×
  • remind me tomorrow
  • remind me next week
  • never remind me
Subscribe to the ANN Newsletter • Wake up every Sunday to a curated list of ANN's most interesting posts of the week. read more
You are welcome to look at the talkback but please consider that this article is over 2 years old before posting.

Forum - View topic
This Week in Anime - Where Did Platinum End Go Wrong?


Goto page 1, 2, 3  Next

Note: this is the discussion thread for this article

Anime News Network Forum Index -> Site-related -> Talkback
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
Animeking1108



Joined: 26 Apr 2011
Posts: 1244
PostPosted: Thu Apr 07, 2022 8:09 am Reply with quote
Can we just agree that if an anime is about a death game, 9 times out of 10, it's terrible? This show couldn't even be So Bad It's Good like GANTZ because it takes itself so seriously. It tried to be a Thinking Man's Future Diary, but it just ended up being a Simple Man's Death Note.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Greed1914



Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 4449
PostPosted: Thu Apr 07, 2022 9:59 am Reply with quote
I'm not surprised at the staff change midway. Platinum End was not a pretty show from the start, but it looked noticeably worse in the second half.

The story was barely holding together with Metropoliman, and then fell into an utter snooze fest after that. When your own characters are totally disinterested in the outcome, it's not entertaining.

Mirai and Saki have zero chemistry. There is a point where someone asks if they are together after seeing them hold hands. The other character says he doesn't know. This part was inadvertently humorous since I was like, "I've been watching this whole time, and I'm not convinced either,"

And then it just sort of stumbles around in the end like the author realized he had some unused ideas way after any opportunity to develop them.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
TarsTarkas



Joined: 20 Dec 2007
Posts: 5852
Location: Virginia, United States
PostPosted: Thu Apr 07, 2022 10:09 am Reply with quote
A show that features the sudden end of all human life at the end of the series, is usually a bad show.

At least Alien 3 killed off all your favorites from Alien 2 in the first few minutes, so you had an indication that you didn't have to see the rest of the movie.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
luisedgarf



Joined: 02 Oct 2004
Posts: 660
Location: Guadalajara, Mexico
PostPosted: Thu Apr 07, 2022 10:29 am Reply with quote
TarsTarkas wrote:
A show that features the sudden end of all human life at the end of the series, is usually a bad show.


Ideon and Evangelion want to have a word with you.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
blooperboy



Joined: 28 Dec 2021
Posts: 132
PostPosted: Thu Apr 07, 2022 10:57 am Reply with quote
When I found out that the series was getting an anime adaptation, I went back and reread the series because for some reason I couldn't really remember what had happened.

Then I remembered why I didn't remember.

This show was always doomed to be bad given the story it was trying to adapt. I will straight up admit that I spite-watched it, just so that I could fully appreciate the hate that I knew would be coming when the series reached it conclusion.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
a_Bear_in_Bearcave



Joined: 14 Jan 2019
Posts: 514
Location: Poland
PostPosted: Thu Apr 07, 2022 11:07 am Reply with quote
"Platinum End" and "World's End Harem" both have similar big flaw (and many other flaws that are not similar) of having a protagonist character that is very ill-fitting to the kind of story they're in to the point it seems like creators just hate their MCs.

It's fine to not want to be breeding stud or to keep your virginity for your lover, but "World's End Harem" invents nonsensical science just to make sure MC can have ton of heroic, consensual, humanity-saving sex with titular large harem of sexy women, just to make him refuse to be the sex Jesus. This means he not only refuse to give viewers what they watch the series for, but he does it in selfish and unsympathetic way, which just makes viewers hate him.

Same with Platinum End - it's fine to have "no killing" rule, Batman for one live by that rule and is plenty popular, and it's normal for traumatized teenager to be very reluctant to kill a human, but Platinum End makes MC choose between adhering to his rule and risking his friends, friend's family, or even whole of humanity dying, while making him seem super selfish (killing would make me sad!) instead of paragon of morality.

In both series you have characters with morality that is both completely unsuited to the genre of their story (saving virginity in porn series, refusing to kill in death game full of murdering villains), and presented in a way that makes the MCs as unlikable as possible, even though their morality would be somewhat fine in completely different stories.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Manaos



Joined: 07 Apr 2022
Posts: 1
PostPosted: Thu Apr 07, 2022 11:26 am Reply with quote
The funny (or sad) thing about Saki and Mirai relationship is that she only started liking him because of the red arrow effects that he shot at her during Metropoliman last fight.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
TarsTarkas



Joined: 20 Dec 2007
Posts: 5852
Location: Virginia, United States
PostPosted: Thu Apr 07, 2022 12:26 pm Reply with quote
luisedgarf wrote:
TarsTarkas wrote:
A show that features the sudden end of all human life at the end of the series, is usually a bad show.


Ideon and Evangelion want to have a word with you.


