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| Overall | Art | Animation | Character Design | Music | Series Story | Episode Story | Reviewer | |
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| Watch | 7 | 5 | 7 | 7 | 5 | 5 |
 Ggultra2764
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[series:3029#1552] |
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Seraph of the End had quite a bit typical of its shounen manga roots in focusing on a post-apocalyptic future where humans and vampires are at war with one another. Elements such as a short-fused male lead seeking revenge and having a superpowered evil side, vampires thinking they are superior to humanity, ulterior motives among both factions, male characters behaving like they think they are badasses, and so forth are nothing new within this series and the first half got a bit tough to plow through thanks to many of the characters being absolutely unlikable with their character types and motives. Also for a series that is fixated on vampire-hunting action, the animation for this is rather underwhelming with frequent use of animation shortcuts and action sequences not being too engaging as a result. While I don't mind seeing any vampire action for anime, Seraph of the End is a bit too generic with what it has to offer up.
Last updated Monday, November 21 2016. Created Monday, November 21 2016. | ||||||||
| Unevaluated |
 Stretch
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[series:3029#628] | ||||||
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(All episodes watched): The first episode of Seraph seemed a little confusing and unfocused--it took awhile before it was revealed that the hooded bad guys were vampires, for instance. I was impatient and skeptical early on, but became fairly interested in the story as it proceeded, even though it could have been told in a more exciting and shocking manner than it was. The vampires could have been made more despicable than they were; they seemed much like monks early on. I guess what I liked was the fairly unusual premise of children being enslaved by vampires--nowadays Vampires are often sexy, cool anti-heroes rather than out-and-out villains. Usually they operate in hiding, picking off a person or two now and then, but here they have taken over a good sized chunk of Japan altogether. Main character Yuichiro is given a clear and understandable motivation for revenge after what the vampires do in this episode. I also liked the way vampires, while frightening and deadly, are by no means invincible--I hate it when nobody can so much as scratch them. I wouldn't mind seeing the vampires in an anime get wiped out altogether, and the way the episode ends suggests that this might just happen. So, while probably not brilliant, Seraph seems worth watching. Episode two left me thinking that this is a neat show which I am liking a good deal. Having reached the 'normal' world, Yuichiro makes a couple of new friends who also want to join the elite vampire extermination unit--in some ways, the plot of this show reminds me of Attack on Titan (but hopefully this show will do a better job of storytelling in the end). These people are given decent personalities via what they do and say, and as a result I can care about them. I got the feeling that this will be a dynamic series which tells an unpredictable and interesting story. As usual, beating the enemy seems to depend on mysterious, magical weapons--that's one element of the story that I am somewhat tired of, but whatever. Not surprisingly, judging from the OP sequence and the amount of development he got in the first episode, Mika, Yuichiro's friend from vampire land, is still alive. It looks like a tragic conflict between former best friends is building. The plot could be a little more focused; before episode four it occurred to me that I couldn't really remember much of what had happened in number three. Maybe I'm getting impatient for Yuu to get to work slaying vampires. Bizarre creatures, like a 'horseman of the apocalypse' sometimes show up and are never really explained; we are just supposed to accept them at face value, I guess. Yuu is impatient too, as he continues to accumulate a team of friends (sort of) and complete his training. The Imperial Demon Army which they want to join (because you have to make a deal with a demon to acquire a weapon capable of taking out vampires) has caught the attention of the vampire leaders, who are planning a counterattack. At this point the real story had barely begun, so it was hard to predict how good the show would be in the end. But I remained quite interested. I thought episode six, in which the new candidates must each make their deal with a demon, was pretty neat. The characters come to grips with the skeletons in their closets and undergo a sort of epiphany, and emerge reinvigorated and a good deal more developed. Most magical weaponry is cheap thrill nonsense, but here the right to use it has to be truly earned and as a result it is a good deal more believable. Afterwards, however, I couldn't help feeling impatient for the main conflict of the plot to get underway, namely Yuichiro discovering that Mika is still alive as a result of becoming a vampire. For now, the plot seems to be pussy-footing around minor missions, and whenever a fight with a major vampire seems imminent, some excuse comes up which cancels it. Like, 'you are not important enough for us to fight, so we'll fly away and do something else'. It frustrates me. And now it's the vampires who are flying helicopter gunships (and a C-130 Hercules transport plane)? And the good guys are using magical bows and arrows in defense? This is making very little sense and as a result I am getting tired of it. A vampire show has got to have something unconventional, since there are so many of them, but this is going a little too far. And what it doesn't have is a sense that maybe any of the good guys (or even any major bad guys) will get killed. Swordplay is lightning fast and the slightest lapse of concentration would surely mean death--unless the plot needs somebody to dodge a slice and grab their opponent, in which case they easily do. And whenever a blow lands on a significant character, somehow it's always the butt of a sword or a fist, not the blade itself. One excuse or another saves all notable characters from harm, while faceless, nameless ones are cut down wholesale. Fighters conveniently stand idle while one-on-one 'duels' take place--it would be impolite for them to interfere. But of course these duels never kill anybody. The smart-ass comments that characters make seem rather hollow when the characters seem like cheap actors in a poorly choreographed play. It gets annoying rather than exciting. The vampires just don't seem all that evil and frightening. Perhaps most frustrating, the pathetic battle in episode 11 didn't quite disappoint me enough to drop the series as a whole. Even though I knew that the odds were stacked heavily against me, I wanted to know what the deal is with Mika's apparently heartfelt claims that Yuu is being manipulated and the freaky superpower he discovers within him which even his demon sponsor doesn't control. And now angels seem to be intervening in an already confused and unfocused story? I bet it will all come to nothing, and the only result will be a waste of some more of my precious time on what is looking more and more like a mediocre series, but I can't quite give up yet. For awhile Seraph had seemed to have something neat and intriguing about it, but I have gradually grown pretty tired of it. Episode twelve sort of revived my interest when it unexpectedly leapt from combat with vampires to a new plotline about a program of human experimentation (of questionable morality) in the name of finding a way of defeating the vampires. But this turned out to be little more than a lengthy teaser, because apparently the series is finished until October and we won't learn any more about what's going on until then. The notion that angel-like creatures are in fact the result of human research seems more ridiculous than intriguing to me; my hopes that this anime will manage to patch an interesting story together are not high. Seraph is a show which had some neat touches but in general there was more low quality stuff than high. Should I drop it once and for all, or pick it up again this fall? I suspect that in the end the deciding factor will be the same one as made me watch this first season: if there is a shortage of really good anime this fall, I'll watch, and if there isn't, I won't. Last updated Sunday, March 27 2016. Created Thursday, April 09 2015. | ||||||||
