REVIEW: ‘Platinum End,’ Episode 7 – “Tower of Nightmare”

Platinum End is a dark fantasy shonen anime produced by Signal.MD. Believing to find Girl A at the top of a nearby tower, Nanato and Marai speed off to confront the killer. Upon arriving, however, Metropoliman detonated a bomb in an attempt to remove two more god candidates from the field. Managing to survive the blast, the duo are now confronted with the villainous Metropoliman himself, in Platinum End Episode 7.

With all the horrors Metropoliman has unleashed upon the world in previous episodes, this week’s confrontation carries an absurd amount of weight with it. There are no doubts about how far the villain is willing to go to eliminate the other god candidates. But even with the threat right in front of them, Marai continues to struggle with what he is and is not willing to do to survive.

Marai’s continuing struggle with his personal beliefs manages to steal the show from all the more physical struggles in Platinum End Episode 7. With most programs portraying people as managing to accept the need to defend themselves violently with relative ease, Marai’s psychological aversion to killing is striking. You can feel the gears in the young man’s mind grind as what he can logically see as necessary clashes with what he wants to be. This results in some fairly explosive moments when Metropoliman pushes his confrontation with Marai and Nanato.

The other interesting aspect of this series that Platinum End Episode 7 continues to build on is its portrayal of the angels. The limitations of these heavenly creatures, both in action as well as knowledge, continue to surprise. As the God Contest continues, they are shown to be further and further from their usual, near all-knowing representations. With the angels being depicted in such unique ways, I’m honestly more interested in meeting the remaining candidates’ angels than I am in the actual candidates themselves. Plus, whether or not the show can come up with a more interesting place to put an angel’s wings than Saki’s angel’s, whose wings are sprouting upside down from his buttcheeks, is another question that must be answered.

This week’s episode saw the series’ first real physical confrontation. The animation throughout this fight does a good job of delivering the speed and emotion of the fighters. However, there isn’t anything in these moments of conflict that feels new or eye-catching. Anime characters bouncing around a battle like pinballs as they clash, separate, and clash again is as old a sight as the shonen genre itself. But while the action fails to innovate, it does deliver these tried and true visual styles quite well.

So, when all is said and done, Platinum End Episode 7 brings more emotion and its first moments of action to the series. While the action is a little run-of-the-mill, the emotional aspects of the series are far more important to this narrative than the combat. And with these elements, Platinum End continues to bring unique and impactful moments to its story.

Platinum End Episode 7 is streaming on Funimation and Crunchyroll.