“Seraph of the End – Vampire Reign” has the potential of being an awesome manga series but it does have a banal storyline that we have seen before on other manga series. But I’m sure by volume 2, we should start to see the storyline and its characters to be more established and things to become more exciting and action-packed in the near future. An exciting and enjoyable manga series so far!
© 2012 Takaya Kagami, Yamato Yamamoto, Daisuke Furuya. All Rights Reserved.
MANGA TITLE: Seraph of the End – Vampire Reign Vol. 1
STORY AND ART BY:Â Story by Takaya Kagami, Art by Yamato Yamamoto, Storyboards by Daisuke Furuya
FIRST PUBLISHED IN JAPAN: SHUEISHA, Inc.
PUBLISHED IN USA BY: VIZ Media, LLC/Shonen Jump Manga
RATED: T for Older Teen
RELEASE DATE: June 3, 2014
After a catastrophic epidemic kills every adult on earth, vampires arise from the shadows to enslave the remaining human population. Yuichiro and his friends are kept as vampire fodder in a creepy institution masquerading as an orphanage. One day, Yuichiro’s dreams of fighting back are realized when the orphans stage a daring escape. But things go horribly wrong, and his dream is kept alive at a cruel price.
In 2012, mangaka Takaya Kagami (“The Legend of the Legendary Heroes”), artist Yamato Yamamoto (“Kure-nai”, “Denpa Tei na Kanojo”) and storyboard artist Daisuke Furuya teamed up to work on the dark fantasy manga series “Owari no Serafu”.
The series which has a total of six tankobon volumes released in Japan, has been released in the U.S. courtesy of Viz Media with the title “Seraph of the End – Vampire Reign”.
“Seraph of the End” begins with an introduction of how an unknown virus brought the world to a sudden end. Only children under 13-years-old survived and those children were enslaved by vampires.
The story introduces us to an impulsive boy named Yuichiro Hyakuya who wants nothing more but to kill vampires. But his friend Mikaela Hyakuya is a boy who is more levelheaded and tries to get his friend to think straight and know they are not powerful enough to defeat them.
For Yuichiro, he wants nothing more but his fellow friends to escape captivity from the underground city of Sanguinem and reach the outside.
And one day, all of them decide to make their escape…but will they be successful?
The first volume of “Seraph of the End – Vampire Reign” is a dark fantasy manga series that was rather enjoyable as the storyline featured children living underground as slaves of vampires. Literally, as cattle that they can feed upon.
Wanting nothing more but to escape the vampires even though they are not powerful, the main protagonist Yuiichiro is your typical headstrong teen who desires nothing more but to defeat them but desperately wants the power to do so.
While I do not want to spoil this first volume (as you can’t discuss the second half without spoiling the first half), I will say that the series is strong on action, but also on humor as Yuiichiro is hard-headed and wants to jump from A to B in order to learn the tactics needed in defeating the vampires.
And of course, you are left with a significant twist right at the end.
The storyline had me feel there was similarities to a series such as “Attack on Titan”, as the young main character has wanted nothing much but to defeat the giant titans, one can see the same with “Seraph of the End”. While the second half the storyline reminded me of “Blue Exorcist”. By no means is the series a copycat of the two, but there are similarities and I can only hope that by volume two the series starts to stand on its own.
But there is quite a bit of potential that leaved me wanting to read more after I was done with the first volume.
The storyline by Takaya Kagami is enjoyable, humorous and it has its dark, violent moments that easily drives up the ratings to “Older Teen” but for the most part, it’s not a horror manga series, nor is it too dark that it’s twisted or scary partly because of the comedy due to its hardheaded protagonist.
The artwork by Yamato Yamamoto is well-done and characters are very expressive.
But this first volume is primarily an introduction to the world that Yuuichiro had to endure and also the introduction of many characters who I expect to see more throughout the series.
Overall, “Seraph of the End – Vampire Reign” has the potential of being an awesome manga series but it does have a banal storyline that we have seen before on other manga series. But I’m sure by volume 2, we should start to see the storyline and its characters to be more established and things to become more exciting and action-packed in the near future.
An exciting and enjoyable manga series so far!