| “ | Every human being is born for the sake of being happy. Every human being lives for the sake of being happier. | ” |
— The opening lines of the chapter[1] | ||
Gift from an Angel (天使の贈り物, Tenshi no Okurimono?) is the first chapter of the first volume and the first chapter overall of the Platinum End manga series, written and illustrated by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, respectively.
Synopsis[]
Instead of celebrating his middle school graduation, Mirai Kakehashi executes his suicide plan by jumping off a building after the ceremony. However, he is saved by an unfamiliar entity and learns about the truth behind his rescue and a family secret.
Summary[]
Class 3-1 is celebrating their middle school graduation and everyone is talking to each other except Mirai Kakehashi, who sits despondently in the middle of the classroom. After school, Mirai walks to a market and considers stealing a packet of melon bread but decides not to. While walking outside, a man greets him who he eventually ignores. Instead, he enters a high-rise building and takes the elevator to the roof, where he jumps off the edge.
Mirai is caught by the angel
Mirai blacks out for a second while falling. He wonders if he is still conscious or if he has already passed and entered the afterlife, but he later realizes that he is floating above ground and being carried by an angel to what he presumes to be Heaven. Still fazed from his suicide attempt, Mirai requests the angel to drop him despite her rescue, but she is adamant in saving him, claiming that she wants him to be happy.
Mirai finds no hope in the angel's words as he had lost all happiness when his family died in a car accident several years ago. Knowing full well of his history, the angel chronicles the abuse and hardships he went through after the accident and gives him the hope to live. She claims that she can give him freedom in the form of Wings and love in the form of Angel Arrows, and asks him to choose between the two. Mirai is skeptical about this offer, but wisely asks for both objects.
The angel fulfills Mirai's demands and grants him with both the Wings and Arrows nonetheless, adding that it was only customary to decide between the two. She summons three glowing rings from her halo and bestows on him the angelic necklace and bracelets from where the Wings and Arrows will materialize. These rings are invisible to most humans, but are visible to those who have angels of their own.
Mirai uses his Wings
The angel sets Mirai down on a rooftop and urges him to activate his powers. His Wings emerge after reluctantly commanding them to appear, and he flies away at top speed. He flies to the top of a building and lands on top of a pyramid, where he meets the angel once again.
She asks him if he enjoyed flying and suggests to use the Wings and Arrows to escape from a robbery and manipulate people to his advantage. Taken aback, Mirai doubts her existence because of the gruesome proposal and sees her to be more fit as a demon rather than an angel. The angel disagrees with this and reasons that he has never seen a demon or one of her kind prior to meeting her, and calls the hearts of man the true demons, the same ones that reside within Mirai's aunt and uncle who had murdered for their own good.
The angel divulges the truth behind the car accident that took the lives of Mirai's family years ago: his aunt and uncle had planned to kill them but made it look like an accident to escape charges. Mirai becomes horrified and doubts the angel's claims, but he is influenced to fly back to his extended family's residence and use the Angel Arrows to verify the story.
Mirai meets his aunt in the living room and shoots her with an Arrow. She is quickly swayed by the Arrow's power and reveals that it was her husband who thought of killing the Kakehashi family, claiming that she had always been against the idea. Suddenly, her husband enters the room as she throws a rampage. She argues that he had persuaded her to obey his plans because her father owned an estate, which would naturally be inherited by her older brother. To have the estate to themselves, Mirai's uncle schemed to kill Mirai's father by tampering with the family car and setting off an explosion.
Mirai's aunt kills herself
Mirai recounts the moments leading up to the explosion while his uncle beats his aunt for revealing the truth. Amid the beating, she confesses that they adopted Mirai to have the insurance company pay them. Mirai falls to his knees after recalling their behavioral change after receiving the insurance payout. As his uncle chokes his aunt, Mirai believes that they should have died instead of his family, which causes his aunt to stab herself with a knife.
Mirai and his uncle watch in disbelief. Mirai freaks out about the Arrow's power after the angel tells him that he had instructed his aunt to kill herself on accident. His aunt dies before they can call an ambulance, and Mirai has an epiphany as the situation dawns on him; remembering his mother and her devotion to happiness, Mirai believes that he has to live to be happy.
The thirteen angels
In a flashback in the celestial realm, God instructs 13 handpicked angels to select one human each that will compete in becoming his replacement. God explains to the angels that, if their candidate is chosen to be God, they will be allowed to live comfortably alongside their selected candidate for eternity, and that they have 999 days for the competition. As the rest of the angels consider who to choose, Mirai's angel, "Nasse," excitedly begins her plans to bring Mirai happiness.
Back in the present, Nasse introduces herself to Mirai as his very own angel.
Characters in order of appearance[]
Trivia[]
- The song sung on the first page ("How fast time flies…") is the Japanese graduation song called "Aogeba Tōtoshi".
References[]
- ↑ Platinum End manga: Chapter 1 (p. 3)