Platinum End, Vol. 2 (2)

Really amazing story and artwork, but that is to be expected from Tsugumi Ohba, and Takeshi Obata, creators of Death Note and Bakuman. You can count on them to deliver a compelling story and characters! This series is definitely for mature audiences
Arrived on time and in great condition!

Wow...I can't remember the last time a series had such promise and cratered after 2 volumes. The initial premise was interesting, and the M rating allowed for the mangaka to explore more mature themes that mainstream shonen either ignore or simplify. But I had to stop reading 2/3 of the way through this volume. It is bad, atrocious. The mangaka does literally the exact stereotype thing manga gets made fun of for doing and that's using the arbitrary rules of the manga world to create artificial conflict. The arrows only work for 33 days, yeah that's fine, they should wear off at some point. The arrows only work at a distance of 31.6 meters....that's also fine but every scene in the manga shows them only working at point blank range. You can only shoot an arrow every 2 seconds....unless you alternate, then you can shoot an arrow every .3 seconds!

Does this seem like stupid information to read in a review? Well imagine if those extremely arbitrary rules are used as the major conflict in the story. It's so dumb and I knew when they brought up the arrow rules for the 8th time that they were going to be used to generate dumb conflict. If there's two of us, and we stand 31.7 meters from homeplate, and you can only shoot an arrow every 2 seconds, then you can't kill both of us!! That's stupid. Your book is stupid. That's not interesting, these non-intuitive rules aren't interesting. Also, the main character gets shot with a red arrow then they just fast forward through the 33 days so it's like he was never shot. Yeah, great sense of storytelling you got there.

Also, the mangaka can't write female characters at all. I could forgive it in Bakuman as the story was incredibly engaging the main characters likable, but you have thrown out all pretense of likable protagonists and never got better at writing female characters. They're literally cut and paste from the other series.

A page turner with jaw-dropping artwork. The story isn't as good as the first one, because the author is still developing the growing cast of characters and clarifying some of the rules. Nevertheless, it's still a great read, and I can't wait to get my hands on the next installment this fall.

As others have stated, Volume 1 was an exceptional setup, and I truly wished the momentum kept going for Volume 2. Unfortunately, this volume was more or less meant to add more to the supporting cast, and how the angel powers work. It only nailed one of those two. The characters added in this volume, were lackluster to say the least, and again the angels seemed to be the more interesting of the two. The new human characters, were there only to advance the plot or add to the suspense of our now more identifiable villian. Now I can completely accept the shortcomings of this volume due to the fact that quite a few god candidates were introduced, and alliances were being formed (which can't end well for anyone). Also, the way powers were moved from one person to another, left me excited for future volumes. Overall I gave this a 4/5 simply due to slower character development in our main protagonist, but it was redeemed in its world building. Aside from a few convenient coincidences in the plot, this was another solid volume and I'm now stuck waiting for Volume 3.

As others have stated, Volume 1 was an exceptional setup, and I truly wished the momentum kept going for Volume 2. Unfortunately, this volume was more or less meant to add more to the supporting cast, and how the angel powers work. It only nailed one of those two. The characters added in this volume, were lackluster to say the least, and again the angels seemed to be the more interesting of the two. The new human characters, were there only to advance the plot or add to the suspense of our now more identifiable villian. Now I can completely accept the shortcomings of this volume due to the fact that quite a few god candidates were introduced, and alliances were being formed (which can't end well for anyone). Also, the way powers were moved from one person to another, left me excited for future volumes. Overall I gave this a 4/5 simply due to slower character development in our main protagonist, but it was redeemed in its world building. Aside from a few convenient coincidences in the plot, this was another solid volume and I'm now stuck waiting for Volume 3.

Loving this series.

This proved they can still do a good plot after death note. The plot is far more based around characters then plot twists.

Very good read by deathnote creators!

I read the whole thing in one day wanting more, that's how great this is!

The book is a soft cover like conventional manga however it has little glistening triangles all over the back and front which looks really neat.