English Dub Review: Platinum End: “The Final Arrow”

Overview: Years have passed in the human world since the Nakaumi (A.J Beckles) became God and Mirai (Alejandro Saab), Saki (Laura Post) and the others have progressed their lives quite swimmingly. 

Our Take: A lot, and I mean a lot, can be said about the highs and lows of this series in regards to its story, characters, antagonists and overall arching themes regarding life, death and God as a whole. But man did it throw me for a loop for one final time, and make no mistake it is most certainly the last.

Mirai and Saki marry and live together after high school and opening a flower shop. Temari is a happy lab assistant for Yoneda, who has become less occupied with an excessively lush lifestyle. Mizukiyo is dating his girlfriend in college, Sayuri. Hoshi and Yumiki are still happily serving the police force. Everyone is just so happy and just in case you had not realized it, we are subjected to yet another conversation about happiness with Mirai that believes itself to be profound and deep but is just melodrama in disguise, detracting what should have been shown rather than told. 

The reveal of how creation unfolds is about as average of an outcome as one could imagine. Not because the result is so radically unconvincing but because it never subverts expectations or offers any particular originality with Nakaumi comes to understand that God created people but was also created by something else too. This also proves Yoneda’s theory about God being unnecessary very wrong. 

Of course, when you make the boneheaded decision to give a suicidal kid the literal powers of God, and so carelessly at that, I wonder what result Mirai, Saki and the others thought would come out of it. I would surely like to know considering it lead to Nakaumi to decide that the best course of action for humanity’s salvation was that of it’s entire genocide. The entire devastating debacle melted my brain for how puzzling a group decision it was at the time and how idiotic it eventually became in coming to bite every last one of them in the ass. This is especially considering how amongst the God candidates was “the world’s smartest man,” to help facilitate it, no matter how coldhearted he is. 

All that being said, I will give it this much, it definitely was an unexpected twist considering how much Nakaumi was seemingly on the verge of change and wanting to help mankind not to mention how an overall happy ending was within sight. But alas, it was not meant to be and neither were Mirai and Saki’s last moments as they aren’t built up as amazingly as they could be with little time given to let the moment marinate, but their chemistry throughout the season as a whole (this one and a few episodes aside) makes it heartfelt and saddening enough. Yoneda realizing his miscalculation with his arrogance costing him is poetic justice that feels nicely earned. The show’s overall message about death giving meaning to life is powerful but could have been executed in a less on-the-nose and more intelligent way than what this finale gave us, that would have made it even stronger.