Review of Seraph of the End: Battle in Nagoya

This anime Characters (1/10): OMG! Has there ever been a group of characters more clique than these guys, the MC is a pain up the backside. He is so selfish, inconsiderate and impulsive its mind-numbing. A complete waste of space who you don't care about and don't want to route for the need to focus attention on him often means not being able to spend time on the other interesting elements in the story. While said elements are underdeveloped, part of the reason for this could well be the refusal of the series to allow us to leave the MC for an extended period of timeto catch up with other characters in a meaningful way.

Shinoa, AHHHH! She held so much promise in the first season, she was spunky, sarcastic, I liked her purple hair. This season she becomes a complete damsel in distress. I swear she did not use her weapon more than once this entire season. Every time she is about to defend herself the MC swoops in and saves her, HOW IS THAT FUCKING POSSIBLE? She has been in the Demon Army WAY LONGER THAN HIM, and yet she is completely incapable of defending herself! The other blonde chick whose name I can't remember is just useless and another girl whose crazy for the MC.

Shihō Kimizuki's personality while somewhat different is still to close to that of the main character's to warrant him a place in this anime. We already have one hot headed guy with a sibling who they deeply care but are separated from, we don't need another. If giving them similar backstories was used to get them to relate to one and other and stop fighting it has been done in such an lame way that its not even worth giving credit to.

Not talking about the brown haired dude, he does nothing as is of no importance, end of discussion.

The other two squads are boring as hell, I have no idea who they are and what their purpose is so I can't even really tell you about them or evaluate them.

Mikaela Hyakuya: The issue with this character is that he was created in relation to the personality of the MC and hence does not have any uniqueness to his character. All the traits which the MC has this guy, his adopted brother of sorts does not have. This obsession on the part of the creators for the two to be polar opposites at all times greatly limits the scope for character development. Its just a theory but one reason the MC never becomes as mature and logical as we would like him to be is because Mikaela in the creators eye's already fulfils this role and hence to have the MC gain such attributes to such an extent that no longer depends on Mikaela as much as he does would bring down the story. This of course is a load of bullshit. Negative and emotionless Mikaela is just annoying and someone who like the MC in fact does not want to seem to see what is right in front of him and face it head on. In fact he would much rather run away which he mentions multiple times to the MC. The situation however is that the conflict which they are both engulfed in makes this impossible. Also when your at war and you want to save those who love, man up, drink the blood and go full vampire!

Fetid Bathory: A character who I feel has potential but this is not reached through the duration of the show. In my opinion he goes from being an arsehole who is just messing around to someone who does in fact have a multi-layered plan to achieve his aims. As we have no idea as to his motivations however and we don't get to see him concocting his schemes this part of the narrative is not as engaging as it should be. I will however say that his walk is ON POINT. If he never gets kicked out of the army he needs to get himself on the catwalks of Paris. If you where heels or want to, get a notepad and learn something from this guy.

Guren Ichinose: Positive first shall we? I love his demon mode. Over the past two seasons this is a man who its clear is holding back when it comes to facing his enemies. To see him at full strength and let go of his inhibitions was great to see. Also unlike the Seraph transformation I am glad that his human and demon selfs look pretty much exactly the same excluding the eyes. I think a monster who looks like a man is always more frighting than whatever the seraphs are meant to be. Like all the cast he suffers from lack of character development. Out of all the characters however he is the most well rounded I feel and if it were up to me I would much rather have had this story be told from his perspective rather than the MC's.

FINAL POINT. WHY IS ANYONE IN THIS ANIME EVEN FIGHTING? On both sides no one really seems to care if there side wins (they don't act in a way that would help anyway) and if they do they way in which they go about it is sneaky and downright inhumane so you can't even admire them for it. Everyone in this anime seems to be focused on something other than ensuring victory for their cause. By the end of the season most of the characters who did once care about beating the other side to a pulp (MC etc) no longer put that at the top of their priorities. Those who are still actively fighting for one side doing it because they have an ulterior motive, because their power hungry or because they have nothing better to do and warfare is all they know even if they can't stand it. As you can imagine because they don't care you don't care and the stakes feel non-existent. When your watching an anime about a war in a post apocalyptic world with two sides fighting for survival and you don't care who wins, you know there's a problem.

Art: The art is solid in this anime however there are a few things in the character design I take issue with. First why do all the buildings look the same? I admit I have never been to Japan but the characters do cover significant ground in this season hence I don't understand how one part of the city can look the exact same as another.

Story: WTF happened this season? This story was messy and all over the place, to be honset I cannot even tell you what happened. The pacing was so poor I skipped masses of minutes in episodes, and yes I can tell review this anime having done that because even if you don't watch about 2/3 of this anime the story STAYS THE SAME. Tons of filler with people standing around talking, often in the middle of battle. I often forgot there was even a war going on. Furthermore while this season was based around a campaign that was sold as having significance to the war against vampires overall this ramifications of Demon's Army's Plan was not made apparent until the very last episode. There was no buildup whatsoever, the preceding episodes were completely devoid of tension.

Enjoyment: I hated this anime. I don't even know why I watched it, the first season made it appear as if this anime was going somewhere interesting and then this season just let me down completely. You will stare at your computer screen asking WTF AM I WATCHING THIS?! If your like me and have only been fully committed to anime for the last few years (3 for me) and still have alto of classics to get through like I do then don't watch this, there are way better this both old and recent than this. Heck if your a sane human being don't watch this! Its not anime but if I wanna see the two brothers, one crazy, overpowered and reckless as fuck and the other tormented, classy and controlled go through thick and thin I'll watch The Originals.

Final Score: (2/10)

P.S: I did not go into all the areas of this anime because its so bad and the more I write the more I relieve it. I hope I gave you enough reasons TO NEVER WATCH THIS ANIME! Also I gave this anime a 4 which I now note is to high and will be changing ASAP.