Although Platinum End's manga has recently ended, the title has found new life in the newly airing anime adaptation. Featuring a war between angels in the battle to decide who will become God, Platinum End and its angelic cast is certainly something different for the likes of shonen manga concepts. However, the series seemingly has its roots in an idea spawned by the two main characters of Bakuman.
Bakuman's manga and anime featured a manga about an angel fighting other angels, much like the plot of Platinum End from the same creators. This speaks to how much the creative team's works have influenced and referenced each other over the years, creating manga that, if not in the same continuity, at least homage each other in some way. Here's how the new Platinum End anime is a Bakuman fan's dream come true.
Bakuman's Angel Manga
Bakuman is a series from Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata about two teenagers who begin a career as mangaka while they're still in high school. In the anime and manga, protagonists Moritaka and Takagi come up with the idea for a manga about angels and humans. The plot has angels attacking and killing humans for their own ends, with one lone angel deciding to fight against his own kind and defend the human race.
Eventually titled "Angel Days," the manga, which is one of five that the duo creates over the course of the series, doesn't get much traction. There's another angel-themed manga in the series that's a romance story between an angel and a human. The reason that Takagi and Moritaka chose an angel for the main character was that the concept hadn't been used for a mainstream Shonen Jump manga anytime recently. Despite the manga in Bakuman failing, the basic concept is revisited in Platinum End, which is a more greatly expanded version of the story.
Bakuman and Platinum End
The plot of Platinum End, which is also created by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, involves a young man named Mirai who is saved from committing suicide by his guardian angel Nasse. Nasse gives him special powers with which to enact justice upon the world, but Mirai soon learns that there's far more to his new role.
Mirai is now one of many angels who will compete to potentially replace God as he retires in the near future. Some of these other angels have far less than benign motives for their planned godhood, and they're not above mercilessly killing others of their kind to do so. The story was told over 14 manga volumes, with the final one releasing in Japan earlier this year in February. The anime adaptation has finally begun, but even those who haven't read the source material will likely note the similarities to the plot of a Bakuman story.
Platinum End is in many ways an expanded version of Angel Days, featuring a war between angels with humankind caught in the middle. Thus, Bakuman and its manga-within-a-manga were something of a preview for Tsugumi and Ohba's works afterward. Bakuman also made references to Death Note, which was a previous collaboration between Tsugumi and Ohba and perhaps their most well-known work to date. That series also bears some similarities to the later Platinum End due to its supernatural premise, making all of these works a full-circle creative affair between the duo.
Hopefully for fans of Bakuman, and with the Platinum End manga over, a separate manga and anime based on animalistic gag manga Otters 11 is on the way.