Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign (Volume 1) - The World of Blood Legacy

When humanity was devastated by a virus that killed everyone over thirteen, vampires came to the surface to safeguard their food source. After four years of giving blood, Yuichiro and Mikaela are ready to escape.

Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign (Volume 1) – The World of Blood Legacy

What happened?

Yuichiro had just joined an orphanage when the virus swept the world. He was already alone after his father tried to kill him and his mother had called him a demon. Now, he was stranded in the strange new world. As an eight-year-old, he was one of the older members of the orphanage, but even so, there was nothing they could do to resist the vampires. For the next four years, they lived in one of the vampire cities, giving blood as needed to feed the vampires.

That was until Mikaela managed to acquire a map and a gun from one of the vampire’s homes. With those items, they decided to escape there and then, taking all of their family with them. Unfortunately, the vampire he stole the map and gun from was waiting for them at the exit. He attacked, killing without mercy. Mikaela took the gun and charged the vampire, hoping to buy Yuichiro enough time to escape. One of them had to make it out or it was all for nothing.

Yuichiro did escape into the human world and was found by a member of the Japanese Imperial Demon Army and was offered a chance to hunt vampires. He jumped at the offer, but soon found himself in a high school where he was told to make a friend if he wished to proceed with his training. A friend? What did he need a friend for? He just wanted to kill vampires.

Seraph of the End Volume 1 The Vampires claim the children of the world

What did you think?

Almost four years ago, I had read up to volume fifteen of Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign. Since there are now twenty-five volumes and I’m diving back into manga, it seemed like a great chance to reread them and offer up some of my opinions on the series. There are a lot of twists and turns and I’m going to use my knowledge of the series to attempt to highlight some of the foreshadowings. First, though, I just want to say that I love the premise. The idea that the vampires would reveal themselves to safeguard their source of food was brilliant. There’s a lot of fun to be had with this idea.

All right, back to the foreshadowing and there’s quite a lot in this first volume. The fact that Guren Ichinose was waiting for Yuichiro to emerge from the vampire city should be a big sign that something isn’t quite as it seems. I liked that it was brushed off as a prophecy being fulfilled, as you can kind of ignore it. You’ll probably never remember that there was a prophecy soon so that worked nicely. The question you should be asking is why Guren was there and who told him to be there.

There was also the way Guren referred to Yuichiro as one of the lab rats from the Hyakuya Laboratories, the company that destroyed Japan! With everything going on, it would be easy to miss that, especially as it doesn’t really get brought up again for a while. Anyhow, it goes without saying that I enjoy this series, I’ve already read fifteen volumes. However, it has some issues. My main problem is Yuichiro and how much of a screaming shounen protagonist he is right now. He calms down, but at first, it’s annoying. I also felt like the impact of the death of his family was lessened because we had no reason to care for any of them. We only knew three by name… barely.