Platinum End Chapters Hit the Comic Stands - New Manga by Death Note Creators Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata

Platinum End begins - chapter 1, page 1, and front cover of the English version

Platinum End - the new manga by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, Death Note's creators - launched today with its first chapter simultaneously appearing in Japanese and English translations on opposite sides of the Pacific.

Readers in Japan may find it serialized in Jump Square magazine's December 2015 issue 12 (Nov. 4th 2015), while English readers can download a digital version from Viz Media's Weekly Shonen Jump website.

Jump Square Issue 12 front cover and contents for introduction of Platinum End

Naturally a copy of the first chapter of Platinum End has been grabbed here, so we can see what it's all about and how the Death Note fandom might possibly receive this latest manga by Ohba and Obata.

However, sensible of spoilers, all thoughts in review of the chapter will be hidden behind a read more mask.

A Death Note Reader's Review of Platinum End

Other sites and places will be doing straight up reviews of Platinum End.  Here we're mostly concerned with its creators' previous output.  Therefore our take will be the Death Note Fandom Review of Platinum End.

Platinum End isn't Death Note, but for obsessed readers, there are shades of it everywhere.  Let's start from the beginning, where protagonist Mirai Kakehashi is revealed in full colour glory alongside the angelic Nasse.

Mirai Kakehashi and Nasse from Platinum End

Mirai Kakehashi is shown with red hair and green eyes.  Matt from Death Note then!  At least as my branch of the fandom would have it.  At fact that elicits a faint smile when one of his first actions is to buy a loaf of Melon Bread.  MELOn bread... yeah, weak, I know, hence only the faintest of smiles.

Meanwhile a closer look at Mirai's angelic companion Nasse suggests that a million Near cosplays won't have to be altered too much to accommodate this new character.

Nasse's resemblance to Near only increases as the story progresses, though the angel is depicted as female, complete with fairly prominent breasts. 

That becomes a little disturbing, as some kind of fan service plays out in later panels.  (See right.)

Would you believe that the above is fairly innocuous in context?  At least insofar as the plot has revealed itself by that point.  Nevertheless it won't be for long in the hands of the fandom. 

Like Death Note, Platinum End starts with a High School student in a classroom.  Only this schoolboy isn't bored and in need of a Shinigami notebook.  He's suicidally depressed and on the verge of making good such fatal inclinations.  Mirai just needs to graduate first, which he seems to do with little fanfare nor ceremony.

Then he leaps off a building, after first picking up some Melon Bread.  The purpose of the latter not being explained at all in subsequent plot features.  Anyone else with a clue what was going on there?

Enter the Angel Nasse, aka Mirai's guardian angel, with a mission to catch him before he hits the ground, then turn his life around so there's hope and happiness, not a high rise building and a hard road below.

We then get a plotted history of our character's background and the context for his jump, with yet more links between Matt and Mirai, insofar as both are orphans in their respective tales.

However, the more blatant correlation is between Platinum End and the Harry Potter series.  Both Harry and Mirai are raised by an unloving aunt and her family, subjected to abusive home lives and unable to please no matter how many chores are done.  Each treated as little more than live-in slaves, sleeping in a storage cupboard.

For those insisting upon seeing Death Note's Matt in the physicality of Mirai Kakehashi, then then it gets wrong fast  in the imagery shown in his receipt of Nasse's Heavenly gifts.  But only if Matt's persona is viewed through the lens of his It Matters fan-fiction series characterisation.

Mirai gains shiny bands about his neck and wrists, which cannot be removed

For a much wider Death Note fandom audience, connections between the two tales can be much less tenuously drawn as the new manga grows darker.  Suddenly we have a supernaturally assisted hero who can kill and has the potential to become God - de facto or otherwise.

Am I describing Miral Kakehashi or Light Yagami?  You decide!

Ultimately, Platinum End will become its own story, devoid of and divorced from Death Note references. But in the meantime, it's fun to compare the two in this first chapter.

So what are your thoughts on the matter?  Will you be reading this new story from Death Note's Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata?  Or will you be leaving this one well alone?