I give. The curse is in full effect. Whenever I shotgun something without fail the same things happen, a series that is otherwise impressive will always come of extraordinarily dull. Owari no Seraph has amazing art, an amazing soundtrack, great acting, and an absurdly boring start. It’s episode 8 and I want to skip passed most of the episode to get to something interesting that for the most part never comes.
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I want to like this show! Really, I do! Everything about it is something I genuinely like and the plot is something I want to actually invest in. But we are 8 episodes in and the most interesting episode so far was the first one. The most interesting characters and premises are usually the things we see nothing about.
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I’m really tired of build up and no pay off. This episode they even go to exterminate vampires and it turns out to be more of a character badass moment than an actual fight. As usual Yu turns around to show he is the ultra badass of the group and Ugh. I really do not like the blonde tsundere in the show. So far her entire character has been being really rude to Yu, fawning over Yu, and thinking she knows best. Meanwhile she got herself into the worst situations and has had to be saved the most.
![[HorribleSubs] Seraph of the End - 08 [720p].mkv_20150523_142323.062](https://i0.wp.com/angryanimebitches.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/HorribleSubs-Seraph-of-the-End-08-720p.mkv_20150523_142323.062-1024x576.jpg?resize=720%2C405)
So far nothing about Owari has been anything but blandly beautiful. The most exciting parts are ones it feels like we will never see. The vampires seem mysterious but not in an interesting or appealing way because it feels like we never will actually see them. They decided to wage war and now instead of focusing on that interesting element we’re focused on the idiot brigade. We even learn there are other ways to fight vampires NOW in the heat of battle, shouldn’t they have been shoving some more of this into our brains before this?
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Bah, I want to like this story but so far I do not. I feel like it’s just dragging on and on and they have a long set of episodes in order to do it, but that doesn’t mean they should! It doesn’t make it more interesting! And I honestly feel like all these girls who are suddenly interested in Yu are forcing it for the sake of a het romance when the show has done way too good of a job shoving Yu and Mika into our faces in a way that is not possibly platonic.
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Bah. Shinoa was really cool as always, what little fighting we did see was awesome. We saw another vampire noble and see they’re way above the paygrade that normal vampires are. But can we just get there already? It doesn’t help that the last two episodes have very heavily focused on a character I have no interest in and that I think does nothing for the plot. It’s like Shinoa said, in this world there’s no one who hasn’t lost something precious. So I really don’t care what this girl has lost, especially when you keep shoving the flashbacks into my face over and over. Add on that it was just a superior and not say, your whole family or your friends, I really don’t feel for her like I do everyone else.
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Here’s hoping the show picks up. A lot.
Oki
I think I liked this episode the most of all. In fact, I think I like every episode more than the last, but it really hit me here because we had this blend of the past (both memories and knowledge coming in handy), Yuu’s original goal, finally fighting vampires for real, the team bonding and most of all… It feels like WAR now. Well, it feels like there’s a threat, or better said a milestone for our team, after seeing the power difference 😀
That said, you do make a good point about the pace, which I only wrote indirectly acknowledged when I typed my impression up earlier waiting eagerly for your post. It is only NOW that I feel the gravity of the war as a war, rather than a tragedy that’s befallen humanity alone… That was probably awkward to read, but I hope it made sense.
If they’re going to be where Gurren’s at, hopefully he can get the ball rolling and maybe scold them for being a bit slow about getting there as well, just as an indirect way of acknowledging the real life delay :3
I found this episode to be more interesting than all of the previous ones (except for the first one), but even then, I really can’t seem to feel anything for any of the characters except for Mikaela.
It’s weird because the setting is pretty end of the world, vampire takeover, no hope for humanity -esque, but the show really isn’t creating the proper mood at all. I feel no threat or urgency from the situation. Plus, in this episode particularly, there were so many awkward moments. I already think that a lot of the dialogue is rather cliche, but the fact that our little vampire extermination crew was surrounded by vampires and had type to talk about how they would destroy all the vampires with absolutely no reaction from the vampires was just plain weird. There was just way too much dialogue for a battle situation and they didn’t even include the fight (though I hear it was left out in the manga too).