ANIME: Owari no Seraph // Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign (2015)

  Disclaimer: Spoilers of the series Owari no Seraph, but only after the warning. I've never read the manga so all of this is just my opinion based on my experiences watching the anime. I hope you enjoy!

• Studio: Wit Studio
• Source: Owari no Seraph (manga by Yamamoto Yamato, Kagami Takaya and Furuya Daisuke)
• Episodes: 12
• Genres: Action, Military, Supernatural, Drama, Vampire, Shounen

Summary:With the appearance of a mysterious virus that kills everyone above the age of 13, mankind becomes enslaved by previously hidden, power-hungry vampires who emerge in order to subjugate society with the promise of protecting the survivors, in exchange for donations of their blood.

Among these survivors are Yuuichirou and Mikaela Hyakuya, two young boys who are taken captive from an orphanage, along with other children whom they consider family. Discontent with being treated like livestock under the vampires' cruel reign, Mikaela hatches a rebellious escape plan that is ultimately doomed to fail. The only survivor to come out on the other side is Yuuichirou, who is found by the Moon Demon Company, a military unit dedicated to exterminating the vampires in Japan.

Many years later, now a member of the Japanese Imperial Demon Army, Yuuichirou is determined to take revenge on the creatures that slaughtered his family, but at what cost?

Owari no Seraph is a post-apocalyptic supernatural shounen anime that follows a young man's search for retribution, all the while battling for friendship and loyalty against seemingly impossible odds.

(from My Anime List)

Intro and Short Review

At the time I was beginning to watch anime "seriously", Owari no Seraph was very popular. It had just been released and that weird mix of fantasy and sci-fi was being well received by my peers. At the time, I was mostly interested in long animes like Naruto and Bleach, so I paid no mind to what people suggested me. But then, after years of seeing it on my list, I've finally decided to give it a try.

I started Owari no Seraph expecting it to be just like Ao no Exorcist but a little worse: a mediocre shounen anime with a traumatized main character who may or may not be the Chosen One™ and lots of magic-based fights and cardboard cutouts for secondary characters. And oh boy did it deliver.

The worldbuilding is considerably vague, the characters are underdeveloped and copy-pasted from other popular anime and even the fight scenes were average. The story was all over the place, and couldn't even deliver properly the plot point which was the base of the whole anime: the interactions between the two brothers. The pacing is weird, there isn't any major climax point or plot twist that grabs your attention and honestly, they made such a poor attempt at hyping me up for the next season that I'm not even going to watch it.

Being completely sincere, you can find all of the positive aspects of Owari no Seraph in other titles, a lot of them without all of the mess you'll find here. Some people told me the manga was a lot better, and fleshed out everything the anime didn't, but I can't really confirm so read by your own risk. Owari no Seraph is not a horrible anime by any means, but it could also have been done soooo much better. 

I Don't really recommend watching it, unless you have VERY low standards or just want to watch something without thinking much about it. 

I will give Owari no Seraph a 5/10.

Warning! Spoilers below!

Characters 

I have mixed feelings about the characters of Owari no Seraph. While they definitely had more development than some other shounen I've watched, I don't really feel attached to any of them, except maybe Hiiragi Shinoa (mostly cause she's cute, though). I mean, that's kind of expected from a 12 episode anime, but I still feel like there's so much wasted potential.

Let's start with the main duo: the brothers Yuuichirou and Mikaela. While their past together at the vampire city is well defined, their development from there is so confusing. Yuuichirou is so unstable you can't even notice his develompment, if he actually did have one. During the greater part of the anime he acts like a complete asshole and a spoiled brat to everyone, but in random parts he acts like a normal human being for once, and it really breaks his character. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing bad in having duality whitin a character, it spurs great conflict actually, but it has to be well done, y'know. It just looks like Yuuichirou is a half baked character who conveniently does what is best when it's most needed, but reverts back to being immature the rest of the time. 

And don't even get me started with Mikaela. He had so much potential to be a badass while also being a complex character, an incognita that could have spiced up the conflict in the show. But he gets nothing. All we know is that he's now a vampire, has attachments to that goth lolita vampire princess, wants to see Yuuichirou again and hates everyone else. He's one of the main characters, for goodness' sake! I want to know more about him! I want to see more of him interacting with others, more of his ambitions and plans, more of his past after turning into a vampire, not just random shots of him being cold and mysterious! I do enjoy mysterious characters, but if you don't end up doing something with them they just appear shallow, and it's very hard to sympathize with them. If they had cut out some of the unnecessary flashbacks and showed a bit more of Mika, the last episodes would have been a lot more emotional, in my opinion.

The secondary characters weren't as bad as I thought they would be, but that doesn't mean they were good either. They were just bland copies of overused anime tropes. We have the meek boy that looks too weak to be there; the mischievous but kind girl that helps the MC; the bad boy who's a covert softie; the small and feisty girl that falls in love with the MC; the strong and cool senior and the classical vampire lord, to name a few. At least some of them were able to break those stereotypes a bit, specially Hiiragi Shinoa and Ichinose Guren.

Shinoa was a sight for sore eyes. It's not like she was a groundbreaking character with a clever twist or something, but out of the main bunch she was by far the most fun to watch. She can be badass without being cold hearted, level-headed without being boring, and in the end she's still a lot more in-character than Yuuichirou. She also has ties to what looks like an important family to the story, so I hope she gets more development in the future. She ended up being used mostly as a guide to the protagonist, and that's a shame, but she's still my favorite character of the anime.

