Platinum End ep 20- Spiritless

Posted on by Irina

I have to be honest with you guys, this episode bored me to tears. It might just be my state of mind but I could be bothered to care about anything that happened in Platinum End this week. I don’t even have anything to complain about really. This is going to be a short post.

Part of the issue here is that I just don’t relate to any of the characters that are left. Don’t relate isn’t the right expression here. I don’t get them at all. I think Platinum End in general hasn’t done a great job with character development. A lot of them are pretty flat and occasionally inconsistent. But I also don’t see them as people that could exist. Maybe Yuri but even then.

Because of that, I have a very tough time following anyone’s train of thought. I often find myself thinking why would they choose to do that or why would they jump to that conclusion and I have to stop questioning it and just go with the flow if we’re going to get anywhere. And in the action-heavy episodes, that can work. But in the brooding ideological ones, I struggle to care about anyone’s convictions at this point.

And then you couple that with the fact that half the episode was dedicated to Dr. Yoneda and well… I’ve mentioned a few times that I rarely enjoy when a show introduces an important character, one that we are supposed to care about as a person on some level, in the last few episodes. There is a way to do this right. Proper foreshadowing so that the audience already has an idea of the character is helpful. Also, there are some authors that are just so good at characterization that they can get an entire personality and motivation across in a single episode. But, in my experience, it often just throws off the pacing of the climax and leaves us with a disappointing character.

And that’s what happened this week with Platinum End. This show has already introduced so many characters with so many sob stories. They just killed off one of the last ones I found likeable. And now I’m supposed to go through the effort to get to know a how new character. I barely know Yuri and depressed boy. I don’t remember his name. I also don’t really know the cops at all and the main characters have been living with them for months. If you’re not going to bother establishing the pre-existing cast, why would I invest in someone new? Huh?

So it’s not that the episode was bad per see. It’s just that in my opinion, it didn’t add anything and at this point, I think we would have had a stronger narrative if they left everything about Yoneda, his philosophy, motivations and plans, purposefully ambiguous and just moved on with the action.

Oh, and I’m annoyed by the god premise a little. Not the premise as a whole. It’s just that God is disappearing because people are believing less. And in this episode, it seems he is really on his way out. But I still don’t understand how revealing angels and superpowers to the world made people believe less. People believe stuff really easily. Honestly, it’s amazing what some folks will swallow cause they saw it on the internet. You’re telling me the news is broadcasting flying people that can disappear and reappear at will and that openly say they are doing so through the power of god and nobody thought to themselves, huh maybe there is a god after all. Not one person? I don’t believe it. And the series has done absolutely nothing to try to convince me of why it should be so. I guess my faith in Platinum End is dwindling. How meta!

Previous Episodes

2 thoughts on “Platinum End ep 20- Spiritless”

  1. Honestly, I sort of dropped out and don’t remember too much of the episode. I thought Yoneda’s theory is that God staged the god-selection precisely to ignite belief, and Yoneda might have some sort of plan to counter that plan. I don’t really remember enough to be sure, though, and if I ever guessed anything about that plan, it didn’t convince me. Really not a show that holds my interest.

    Reply

Leave me a comment and make my day!

%d bloggers like this: