Is the story in Owari no Seraph good? Heard it's just your average shonen manga.
Thank you for the question, anon! Owari no Seraph is not just “your average shonen manga” it’s THE AVERAGE SHONEN MANGA, it is every single average shonen manga ever combined into one and that’s why I love it. I might as well turn this into a reccomendation post to answer your question.
You Should Read Owari no Seraph
Owari no Seraph is like several different shonen manga sewn together in a horrible frankenstein’s monster, but once again as I often say on this blog tropes are not bad things. They’re all about the execution. Owari no Seraph is like, one of five exorcism/demon fighting manga published by shueisha right now (Chainsawman, Kimetsu no Yaiba, Jujutsu Kaisen, Ao no Exorcist, Owari no Seraph). It stands out by raising the stakes as high as they can possibly go, it has no reservations at all over the fact that it’s a tropey, pulp, nightmare. It knows exactly what it is and just tells it’s story anyway.
So here are a few things I like about the manga that make me want to reccomend it.
1. The World
The worldbuilding of Owari no Seraph sounds like it was made up on the spot. This is coming from someone who has read the entire manga through twice, and every single english translation available of the spinoff novels. It basically goes like this, there are exorcists who fight demons with magical swords. Then there are vampires but they’re way too strong for an exorcist to ever defeat. Demons are former humans, or maybe former vampires. Eventually the exorcists learn to put demons in swords and allow them to possess you. The world ends because of things called seraphs which are children that were experimented on to turn them into angels to call the end of the world.
It’s basically a mythology where every single supernatural creature exists simulatenously. It reminds me a lot of the Buffy mythos, where all sorts of supernatural creatures exist and vampires sort of just reign supreme as the strongest.
While it is kind of a mess, it works well for the story. It basically creates a world where literally everything is out to kill humans, and the humans themselves can just barely fight back. It makes humans seem even more smaller and insignificant in the world they are inhabiting because there are just so many types of magical creatures that are infinitely stronger than them.
What I love about the exorcists in this manga is how physically weak they are. Literally no matter what desperate strategy they pull, even if they are a once in a generation genius, or from some kind of chosen bloodline, every single character in the manga is desperate to survive at any time. No victory is ever achieved without tons of losses. The characters backs are perpetually against the wall.
The exorcists really do come off like underdogs just trying to survive the extinction of humanity, because the world of magic is just so overwhelming and unknowable to the human characters. It’s like if the world exploded and every single fantasy creature came to life at once, and they all hated humans and wanted to stamp them out.
Another thing I like about the vampires is that they’re not X Men. Sometimes when writing vampires authors just make them X Men, as in rather than being vampires themselves they just all have some kind of mutant power like flame conjuring or shapeshifting. The vampires are at the top of the hierarchy in this world because of their sheer strength alone, each one of them is a powerhouse of raw strength.
2. Yuichiro Hyakuya
Yu’s character is interesting because it’s so weird and offputting but only if you read far enough in the manga to realize why. Yu’s attitude is something that is eventually deconstructed to horrifying effect much later on in the manga. People often call him a boring shonen protagonist who only cares about fighting and friendship, but to me he’s always been more like Gon. That is a deconstruction of the “Pure-Hearted Hero” protagonist.
Yuichiro tends to naturally attract people around him, especially damaged and lost people because of how accepting and trusting he is. The problem is Yu is able to accept everything because you get the sense that he doesn’t care. He just doesn’t even think about or consider the consequences of his actions at all, or even how his actions will affect other people.
Yu cares about the people he considers family and that’s it. The rest of the world might as well not even exist. And this is never once framed as a good trait. Yu just doesn’t think at all before he does something, and it’s not even him being stupid it’s him being suicidally reckless. He just kind of assumes that if he wants it everything should work out in his favor.
It’s gotten to the point where people around him are constantly bringing up the consequences of some of the reckless things he wants to try and he just shrugs it off. Somebody warns him reviving the dead is a bad idea, and he just says “but I want my family back.” He trusts and allies himself with complete enemies if he thinks it can return his loved ones to him.
Yu doesn’t actually trust anyone. He just has the part of his brain where he distrusts people completely shut off. His complete and total blind faith in people ends up becoming a bad trait because as much as it brings his comrades closer to him, you get the sense that he just doesn’t care what happens in the end. As the manga progresses what seems like a typically all loving hero just becomes more and more distant from other people. The fact that he trusts without question is presented as something that makes him seem inhuman.
