this will be nowhere near the level of in depth i wish it could be, but i really, REALLY needed to write SOMETHING about how good seraph of the end USED to be. specifically, i want to talk about how the character ferid bathory, also known as one of the most despicable pieces of shit of all time in manga history (source: me) was such an incredibly well done exploration of how horrific unconditional immortality truly can be.
it drives me absolutely fucking insane how often in media immortality is treated as something romantic and ideal, and my largest bone to pick is with modern vampire fiction. by far, modern vampire fiction is the worst perpetrator of this slop. and it doesn’t matter what media form it is in; books, movies, television shows, anime, etc. we see sparkling creatures of the night with psyches that are still completely intact after seven hundred something years… oh how dreamy… oh he’s only possessive because he’s a vampire, nothing more.
BULLSHIT!!!!!!!!!!
that brings me to seraph of the end’s ferid bathory: a millenia old vampire with severe behavioural issues, a childish personality, a downright horrifying sense of humour, a distinct total lack of empathy, and let’s be real, terroristic tendencies.
see, he wasn’t exactly ‘normal’ when he was human, either, which makes this even more interesting. however he was born long before modern psychological care services were even concieved, so imagine how that could’ve turned out. ferid bathory killed his own parents before he even turned ten out of ‘love’, grew up around war in a noble family during the height of the grecoroman conflicts, killed his older brother who was the army general at the time at fourteen years old by catching him totally off guard as he had no reason to hold suspicion around ferid, and… eventually became the war general himself.
but he didn’t want to do any of that for any specific sort of gain. he was simply permeated by an almost unbearable sense of boredom.
during his time leading the army, he was noted many times by his soldiers that he was concerningly… unconcerned with everything. funnily enough, when faced with a vampire he had been hearing rumours about on the battlefield, he deliberately acted a fool and got himself decapitated.
so, essentially, he committed assisted suicide out of complete and utter boredom because of a slight curiosity about this man being a vampire.
this led to three to five hundred years of being isolated and kept alive as just a decapitated head, and slowly regrowing and regenerating his entire body system by system, organ by organ. in near complete solitude and isolation. in silence, in the most boring conditions imaginable.
ferid had to live a few fucking centuries in conditions where if humans were to endure them for about three days straight they would lose their fucking minds.
see, we don’t know anything like this about ferid for almost a hundred chapters. we are simply confronted with a horrifying menace of a vampire who kills children for fun, exploits them for shits and giggles with no personal attraction or interest because other peoples’ reactions are funny, and acts eerily cheerful, reckless, and bubbly. ferid also presents with little to no proper social skills despite his friendly and ‘amicable’ nature, because he lacks the empathetic processing to be able to engage in such a way with others.
what many fans of the series also tend to gloss over due to the overt nature of his disgusting behaviour is that he has very, very distinct suicidal ideation. the man does not want to be alive, at all. he calls himself a philistine, he offers himself to his partner/suboordinate in such a manner that could easily result in death if he were not a vampire (ie asking him to drink so much of his blood that “it might kill me… no, actually, kill me.”), throws himself repeatedly into harmful and life risking situations despite knowing he can’t die, etc.
he’s always talking about it in a very open way, too. he contemplates death and the afterlife, almost as if he’s longingly yearning for it.
and, terrified to be alone after the trauma he endured during his transformation and regeneration, not only did he turn crowley eusford for prophetic purposes (and because theoretically crowley could have been a reincarnation of ferid’s older brother), after crowley had been a vampire for fifty years and suffered the eventual emotional numbing and mental decay that being alive past the natural human maximum age poses, ferid goes and finds him again. at this point, despite the physical and psychological torture ferid put crowley through after turning all of his friends and family against him, killing them all in front of him, and more, because crowley could no longer feel more about it than a dull ache, ferid manages to essentially force crowley to be stuck by his side for eternity.
there’s a lot more i can go into regarding the whole ferid and crowley sections of the ONS light novel the vampire michaela, but that would be a whole separate blog post.
i still don’t feel like i’ve gotten everything across properly, but i’m tired now. long story short, seraph of the end used to be so good when the plot was consistent and not rushed and the mangaka actually took their time with perfecting their most well written complex characters.
!!!SPOILER BELOW!!!
it really, really pisses me off that after ALL OF THIS DEVELOPMENT for ferid bathory, the way they decided to ‘kill him off’ was to have him STUPIDLY FUCKING DISAPPEAR in like a SINGLE PANEL. oh my god. the RAGE that made me feel. ragequit the damn manga after that. not even some detailed finishing touch when this is THE character that, despite everything he’s done, DESERVES some sort of properly addressed death? be so fucking serious with me right now.
anyways, that’s it for this post. thanks for reading! 👍
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