Yes, let’s announce it to the whole world. That sounds like a fabulous idea.
— Yuichiro is a hotheaded boor, remember? So he charges ahead by himself. To be fair, MItsuba did pretty much give them away. May as well get a jump on the enemy now, right?
— What a badass. I like that the cut in the vampire is just like this tear in the fabric of reality as opposed to an actual wound.
— When Mitsuba goes to slap the guy, however, he suddenly pulls her closer to him! W-what are you doing, baka?!
It turns out there was a vampire behind her, which none of their friends decided to call out or warn them about. Or maybe the vampire was just that good at sneaking up on them, and only Yuichiro could see it. Who even knows anymore! Anyway, this time, he cuts the vampire like it was nothing more than curtains. No blood or anything.
— What power? He took a sharp knife to some curtains!
— Hurr hurr.
— Soon, however, they get ambushed by a lot of vampires. It turns out the loli from last week’s episode had fed them incorrect information. Oh dear…
— Mitsuba gets caught, and she isn’t about to let her squad make the same mistake she made! But of course, we’re all true tomodachis here, so Yuichiro takes all sorts of punishment to fight his way to the tsuntsun girl.
I know I’m about to die and everything but… *blush*
— The lead vampire just dies. He doesn’t even do anything. It’s curious. These vampires seem so ineffective. They just look fabulous and pick on little kids. Anyway, none of these vampires put up a fight, and the story just handwaves it off. Oh, they have second-tier weapons, so yeah, uh, of course they’re weak! It’s just too bad this is the laziest storytelling possible. It’s like when they first got here, our heroes saw all of the kids huddling in the tunnel even though they could clearly make a run for it. So why don’t they? Well, it’s because there are monsters outside! Duh! Execution-wise, however, we’ve barely seen any monsters. Like two? Three? In fact, the outside world always looks relatively calm whenever we see it. The story can’t paint a proper picture for us whatsoever. Like most anime series out there, it builds its world by simply having the characters prattle on and on as they walk through some boring-looking tunnel. These underground stations, therefore, are just modern caves.
— *blush*
— With that, the mission is a success. Loli shows up to see if her family. She also apologizes for betraying Yuichiro and his friends. He, of course, readily forgives her. Boring, really. He’s hot-headed and reckless, but he turns into a saint around a loli? The characterization can’t even be interesting in that regard. After all, being hot-headed isn’t even a weakness when nothing comes of it. This was a perfect opportunity here for the guy to irrationally rage at the girl for risking his friends’ lives, thereby forcing someone to hold him back or something… but no, Yuichiro is only hot-headed in theory. He’s still, like every anime protagonist ever, virtually perfect in every way.
— Shinoa decides that now is a good time to tell Mitsuba all about our hero’s childhood. And we try to play it up like this big tragedy. Like Yuichiro had a dark past because he abandon his family! But we all watched that first episode. We all saw how they all pretty much died before he could even leave. So why is the anime fronting?
— We skip forward in the timeline to see Shiho hotwiring a car, an act which leaves Yuichiro quite hot and bothered:
But he’s not the only one…
Baka, anyone can hotwire a car!
— Some pointless hijinks follow. Yuichiro tries to drive the car anyway when he clearly can’t. I don’t really know what the anime is trying to be. An action anime? Some hopeless struggle against vampires and monsters? Or some wacky, stupid comedy?
— On their way to Shinjuku, they see plumes of black smoke pilfering away at the clear, blue sky. In front of them stands a single vampire…
…just chilling in the middle of nowhere, I guess. And they’re always looking down. One guy did it once, and we thought it looked cool. Now every fucker does it even when he has nothing to look at. Of course, he’s here so that our heroes can have some encounter with him. But it’s so inorganically executed that it’s laughable. Just some dude dicking around for no reason. Oh good, someone happened to drive by!
— This guy has a first-tier weapon, so he’s automatically stronger! Uh-huh, uh-huh!
— In fact, don’t move period!
— Damn it, protagonist! Didn’t you hear what I said? They want to make it seem like all the military protocol is just holding our hero back, and sure, this is a pretty common trope in storytelling. But none of the orders being barked out here even make sense. Like don’t break formation even though they’re often just walking in a straight horizontal line.
— The vampire is quickly joined by two other vampires. Like they were just waiting to step in.
— But of course, the guy who was just wasting his time in the middle of nowhere now suddenly has to urgently report to the frontline. That’s right. He’s supposedly so much stronger than these kids that he and his two helpers can just take them out in… what? Maybe half an hour? But no, we gotta get to the frontline noooooow.
— B-but I want to kill the bloodsucker nooooooooow!
— Anyway, I gotta wake up at 4AM tomorrow, so that’ll do it for tonight. Still feeling pretty sick. I’ll catch up on the rest of the weekend shows soon, though.
Filed under: Anime, Owari no Seraph, Series Tagged: Anime, Owari no Seraph