3. Shinoa Hiragi
Owari no Seraph is one fo the few manga where the female of the main character trio is just as connected and important to the plot as the two boys. Shinoa’s arc about learning to love and trust people also works because she was raised in a family with no love at all that only ever saw her as a tool.
Shinoa is probably the most complex of the main three characters because she engages with everyone behind a mask, but she’s also not a perfect actress. What’s great about her is that she’s flawed, she’s kind of a mess. Unlike her older sister who can manipulate anyone flawlessly, Shinoa is much more human behind the mask and has a difficult time repressing it.
Shinoa’s arc is as central to the story as Yu’s. However she’s also his opposite and a good complement to him because while Yu is wild and reckless Shinoa is reserved and overly cautious. It’s not a fear of being weak in the same way Yu is afraid to be weak, what Shinoa fears is being out of control. However because she’s not the genius her sister is for Shinoa she only ever really has the illusion of control over situations.
It’s a female character where basically the entire conflict of her character revolves around her agency, and trying to be her own person separate from her sister. Which is so rare for female characters to be that well developed and present such an interesting conflict. Which is another thing I likie about ONS, it’s a mishmash of tropes but it always uses those tropes very smartly. She fits in so well with the series because basically everyone in the series knows they’re already doomed and we see how each of them cope with it and struggle against it.
4. Guren Ichinose
Guren is hands down not only the most complicated character in the series, and also one of the best mentor characters of all time, he’s also where the excellent moral ambiguity of the series itself shines the brightest. Guren is basically the second protagonist of the series at this point because he has his own light novel spinoff and is just as important to the plot as Yu.
What makes Guren compelling is that he’s not a bad guy at all, but he ends up committing some of the worst deeds in the manga. It once again solidifies the theme that life is more complex than bad people do bad things, sometimes in fact good people do a bad. Guren is great because he’s always one person who is basically struggling against the whole world, and sometimes you get the sense he wants to destroy it because that’s the only way he can throw his burdens off of him.
But at the same time, this cold blooded guy whose constantly doing terrible things, and is desperate and hungry for power really is just a person who wants his friends to be safe and happy. Guren is someone whose lost literally everything to an uncaring world, his family, his close friends, his lover, he’s also been kicked on and stamped down his entire life. You understand why Guren would end up becoming such a selfish person because literally the world has always told him that he doesn’t deserve to be in it, he’s not a part of this story.
It’s like the struggling of a side character whose not even involved in the plot forcing their way in and trying to be the main character. Guren is so much weaker than everything around him, but he’ll keep fighting. And it’s amazing when Guren does literally every single thing, sacrifices everything, throws away everything and then he still fails in the end. That’s what makes his character compelling because he never gets what he wants no matter how desperately he struggles but he still keeps on fighting.
His foiling with Yu is also incredible, and you get the sense that Guren is a worse person because he actually cares about things unlike Yu who is so reckless and doesn’t even think about the consequences of his actions.
5. The Conflict
Here’s how the manga starts. The world ends. You’ve been enslaved for several years by vampires that suck your blood. You finally escape but all of your family that was introduced died in the first chapter.
It’s overload but yet, Owari no Seraph always manages to keep these stakes consistent. It’s a manga that actually feels like the characters are struggling at the end of the world. Literally every single person there is past the point of no return in one way or another, and yet they keep fighting.
Which is what makes every fight fresh and compelling to read. Because the main characters don’t even win that often, or if they do win it’s a minor victory that’s evened out later by some loss. Every battle is for survival, not gaining territory. Which really helps along the themes of the story as well to create this picture of a severely broken world, where individual people are all desperate to band together to survive.
The story itself also never grows stale or stagnant because things are constantly developing and changing around. You never feel one arc drags on too long. Because every single faction is just trying to survive, enemies from yesterday will become allies today and you end up getting to understand the perspective of each faction.
If you can get past the premise, the manga is actually pretty grounded. Most of the emotional stakes comes from the connection between the characters and the fear of losing them, and that’s the primary focus of the story. It’s about inhuman tragedy and circumstances, and a world that’s so fantastical it’s almost impossible to believe, but there are humans still in the middle of it trying to survive and live even though their lives are insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
