Every episode of Platinum End feels like a trip through an entire series in some cases. Maybe it’s just my excitement building off of each episode and the master class it teaches in cliffhangers and subverting your expectations, seriously, what else would you expect from the duo that created Death Note? Episode four saw us with Mirai and Saki with other God candidates watching a display put on by Metropoliman, confronted by Metro Blue and Metro Yellow, two God candidates we had yet to meet, in which Metropoliman brutally slaughtered both of them, manipulated two humans without the use of arrows, and is setting up to murder another God candidate with a rank-two angel, who only has wings.
I suppose the most important part about my expectations of this episode was when Metro Green and Metro Pink came into play, who ended up being non-God candidate human beings paid by Metropoliman to put on an act, as if they were allying themselves with Metro Blue and Metro Yellow. In the opening there’s this shot of Mirai at the 1:05 mark which made me believe he may don a uniform that would round out the Metro Five with him becoming Metro Red. Consider that the colors are here. Red, Blue, Green, Yellow and Pink. We can consider Metropoliman, despite being currently evil, as a “sixth” member. Does this sound familiar at all? The colors may be different, but this is the set-up of the very first Sentai series adapted into the Power Rangers franchise – Zyuranger or Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. In the series, the sixth ranger began as an evil-doer and then joined the team of heroes in their fight against Rita Repulsa or Bandora for the Sentai viewers. Consider that Metropoliman’s colors are white and gold though, MMPR viewers may associate this with Tommy’s second outfit as the White Ranger – well here’s the part that completes this thought – Dairanger, where all the costumes match Platinum End’s Metro Five. Now I think we all understand that Metropoliman is modelling himself after a hero here, and the point isn’t that these people are actually like the Power Rangers, rather that we saw the setup for Mirai to become less of an observer and more of a hero.
Unfortunately, we don’t get to see what becomes of Misurin, the girl that Metropoliman is getting ready to kill until next episode, but we do know that Mirai is getting ready to intervene in the situation, do you think Saki will stop him? Or maybe Nasse or Revel will somehow?
Platinum End can be found on Crunchyroll.