Owari no Seraph - Nagoja kessen hen

The main protagonist still cannot argue using any other concepts than "family" and "friendship," there are literally countless characters this time, and the assumption that Yuu and Mika are deeply in love with each other becomes almost a certainty. Occasionally, the story is rushed, at other times an entire episode consists of meaningless dialogue. And I am watching every new twist or perfectly animated action scene in fascination. Battle in Nagoya may not have the highest ambitions and I would not dare to argue with its disgruntled viewers, but it immediately stole my heart. The wait for the new season will be unbearable. (23/02/2016)

I am enjoying this anime series so far. Even though everyone at the beginning makes it seem like Yuichiro Hyakuya's transformation has not happened at all, they are tiptoeing around him. They do this even though the main male protagonist keeps going on and on about how he has to save his "boyfriend" and it wears rather thin and gets boring. The first episode with the interrogation seemed weird to me, yet it still went on despite all that. The atmosphere of the show is good, the secrets I want to know are there too, and the male protagonists got new abilities that are not as impressive as something like Bankai, although I find them interesting. I am also a little disappointed at times, like when you expect an epic battle with a demon and instead the hero just talks him down like the song "I would like to be more than just a friend." Sure, there is a lot of hype around this show, like Tokyo Ghoul, and even I got drunk on the action scenes. Objectively it is rather average; however, since I am still enjoying it so far, I think it deserves four stars, mainly because I am waiting for that Battle in Nagoya to break out and for it to be epic. EDIT: I just finished watching it, and my feelings are very mixed. I expected it to be epic; I expected it to be compelling, although I also expected it to make some kind of sense. The first two episodes were pretty good; the last few episodes had a pretty decent atmosphere and a bunch of interesting scenes that I liked; however, unfortunately, I did not really get quite a few things that happened. In other words, the conclusion was very rushed, the twists were strange, and very little was explained, leaving me asking a lot of questions; however, the narrative did not seem to dwell on them at all. So, thanks to all the things I had to think about because the anime's creators had not been able to explain them yet, or that I probably did not get right, I did not enjoy it in the end. So I am going to wait for the next season, and maybe I am going to learn something finally, and it will start to make sense; however, so far, it is just a very pretty action-packed mess. Because of the confusion and the feeling that stuff remains unfinished, and they did not reveal much of the narrative or provide explanations, I have to lower my impression of this show to better than average. 6/10. (17/10/2015)

If anyone desires to know what screenwriting cluelessness and confusion looks like, I can highly recommend they watch the second season of Seraph of the End. Not that my expectations after the first season were all that high – I started out watching the second season purely out of interest to see if the production company had by any chance managed to muster up a little more inventiveness, and make this most audience-pleasing blend of well-known shōnen tropes a work of its own – but I was really not expecting the kind of creative constipation that I got here. For the first nine episodes, absolutely nothing happens, the plot goes absolutely nowhere; and only generic filler is thrown in the audience’s face. This consists of frenzied chatter, training and minor fights, or fights with no real consequence, only to have the production company build up the plot to an insanely breakneck speed at the end in the last three episodes. Those episodes then try to cram in as many events as possible, which do finally move the plot forward, however, on the other hand, without making any real sense. Maybe the producers were trying to make the audience all the more eager to switch to the manga (conveniently, they are caught up to the last chapter here), to find out what the show was actually supposed to be. With such an approach, the audience would have probably had a heart-attack when, after watching the last episode, they realized that shit, there had actually been much more the production company had had to work with. Sometimes, on the other hand, the audience could have been amused: the interaction between the main hero and his friend seems pathetically ridiculous, even though they could suspect that might have been the intention of the production company all along. Then again, sometimes they might have realized that not all of the aspects of a show aimed at the widest possible audience have yet been fulfilled: and this is when they get introduced to two new very feminine, very well-endowed characters. The level of drawing, animation and soundtrack then appears to be back to more or less the same level as the first season. At the end of this season however, this reviewer might bitterly lament and throw a fit at the producers, even if subconsciously he knows that when the third season arrives, he, like a lamb to the slaughter, would blindly eat it up, so he ends up giving it a strong one star. (26/12/2015)