Guren was a welcome surprise. At first I thought he would be a clone of Roy Mustang from Fullmetal Alchemist, so I wasn't expecting much of him. Don't get me wrong, I love Mustang and his goofy but ambitious personality, but it's not everyone that can pull that off without ending up boring. But Guren is a brat, and I loved it. He did whatever he wanted to, was an arrogant and sometimes overconfident asshole, but we could also see that he was serious about his job and position when it mattered. He also seems to carry some secrets we did not get to see in this first season, so I got really curious to see what he would do. It's not like I got to see a lot of him, but I think they made some sort of prequel in which he's the main character so that's nice I guess.

Story and Worldbuilding 

...It's kind of a mess. I admit that the premise about the whole "vampires vs humans" thing didn't really capture my attention since the beginning, but everything else was so surface level! There were so many questions left that could've been answered! And I'm not talking about boring exposition by a side character, I'm talking about actually good worldbuilding and storytelling (like One Piece, for example) where we can understand the little details by paying attention to the background. 

And by "questions" I don't mean the important ones that I'm sure will be explained more in other seasons (at least I hope they will), I'm talking about stuff like: how after four years the vampires still haven't enslaved all those human settlements everywhere? They aren't soldiers and they weren't being protected, so why just don't waltz in there and take everyone to vampire city or whatever? How these settlements survived in the first place? How the fuck people live without much protection in these places? What about the virus? Nobody said a thing about how strange it is that humans can still live in the surface, it just was completely brushed aside! Basically, there are a lot of things that on closer inspection look very convenient to the plot, but what else was I expecting from a second-rate anime, am I right?

The world in general is also kinda boring. We have vampire city, the most interesting location of the whole anime, some buildings occupied by human settlements or the military (I already forgot the name of the organization, I'm sorry), and the abandoned streets of what I assume is Tokyo, Japan. We have the typical sci-fi monsters that I have no idea where they came from to serve as an extra threat, and that's it. No other explanation or exposition. 

On a side note, what the hell is the deal with the school at the beginning? I mean, at least the anime is self aware, and we hear from Shinoa how weird it is to have a high school in the middle of the ruins of a abandoned city. But it still doesn't make any sense! Why create a normal school just to test children? If you stop to think about it, any other setting would have worked if you wanted to disguise a testing ground. Actually, a normal school would just be more weird! What was the deal with that basement with the weapons? Just, what? In the end it looked like it was a weird attempt at sticking to the "classroom" formula of some popular anime from that same time, but it just changed completely on the second half of the show.

Back to the plot, the most blatant mistake was the pacing. Honestly, who thought it would be a good idea to develop a complex story like this one in only 12 episodes? We have so little time to get to know the characters and everything that's happening, so every dramatic moment feels a lot blander than they could've been.

When we need the time to absorb everything that happened after a more dramatic or important scene, the anime is already dragging us to the next without even pausing. That part in the beginning where the kids try to escape vampire city? I was still trying to understand that everyone died and the show was already shoving new important characters instantly after. There were some weird cuts in those scenes too, and some flashbacks that were a bit out of place or too long. Overall, it looked like the anime lingered where it shouldn't and ignored moments where we needed the extra time.

The climax is very weak, and I didn't even notice it was happening until I was halfway through the episode. The last battle between the humans and the vampires was so cliché, as was the reveal that "omg the main character actually has a hidden power that is very scary and he can't control!!! Who would've thought?". Like, really? Of course they had to rely on the safe "hidden dark power" trope to make their protagonist interesting, instead of just developing him or Mikaela a bit more. Of course. Didn't even know what I was expecting.

And when the last episode came around, I was already so bored of watching this anime that I didn't even had the energy to be disappointed. They really used a whole episode to hype us up to the next season, but they didn't resolve shit. The anime ended where it started, with the only progress being that 1. Yuuichirou knows Mikaela is alive 2. Yuuichirou has friends and 3. There's a lot more happening behind the scenes. Nobody really developed past the very superficial stuff, the story didn't have much going on besides a war, we explored only the surface of the world of Owari no Seraph and I was left feeling unsatisfied.

Technical Details and Final Thoughts

Admittedly, the animation is very pretty. The overall vibe of the anime is not so bad, with the contrasting colors of the vampires and humans making some good shots. I like the design of the characters and 

With a composer like Hiroyuki Sawano (the guy from Attack on Titan) it's obvious that the soundtrack is beautiful. It's a shame that the anime doesn't make use of it like it should've, but I really recommend listening to some of the songs even if you don't want to watch the show. The tracks are very emotional and, dare I say, sometimes capture better the whole vibe of Owari no Seraph than the actual anime.

Now, the animation of opening and ending is very generic. In the former, you have the basic shots that every shounen LOVES to use showcasing the main cast, some shallow symbolism and some random battle scenes. As for the latter, it's just some static shots of the characters in a gloomy mood. The usual. But the music... I loved it. 

I'm very passionate about music in all types of media, and fiercely defend the concept of using sound to improve the viewer's experience while watching something. And both the opening and the ending themes just capture beautifully the emotion that should've been fleshed out more in the characters. The opening theme, X.U., is energetic and dramatic, with lyrics that sound almost like Yuuichirou talking to Mikaela, while the opposite happens in the ending, called scaPEGoat. They're both composed by Hiroyuki Sawano, so that's a nice bonus too. 

In the end, it's a shame that Owari no Seraph treated it's plot like that. It had a good start with nice animation and soundtrack, and the story wasn't that original but had some potential. If it had been a bit longer or a bit more well executed, I'm sure it could've been a very interesting anime.