Owari no Seraph or Seraph of the End starts of with the world being killed by a virus where only those of thirteen and younger won't be affected. The story follows two boy named Yuuichirou and Mikaela along with several children from an orphanage they belong to. Them along with several other children are captured by vampires and taken into captivity where they live for the next four(?) years.
First things first. That Virus felt reaaaaally fast and sudden:
1 person collapses > girlfriend of person and then every other person in the scene collapses > truck comes flying in and crashes into car/ building > plane flying by crashes and causes massive explosion > world pretty much dead
Personal highlight for me was the clothing designs given to the characters. Despite that the identical uniform clothes they wear in the "experiment" that they're trapped in, incomparision to the plain cloth clothing they gave to the children in Zankyou no Terror, I was quite fond of the design of them. Of course the nature between the two different show and "experiments" were both quite different, they seemed quite comfortable and looked great on the characters.
Despite this one episode going through a lot of different times and several different moments quite quickly. The story has started and been set up well to give us a good background on Yu and Mikaela - their past and a good look into their relationship between themselves and the other kids of the orphanage
I cringed seeing the children run away. From the scenes where Mikaela had gotten the map and the gun, you could see where it was heading. That particular moment when Yu had told them to run... you knew it was going to come and just watching each child die one by one was painful - especially Akane
I just want to say THANK GOD there's no filters in this anime, but this moment Ferid piercing his hand through Mikaela (although it was the most painful scene hitting my heart on the emotional level) any filter would have destroyed any deep feelings gravitating from this scene. However out of all the scenes in this episode, this one really does somewhat mirror the death of Eren's mother from SnK (but I'll talk about the whole SnK comparison thing later). Though for me this scene and the children running one felt like it still lacked some emotional punch that I got from the end of SnK which was kinda the feeling I was hoping to get from it.
Yu shooting Ferid in the head with the gun does seem quite a fake death to me. I don't think an ordinary gun would have killed him. I wouldn't be surprised to see him come back later.
Finally he escapes and runs into the hands of his savior/ a group of people looking for him based off some prophecy.
With the realization that his only family is gone, agrees to join the group in killing off the vampires.
I will admit though the whole "he's the boy from the prophecy" was kinda a random/sudden statement.
Finally we get a glimpse into present day with Yu now a 16 year old in a new uniform walking in the current state of the destroyed city. Again I am liking the clothing design here. More or less I am really fond with the whole black and green combination which was one of the things that kinda compelled me to watch it in the first place.
