Happy Monday BaddaBing BaddaBlog readers! This is Manga (And Also Anime) Monday, the place where any and everything related to anime and manga is eagerly analyzed and critiqued. Today’s topic is going to be a new manga by two of the best creators in the industry: Platinum End by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata.

Platinum End is a new and interesting manga from the creators of the illustrious Death Note series. There are only a few chapters of this series released right now, but it is already gearing up to be a great manga series. The story follows Mirai Kakehashi, a student who is going into High School who tries to kill himself. He tries to off himself because, well his life basically sucks a lot. His parents died when he was a young child, his guardians are abusive, and he finds out pretty quick into the series that his guardians actually murdered his parents for the insurance money. We find all of this out in the first chapter after Mirai jumps off the top of the tallest building he can find. How does he survive the fall? His guardian angel rescues him!

Seriously, he is literally rescued by his guardian angel. After Mirai is saved, his angel, Nasse, tells him that God is essentially retiring. To determine the next God, a competition is being held between thirteen individuals on Earth over a period of 999 days. At the end of that time period, whoever is most fit to be God will replace the current one. Nesse then gives him the white arrow, that can kill anyone, the red arrow, that can make anyone fall in love with him and do whatever he commands, and the angel’s wings, that allow him to travel anywhere in the world with ease.

The tension in the series begins to emerge when other members of the competition decide that rather than risk not becoming god, they decide to kill all other participants in order to be the winner by default. This leads to a massive cat and mouse game between all of the God candidates and creates a host of ethical dilemmas for Mirai. Now that he no longer wants to kill himself and has been given the opportunity to live freely, he wants nothing more than to be happy. The story has not gotten their quite yet, but I feel as though its going to get progressively darker as it goes on as well as explore the nature of happiness and a person’s fundamental right to it.

I really recommend to anyone reading this that you start reading the manga. It is only a couple chapters in and you could probably get caught up in less than two hours. As expected form the team that created Death Note, the art in this work is exquisite, the characters come to life almost immediately, and  you will be compelled to read on after only the first few pages. Platinum End may still be in its genesis, but I can confidently say that it is going to quickly and powerfully establish itself in the manga world.

That just about does it for this week’s installment of Manga (And Also Anime) Monday. If you enjoyed it, please leave a like or a comment down below. If you would like to be notified when new content appears on this blog, you can subscribe to it via your email in the upper right tab. Alternatively, you can stay up to date by liking the official BaddaBing BaddaBlog Facebook Page, or by following me, @LucasDeRuyter, on Twitter. I hope you have a great week and be sure to check out the next installment of Pop Culture Wednesday later this week.

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