WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Platinum End Episode 21, "The Time For Talk," now streaming on Crunchyroll and Funimation.
The battle royale is over, replaced with a Death Note-style battle of wits, and Mirai doesn't stand a chance in an academic debate with the popular but troubled Professor Yoneda. In a way, Professor Yoneda is the new Metropoliman, especially where his grim view on God is concerned.
Yoneda and Mirai debate on what God even is and what God's role should be for humanity. While Mirai has hope for his and humanity's happiness with God, Yoneda declares that God must be stuck down so humanity can progress into the future without the baggage of faith in God. This controversial idea really gets some tongues wagging.
Professor Yoneda may remind Platinum End fans of the villainous Metropoliman to some degree, since they have radical ideas about God and even reject the traditional concept of God and faith. However, unlike Metropoliman, who wanted to reshape humanity with classist genocide, Professor Yoneda has deicide on his mind instead, and in Episode 21, he has the support of at least half the global population, including that of the Japanese prime minister. Metropoliman once resorted to the threat of terrorism to get what he wanted, while Professor Yoneda, being a cool and calculating academic, takes a different approach. And it's working. This is a threat unlike any that Mirai has ever faced, and Mirai appears unable to beat Yoneda at his own game.
Professor Yoneda's plan for deicide is for humanity's own good, as the professor puts it. He thinks that humanity is holding itself back by praying to and relying on a traditional concept of a God; humanity should progress into the future under its own power, without a patron God to hold the human race's hand. On one level, this is rather optimistic of Yoneda, who clearly has faith in humanity's prowess. Then again, Yoneda's plan to eliminate God will be a serious blow to pious people who rely on faith and prayer in their lives. But Yoneda doesn't care -- he believes it's a fair price to pay, and he can only see things his way. It won't be easy -- and it might not be possible -- for Mirai and his crew to talk Yoneda out of this.
Yoneda calls for the surviving God candidates and their allies to join him at the new national stadium, similar to when Metropoliman invited the candidates to join him at the Jinbo baseball stadium. Yoneda claims that he just wants to talk things out -- an idea that appeals to Mirai -- but it's a trap. Like Metro before him, Yoneda wants to slaughter every God candidate who accepts the invitation as part of his deicide plan. If no God candidate is elected, Godhood will go to the last man or woman standing by default. Yoneda, who wants no winner at all, has a plan to prevent that, and it involves the white arrows and the element of surprise.
Yoneda plans to kill Mirai, Temari and Saki with his white arrows, then have Shujin and himself shoot each other dead at the same time. This, in theory, will result in a draw and prevent the creation of a new parasitic God "creature." In a way, this makes Yoneda a martyr in his mind -- a supposedly selfless academic who will take his own life to set humanity on a self-sufficient, Godless path into the future. However, Mirai and his crew won't accept such an anticlimactic ending. Mirai wants a worthy winner to succeed God, whether it's Mirai himself or not. There must be a God to inspire the people, and even if God is a creature, deicide isn't the solution. It never was.
