#I'm gushiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing

[keets-writing-corner]

I need to guuuuuuuuuuuuuush

I’m absolutely obsessed with Owari No Seraph/Seraph of the End. It has everything I want in a story

okay this got long so I put a cut

A romance I’m actually invested in: 1) it’s gay, like not even ambiguously gay, like very explicitly gay and it’s remarkable 2) it’s somehow enemies to lovers, best friends to lovers, and childhood friends to lovers ALL AT THE SAME TIME 3) the mutual pining is ridiculous, but manifests in “I MUST PROTECT” 4) omg they’re so devoted to each other???? 5) heavily implied in the anime and manga that they are each other’s reason for living after their trauma

Ambiguous characters: 1) we’ve got not one, not two, BUT THREE HIGH RANKING CHARACTERS within their respective organizations with THEIR OWN AGENDAS, screw whoever gets in their way 2) one of the said lovers from above pairing? Technically, he’s officially on one side, but he makes it very clear he actually doesn’t care about anyone EXCEPT his love interest and actively goes behinds people’s backs all the time to get what he wants. He has exactly 0 trust except for his love interest, which means he’ll literally fight both sides to make sure love interest is safe 3) THE FREAKING QUEEN, at first she’s like in a terrible one sided relationship with one of the characters with like... uh what’s it called? Power imbalance? Like she is 100% in control of this other person because they are wholly dependent on her, and she knows it, and often calls this other person her pet, and like, you think you’re supposed to hate her because she’s one of the contributing factors to the other character’s trauma but then it’s like, wait, actually, maybe she ALSO has ulterior motives and is one of the few people said character can actually trust with their wellbeing and their own interests being the only one who actively helps them with it 4) HMMM THAT SUPER SHADY DEMON/HUMAN ROMANCE YOU KNOW THE ONE IM TALKING ABOUT

Characters that suffer: okay listen, all of the characters have suffered through trauma, but special shout-out to Mika who has gone through my favorite kind of trauma to watch that develops characters. Spoilers for the rest of this paragraph so if you want to check out the show skip over it. okay gone? for real? you okay with getting spoiled if you haven’t seen yet? alright. last chance. Okay so first thing we know about Mika is that he’s an orphan and has a found family with his orphanage group right? even when they’re all being held captive by vampires underground, he at least has his family. Mika goes above and beyond to make sure that despite that they’re essentially just acting as the vampires’ blood-stock that their time there isn’t as bad as it could be. He offers himself up to one of the nobles, saying the noble can suck his blood if he gives him things, so he gets stuff like actual real food for his family to eat. In the manga, you can see that this is really draining on him, but he does it to see his family happy. Mika also knows that his crush absolutely hates it there, so he plans an escape, except oops they all get ambushed by the very noble he stole from and was swindling, and literally everyone gets killed in front of him except his crush, well I guess at the time he was too young for crush, so I’ll just call him Yuu. Anyways. Mika and Yuu manage to knock out the vampire noble working together, but Mika is fatally wounded so only Yuu actually escapes. AND THEN MIKA IS FORCIBLY TURNED INTO A VAMPIRE BY THE QUEEN, like he hates vampires, he considers them monsters, he doesn’t want eternal life or whatever, AND SHE FREAKING TURNS HIM TO KEEP HIM FROM DYING (the way she does it too could be considered traumatizing as well) and then he proceeds to be raised by people he considers monsters and hates that he’s become a vampire, and like does everything in his power to not drink human blood (resorting to drinking the Queen’s blood, and she’s fine with it cuz it keeps him completely dependent on her) like MMMM THAT POWER IMBALANCE IN A WORLD FULL OF THE MONSTERS YOU HATE WHILE BECOMING ONE YOURSELF IS ALREADY DAMAGING ENOUGH, and then he finds out that the very adults he used to trust as a child, were actually just treating him and his found family as guinea pigs and lab rats and that the only people who actually cared about him was his found family, who are all gone except for Yuu who isn’t there, so yeah oops, he hates humans now too. Like mmmm that is some tasty juicy angst right there. It manifests in him never smiling anymore, never speaking, just sitting there stoically. Like this was the little boy who was happy smiles all the time, either when he was genuinely happy with his family or putting on an act to deceive and he’s just so broken after the timeskip that we never see him smile until late in season 2. OH LETS NOT FORGET THE WHOLE VAMPIRE THING RIGHT? Mika doesn’t want to drink blood, but his body compells him to. He refuses to at least drink human blood, which works for a while but by the time the second season rolls around, the queen’s blood just isn’t cutting it anymore and there are so many scenes where his instincts take over and he almost bites someone only to snap out of it last second and start sobbing because he believes he’s becoming a monster. AND THAT’S NOT EVEN ALL OF IT, JUST THE THINGS THAT I LIKED THE MOST TO WATCH

spoilers over

the side characters: While I do think they could use a little bit more development, but that’s probably because they’re not quite rubbing me just the right way like Mika is, so they pale by comparison BUT there are some things I enjoy 1) we’ve got a literal troll on the team. I’ve seen some people call her annoying, but omg I love seeing her troll the others. also she uses a scythe and it’s awesome 2) OMG THERE’S A SWEET BABI BOY ARCHER??? slight spoilers, but my favorite part was when he reveals that his demon decided to give him more powers because he treats his demon like a friend, and talks to it at night before going to bed, sometimes asking it what it’s favorite color is?? 3) okay okay okay, listen, I already like the character by himself, the sniper dude, he’s already great as he’s written. But then add the fact that not only does he look EXACTLY like Victor Nikiverov from Yuri on Ice, BUT HE HAS THE SAME FREAKING VOICE ACTOR TOO that just cracks me up 4) I love the one vampire side character who keeps trying to befriend Mika, and Mika just keeps stonewalling him 5) honestly the queen is really badass, and as much as I hated her at first, I actually enjoy every second she’s on screen 6) There’s a vampire called Crowley and idk what it is with him but he just gives me “Big Fun” vibes even though he’s one of the most ruthless characters in the show

plot and arcs: it doesn’t drag itself on and on and on, it actually completes goals and important benchmarks fairly quickly so we don’t need to keep waiting on things to happen. But at the same time, is so drawn out that you still can’t help but feel like it’s taking forever to get to where you want it to go and it’s great because it means you get so much story to enjoy. Also, the fact that the protagonists always have one clear goal at a time, but us as the viewers see other things happening behind the scenes, without always understanding what they are, and we’re stuck seeing this collision path where everything is gonna intersect and you know it’s going to be terrible and there characters are going to suffer but you love that. 

anyways, Seraph of the end is super good, I loved it, the anime isn’t enough so I’m actually chasing after the Manga for once. Mika is officially one of my all-time favorite characters and he deserves to be happy. If you know what I’m talking about cheer with me, if you haven’t seen it yet, omgggggggggggggggggggg GO CHECK IT OUT IF ANY OF THE THINGS I SAID APPEAL TO YOU

#seraph of the end #owari no seraph #Mika #Mikayuu #I'm gushiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing #I'm obsessed #send help #I watched another anime a while ago that a similar sort of gay romance going on #and i really wanted to like it because I loved the premise behind it #I really did #but it was so badly executed that I could only watch it ironically #THEN I FIND THIS #AND ITS SIMILAR PREMISE BUT DONE IN ALL THE WAYS I COULD EVER WANT #also omg the music is amazing #half the joy for me is the music #Do you guys have any idea how hard it is to get me to ship?? #anyways this has consumed my life for now