Platinum End Revisits Death Note’s Themes in New Ways

Tsugumi Ohba, Takeshi Obata/SHUEISHA, Platinum End Project

Death Note remains one of the most thought-provoking anime series to date, exploring the question of death as a punishment or deterrent against crime and showing how unchallenged power can bring out the worst in us. But it’s not that power corrupts, per se; rather, power enables. Those too corrupt to shoulder the responsibility inherent in possessing power will inevitably be possessed by it. Who can say what they would do if they could kill anyone, no matter how far above reprisal, simply by writing the person’s name in a notebook? Platinum End, an anime series based on a manga of the same name by Death Note creators Tsugumi Ohba (writer) and Takeshi Obata (illustrator), returns to these same ideas but uses a new, equally impossible premise to explore them.

Platinum End follows Mirai Kakehashi—an orphan who has been living with his abusive uncle and aunt—from the time he attempts suicide, whereupon he is rescued by his guardian angel, Nasse. Nasse offers him a pair of supernatural powers with which he can achieve happiness: the ability to fly at supersonic speeds to go anywhere he wishes and red arrows he can fire from his hand that will make anyone fall in love with him for 33 days and do whatever he tells them to do. Mirai learns that there are 12 other people who have been offered the same gifts in the same circumstances, and each has become a candidate to replace an aging God.

In many ways, Platinum End functions as a counterpoint to Death Note. The parallels are numerous, but subverted in various ways. The powers Mirai receives—from a benevolent angel rather than an amoral shinigami—are intended to save him from despair rather than merely offer the supernatural creature amusement, and while the series shows us that making people fall in love with you can of course be used selfishly, Mirai is not seduced by these powers and is reluctant to even use his red arrows until he learns that doing so will prevent another God candidate from using theirs on the same person. And while Light Yagami is willing to use his Death Note to kill anyone who so much as interferes with his plans to achieve godhood, Mirai stubbornly refuses to kill anyone, including the other God candidates, some of whom are bent on killing both him and his allies. Furthermore, he has no desire to become God, except that forfeiture of candidacy is said to be lethal. As with Death Note, Platinum End takes every opportunity to examine the ethics of murder: if one does evil to stop others from doing evil, can such a thing be called justice? Even the ad break bumpers consist of “rules” relating to the premise, a callback to the similar bumpers in Death Note that share the rules for using the titular notebook.

Just as noticeable as its parallels with Death Note, Platinum End presents in its struggle between the God candidates a scenario so reminiscent of Future Diary that it reads as a deliberate choice, with one important distinction: Future Diary is a survival game in which the last person standing becomes God, whereas, at the time of this writing, the conditions for reaching divinity in Platinum End have not yet been explained and are likely more complex. After all, why should someone murdering a bunch of people qualify them to be the ruler of the universe?

I’m not sure how long this series will be, exactly. Crunchyroll lists it as 73 episodes, but I lean toward trusting the official website, which says it’ll be a 24-episode run. Either way, Platinum End has time to flesh out its world and the specifics of the God contest some more. But for those who don’t wish to wait, 13 of the 14 volumes of the original manga have been localized and are available for purchase, with the final volume available for preorder.

The first season of the Platinum End anime series is available to stream on Crunchyroll and Hulu.