Platinum End - A manga work... about to die.

When people known that Ohba Tsugumi and Obata Takeshi would work together again, it was only logical that I became very enthusiastic in what they were going to do for this third work/manga together. People already knew this but for those who don't, these two authors worked together on past works such as Death Note (2004) and Bakuman (2008) as Ashirogi Muto.

With this information previously known, Death Note has succeeded in being one of my favorite works so far succeeding consequently other works with the same legal value as this. This manga, Platinum End - or in Japanese ["Puratino Endo"] - still had an advantage that the previous works didn't have: the fact that now it is being worked on a magazine that would give them the supreme freedom and with that, I sincerely hoped that this pair of authors delivered already in the first chapter, some fantastic content and really developed. However, this was not what was shown.

The plot begins showing a class with all the students making plans for their future, while the protagonist, named Mirai, is apathetic, finding everything extremely tedious/boring.* Apparently, Mirai is just a normal student but the story behind it is much denser and heavier than Death Note. When he is about to commit suicide from a 23-story building, he is saved by a (woman) guardian angel called Nasse. During the speech, the angel says that it simply appeared because she wanted to make him happy no matter what, and this is the symbology to which this manga gives when it mentions human feelings. Nasse also explains the definition of "love" as a normal feeling, within an enormous amount of pages.
Explaining by detail what I mean, it is actually very simple to notice: the first chapter has 66 pages, including covers (manga plus the magazine where it is serialized) and commercials, and with that twenty (plus more) pages are 'wasted' just to explain Mirai's sense of his future. Obata Takeshi did an excellent job bringing Mirai's anguish, despair and skepticism in the first pages, however, his work was almost in vain because his colleague Ohba Tsugumi chose to explain that Mirai no longer wanted to live in those several pages. Ohba wanted to show (to the readers) that Mirai is an isolated character (as if he doesn't feel in a correct social position) due to his shameless past. While re-reading in the actual book, Ohba touches the subject, again and again, using almost ten pages to force the existence of Mirai's sadness; it reinforces an idea that was previously settled and understood in the main plot by the (woman) guardian angel Nasse, which in detail makes no sense, since the idea is repeatedly reinforced in the Nasse's speech balloons. To make the point clear, the motive for Mirai's suicide was due to the horrible life he had when he was younger, where his family mistreated him (while they were still alive) but this becomes clear when, once again, Ohba decides to reinforce the idea of the horrible life that Mirai had - and Ohba keeps doing this explanation every time there is a new chapter.

The problem of Platinum End is, therefore, the repetition of the same idea in each gesture of action that happens as the story progresses, there are also problems of speech because each character makes very large and extensive lines to explain something, which turns out to be boring while reading the actual volumes; it's something very annoying to me but people overall can tolerate it. The artwork never goes unnoticed and is just one of the few highest points in the manga.

In a few pages, the protagonist's expressions, the feelings that come to mind, and the depressive character were all well captured visually and you can see in the realism of the drawing. I do not want to blame one artist for the other or vice-versa, but I believe that Ohba should have thought more specifically about the idea of this work and especially in existing terminologies of human life in order to perform this work phenomenally and without errors, as he did in Death Note where each weapon was a way to react and to think. In this case, Ohba treats the reader as if he was a child and he himself 'punishes' the reader with the repetitions of speech and the way of acting before society. It is quite clear that the society that is shown in the work is a society closed and isolated from the rest of the world, just as Japanese society behaves. By the way of seeing more selective, Ohba gives us only a repeated history and with basic narrative errors.

The small problems of this sequence of scenes are that the authors simply sought out ideas that had already been published, more concretely they were to look for ideas to the previous work, Death Note. They also tried, in a way, to introduce plot twists so that the story seemed more truthful and specific but this did not work out, in Death Note the lines were small but explanatory so that the reader perceived both sides of the same coin and in Platinum End, there are not simply two sides of the same coin, there are overly explanatory and redundant lines that reinforce a single idea, which has already been explained (previously). There are scenes that include blood - not gore scenes - that are positive for this series because they give readers a new experience without the basic idea that is provided to us in the synopsis.

So far, the story is by no means a novelty but somehow the script works and here are some reasons: Platinum End is a work that was delivered to the fans in an inconsistent, predictable way but at the same time it is an interesting subject that few mangaka's approach for being vastly vast and complete and therefore I feel that Ohba should be based only on the theme of anguish, despair, and hope that ceases to be negative and hopefully positive.

*(That's a reference to a character named Yagami Light, from the Death Note manga. As shown in the manga, Light also finds everything extremely boring, before finding the ultimate weapon, the Death Note. However, Mirai takes it to another level because Mirai suffers from depression).

Story: 4 | Art: 6 | Character: 6 | Enjoyment: 5

Score: 6/10 (so far)

Personal Note: This is not my definitive review so over time I will edit it. The first volume just came out in Portugal, so my review is limited in comparison with other manga versions, as far as the language in which this manga is edited. Next update can happen maybe in August.