Yeah, your're right. But what a beautiful end it was in "End of Evangelion".
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Great Rumbler



Joined: 03 Oct 2006
Posts: 329
Location: Oklahoma
PostPosted: Thu Apr 07, 2022 1:39 pm Reply with quote
a_Bear_in_Bearcave wrote:
Same with Platinum End - it's fine to have "no killing" rule, Batman for one live by that rule and is plenty popular, and it's normal for traumatized teenager to be very reluctant to kill a human, but Platinum End makes MC choose between adhering to his rule and risking his friends, friend's family, or even whole of humanity dying, while making him seem super selfish (killing would make me sad!) instead of paragon of morality.


Trigun handled this dilemma so much better.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
Replica_Rabbit



Joined: 23 Aug 2015
Posts: 354
Location: Portland
PostPosted: Thu Apr 07, 2022 2:29 pm Reply with quote
Man, if I live in Platinum End world, I would be angry that they give god-like powers to a suicidal 13-year-old. The kid needs help, not god-like powers. Future diary was way better and it somehow has a better Main Character than Platinum End
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
jdnation



Joined: 15 May 2007
Posts: 2007
PostPosted: Thu Apr 07, 2022 2:47 pm Reply with quote
It does make me wonder...

It is possible that the manga had to reign in certain ideas due to aufience/publication with topics of suicide/religion but it is still inexcusable for what we ended up with. It felt the manga creators get fed up and just want to deliberately end what they are trapped into working on so they sabotage it. We know they are better than this in yerms of characters. Outside of the leads, Bakuman had an excellent supporting and memorable cast, yes even caricatures can be good when utilized well. But I think they also got trapped by their own premise and rules.

There was no reason the candidates had to be suicidal, that limits your character range and exploration of the subject matter. But this indicates that they had this ending twist in mind from the beginning - if the candidates were suicides then that seems to match what the higher intelligences seeking death are looking for in their experiment. So thus indactes to me that the ending itself was cooked up in mind very early and a story was written to lead there. It was always going to be a hopeless outcome that resolved nothing, so you couldn't just write a story with a better exploration of the subject and characters and seeing where that would naturally lead you.

Understandably there are certain concepts and laws about your fictional world that need to be nailed down from the start. But that doesn't mean the ending itself can't change as you explore your own story. Plenty of writing does that where an author sees where things logically lead. Bur it seems that here it was constrained and if the ending is one that never matters, then nothing your characters are doing matters, and this may have been reflected in the dullness of the romance and other things. No deviation was allowed for logical reasons so that the ending as proscribed could be reached.

That's how it feels to me.

Plenty of other world endings from Eva to Devilman are better, but these endings were likely reached by theie creators as a logical progression of the story that makes sense and fits with its charactets and theme.

Platinum End just seems to settle on 'The question of God and the origin of life can never be solved and all we have is endless regress or nothing to look forward to.'

Death Note in the manga also had that twist, but was better done, and shed new questions on how we think of Light Yagami's actions, god delusion, and the idea of "justice" in such a world. The anime ending softened it up and ignored this. Feels like Obata wanted to re-explore that here, but instead put that idea at the forefront rather than as the background.

There was a good idea here, but the product was all over the place, and the anime adaptation being even more lazy with the material didn't help.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
sledgerheader



Joined: 30 May 2021
Posts: 10
PostPosted: Thu Apr 07, 2022 2:48 pm Reply with quote
The content seems like it was never that good to begin with for Platinum End but also has this studio ever produced an actual good TV series?
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Kirki



Joined: 11 Jun 2019
Posts: 296
PostPosted: Thu Apr 07, 2022 3:16 pm Reply with quote
Where did it go wrong... I suppose from the moment Ohba picked the pen up. The concept of not wanting to kill when the circumstances force you is nothing new (Trigun, every samurai series where they use wooden swords ever), the problem is that Ohba hates it and he hated Mirai since day one. This ridiculous ending might have been his way of saying "well, you suck Mirai, you and every other shounen/seinen protagonist who acts all high and mighty and morally superior, and everything going to hell was your fault!" I can only view this as satire because nothing else made any sense whatsoever.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
BadNewsBlues



Joined: 21 Sep 2014
Posts: 5987
PostPosted: Thu Apr 07, 2022 4:15 pm Reply with quote
Kirki wrote:
(Trigun, every samurai series where they use wooden swords ever),


Kenshin used a wooden sword?

luisedgarf wrote:

Ideon and Evangelion want to have a word with you.


Beat me to it but honestly Ideon is only talked about because of it’s Kill ‘Em All gimmick and little else which doesn’t mean it’s a good series, whereas EoE is….divisive for a number of different reasons beyond almost everyone being killed off.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Gem-Bug



Joined: 10 Nov 2018
Posts: 1220
PostPosted: Thu Apr 07, 2022 4:34 pm Reply with quote
Geoff Thew/Mother's Basement just did a really good review/dissection of the series(it's still shit, don't worry)!
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic    Anime News Network Forum Index -> Site-related -> Talkback All times are GMT - 5 Hours
Goto page 1, 2, 3  Next
Page 1 of 3

 


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group