo)
Chiyo is the youngest God candidate. She is a young girl who was bullied at school. She attends the gathering and asks Metropoliman for help. Kanade first strikes her with a red arrow, but then uses her as a hostage saying he will kill her if no other God candidates reveal themselves. As no-one does, Kanade kills Chiyo.
Nanato is a God candidate working as the product planner for an apparel company. He is suffering from terminalcancer, and first uses his red arrows to secure enough money for his family after he dies, then to hire private detectives to find more God candidates. He decides to team up with Mirai and Saki in order to prevent Kanade from becoming God, to the point of obtaining firearms from the JSDF in order to have a better chance to kill him. Mirai agrees on the grounds that Nanato continues his treatment.
Born poor and ugly, Hajime was always shunned by others until his mother commits suicide and Balta appears to become his angel. Using Balta's powers, Hajime manages to obtain money and a new, beautiful face by plastic surgery, but still is unable to attract a girl himself due to his poor communication skills. He develops an obscession with Kanade and offers to become his subordinate, which he accepts, but only in exchange of capturing another God Candidate. He then manages to discover Nanato's identity and kidnaps his wife and daughter in order to draw him to a trap. He manages to capture both Nanato and Mirai, but waiting for a chance to kill them, he ends up struck by Saki's red arrow.
An amateur model, known as the "Serial Killer Girl A", she was arrested for the murder of several female middle schoolers until Kanade breaks her free and lends her a red arrow and a pair of wings from the God candidates he previously eliminated, in order to lay a trap for other God candidates who may appear intending to stop her after she starts killing again.
Media[]
Manga[]
Platinum End is written by Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata. It was serialized in ShueishaJump Square from November 4, 2015, to January 4, 2021.[8][9][10] The series' chapters were collected into fourteen tankōbon volumes, released from February 4, 2016, to February 4, 2021.[11][12]
On October 5, 2015, Viz Media announced that they had licensed Platinum End for English language release in North America.[13][8] In March 2016, Viz confirmed that they would start releasing print editions of Platinum End, with the first volume released in October 2016.[14] The manga is licensed by Kazé in France.[15]
On December 2, 2020, Pony Canyon registered the "Anime-PlatinumEnd.com" domain name,[42] and on December 19, 2020, at the Jump Festa '21 online event, it was announced that the series would receive an anime television series adaptation by Signal.MD. Hideya Takahashi is directing the "first series", while Kazuchika Kise is directing the "second series",[43] with series composition by Shinichi Inotsume, and character designs by Kōji Ōdate. Masahiro Tokuda is composing the series' music.[44] The series' is listed for 24 episodes,[43] and it is set to premiere on TBS, BS11, and other channels on October 8, 2021.[7][a]Band-Maid will perform the opening theme "Sense," while Yuu Miyashita will perform the ending theme "Kōfuku-Ron" (Theory of Surrender).[46]Crunchyroll licensed the series outside of Asia.[47]
Reception[]
The first volume of Platinum End debuted at number two on Oricon's weekly list of the best-selling manga, with 105,213 copies sold.[48] In December 2020, the manga had 4.5 million copies in circulation.[49] When reviewing the opening chapter, Ian Wolf writing for Anime UK News compared Platinum End to Ohba and Obata's earlier series Death Note, saying: "the central character is a teenage boy fed up with life, who is guided by a supernatural force and given great power. Both leads seemingly find themselves on the path to becoming a deity. However, while Light Yagami uses his powers for diabolic ends, killing anyone he suspects of doing anything wrong while being observed by a shinigami, Mirai Kakehashi is guided by an apparently more benevolent force."[50] He also writes that the series is an example of a death game, citing the death of one of the God candidates in the second chapter.[51]
Writing for The Fandom Post Jarius Taylor gave the series a B+ rating and compared Platinum End to Future Diary writing: "while I don't have too much doubt it'll be stronger overall, the overt edginess here isn't something I was quite expecting from Ohba. Still it's a pretty interesting read from beginning to end, and there's a lot of potential in terms of both thriller aspects and the overall theme. Hopefully, it'll be able to differentiate itself from Future Diary more going forward, but for now the idea of Ohba and Obata taking a crack at their own version of it seems pretty good to me."[52]
Notes[]
^TBS lists the airing of the series on Thursday at 25:28, which is effectively Friday at 1:28 a.m. JST.[45]