Platinum End

Episode 18

A couple weeks ago, I mentioned the various ways it felt like Platinum End's visuals had taken a turn for the worse. Those are all still true, but something that I didn't realize at first was that those downgrades weren't just in the aesthetic, but in basically every level of visual storytelling and direction. That was easy to overlook the past couple episodes, since practically nothing eventful actually happened after Metropoliman's death, but now that the show's moving forward again, it's become apparent how flat every single scene has become, regardless of content.

Don't get me wrong, Platinum End was never an example of impactful or elevating direction. But during the Metropoliman arc it at least knew how to emphasize when a moment was meant to be important or shocking. It had a firm grasp of the basic interplay of shot selection, music, and editing necessary to tell the audience that what they were seeing was a big deal. That work was often undercut by the terrible writing, for certain, but it at least understood its assignment and attempted to deliver to the best of its ability. That's no longer the case here.

Take the central scene of “Last Supper” for instance. This is, at last, the moment we've been building towards for weeks, where we have nearly all the remaining God Candidates together. Not only that, but they're finally learning what exactly becoming God means, and set to deciding who among them would be the best choice to direct the fate of humanity for eons to come. It is, by a wide margin, the most important conversation in this entire series, but watching it with the subtitles turned off you'd think the cast were discussing what to order for lunch. It's lifeless, dull drudgery that makes the endless planning sessions in Saki's bedroom look exciting by comparison.

It's a huge problem that permeates every second of this episode, even as the story features the most action and forward momentum we've seen in weeks. Yuri uses her arrows to escape government custody! The entire group is convinced to let a suicidal 12-year-old become God for some reason! The Japanese government sends attack helicopters after the God Candidates! An obvious Kim Jong-un stand-in puts a kill order out on our heroes! And all of it is delivered with the energy of a trip to the DMV. I have literally seen anime make office board meetings more interesting than this. It's that bad.

But even detached from the dispassionate delivery, there's just a lot of bad, dumb ideas the characters throw out here that go totally unchallenged. Like just the idea of making the misanthropic 12-year-old who has spent 100% of his screen time arguing for his own suicide become God is stupid enough to make me think it's got to be a red herring. Like, surely, our heroic main character is not just going to thrust the job of becoming the eternal fulcrum of human existence onto a middle schooler, right? Then again, Mirai's most heroic moment was saying he just wouldn't do things that make him unhappy and leave the hard stuff to other people, so it's actually very possible they go with this plan.

More concretely, there's just not much of anything interesting to the banter. This should have been the perfect opportunity to flesh out our remaining cast, to give each of them depth and a unique outlook to explore such a heady concept as literally becoming the arbiter of human destiny. But the cast barely discuss it beyond “nah I don't want to” and “I guess I'll do it” before having a quick vote. I cannot fathom why the writing here decided to take its most interesting central question and examine it like a mildly difficult word problem on a math test. But then again, that's hardly the first baffling decision this show has made with its own premise. Then there's our new antagonist, who seems like he could be pretty interesting, which means he definitely won't. One of those questions that pops up a lot in shows where deities of some fashion are 100% confirmed real, is how you reconcile that with, say, atheists in the world. And Platinum End seems to actually be going with that via Dr. Yoneda here, who's thoroughly annoyed that his previous research and understanding of the universe has been all but invalidated by the creepy-looking angel who swooped into his life. We don't yet know how he feels about all of this God Candidacy stuff himself, but the fact he's demanding that each candidate make a speech about what they'd do as God suggests he's at least not another Metropoliman who's just out to win this thing by sheer force. Plus there's the foreboding fact his angelic partner is the Angel of Destruction, and the show implies there's something nefarious behind its ugly mug.

Like I said before, I don't actually trust Platinum End to explore the interesting ideas it's stumbled upon with any grace – especially not with the downturn in direction. But I at least appreciate that we have those ideas to speculate on for now. And if nothing else, this episode isn't nearly as onerous as last week, making the viewing experience more akin to picking through your kitchen garbage can for a Wal-Mart receipt you threw out, instead of sifting through a septic tank with your bare hands.

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Platinum End is currently streaming on Crunchyroll and Funimation.