Volume 04

Seraph of the End 4 (終わりのセラフ 4) (also known as Seraph of the End, Vol. 4) is the fourth volume to the Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign manga.

Contents

 * 12. A Very Safe Supplement (安全なクスリ)


 * 13. Reunion of Childhood Friends (幼馴染のサイカイ)


 * 14. Everyone's a Sinner (みんなツミビト)


 * 15. Complicated Connections (工作するカンケイ)

Japanese Summary
吸血鬼との新宿攻防戦、貴族を相手に苦戦するグレンのチーム. 圧倒的力を前になす術なく敗北を喫してしまうのか…. そこに駆けつける優一郎は、鬼刀・阿朱羅丸を引き抜き敵に斬り付けるのだが、その相手とは!?

English Summary
A vampire attack reunites childhood friends Yūichirō and Mika, though they now face each other from opposing sides of the battlefield. Mika begs Yūichirō to forget about the conflict between humans and vampires and escape with him, but Yūichirō is unable to abandon his new friends. Then, everything changes when Yūichirō suddenly transforms into a monstrous being with one seraphic wing!

Characters
List of characters in order of appearance:

Afterword
Hello. I'm Takaya Kagami. How did you like Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign Volume 4? I consider this volume the first major climax of the series. I mean, there was what happened between Yu and Mika! Also, until now we kept most of the world-building low-key so that the readers could get to know the characters first. Now we will start exploring more of the world itself.

To be honest, we have over 100 pages written on just the setting itself (after all, we needed background for both the novel and the manga). We've been releasing tidbits so far so as not to confuse anybody. But now that everything is in place, it's time to start showing off more of the world!

On another note, I've started to really appreciate how we've been detailing the world of eight years ago in the novel and left of the world of today, the ruined world, to the manga. I've worked on various types of stories, but getting to write both a story's past and present as their own whole work is really something else. Not only do you get to boil down the setting to the real nitty-gritty details, each work can have serious influence on the other.

For example, it something major happens in the novel's past timeline, it can grow and expand—in my head, at least—and maybe have some big repercussions on the manga's present timeline. Conversely, there are times where I wind up thinking, "Aw, man! If I write that in the novel, I'm gonna have to redo all of the manga scripts I worked on ahead of time!"

However, I still consider myself blessed with an interesting story and fun comrades (Mr. Yamamoto, Mr. Furuya, my editors from Shueisha and Kodansha, and all my readers!) It is with a happy heart that I go on...to do battle with more deadlines. Ugh. But thank you!

Speaking of people... I seem to remember getting a big two-page spread AD for Seraph of the End in one of the other stories I'm working on, The Legend of the Legendary Heroes. Now my editor for that title is starting to ask me when we're going to do an AD for LOTLH here, and I did promise him I would... but I don't have the page space this time either!

So, right here, right now I'm going to mention that I've started another new series, Apocalypse Alice (published by Fantasia Bunko / Fujimi Shobo)! For those of you who have read Seraph of the End and can't get enough, please consider picking up Apocalypse Alice! :D

Now that I've plugged another of my series for a totally different publisher, let me remind you that at the end of the month, Volume 3 of Seraph of the End: Guren Ichinose's Catastrophe at 16 comes out. Eight-year-old Yu appears, and the world finally begins it's slide into disaster. I hope you like it!

— Takaya Kagami