The December issue of Shueisha’s Jump SQ. confirmed on November 4 that Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign ends in the magazine’s next issue, which goes on sale December 4.
The manga has run since 2012, when Takaya Kagami and storyboard artist Daisuke Furuya launched it with artist Yamato Yamamoto. Fourteen years is a long stretch for a monthly magazine, and very few Jump SQ. titles from that year are still going.
The ending was flagged in May
Nobody following the series was blindsided. In May, the editorial side announced the story would finish with the 37th collected volume. Volume 36 shipped on May 1. Viz Media publishes the manga in English in print and digitally, and its edition of volume 35 arrives on November 10, which leaves English collectors two books behind Japan.
New chapters are a different matter. Viz and MANGA Plus both run Seraph of the End simultaneously with Japan, so the final chapter should be readable in English on the day it appears.
What the series is about
The premise has not moved much since chapter one. A virus wipes out humanity and spares only children. Vampires then round those children up and keep them as livestock. Yūichirō Hyakuya escapes, joins the Demon Army, and spends the rest of the story trying to become strong enough to kill every vampire he can reach.
Two anime seasons, then silence
An anime followed in 2015. The first season ran 12 episodes from April, and Seraph of the End: Battle in Nagoya, another 12, arrived in October of the same year. Funimation streamed both as they aired and released them on home video. Nothing further has been announced in the decade since, so the adaptation stops well short of where the manga is now ending.
That gap is the reason the ending matters to anyone who came in through the anime. Everything past the Nagoya arc has existed only on the page.
Prequels, a spin-off manga and a stage show
Kagami also wrote a prequel novel series, Seraph of the End: Guren Ichinose: Catastrophe at Sixteen, published in English by Vertical. Yo Asami drew a manga version of those novels, and its 12th and final volume shipped in February 2022; Kodansha USA Publishing released that one in English. A sequel novel series, Resurrection at Nineteen, began in 2017 with illustrations by Asami, and Kodansha USA is releasing it as well. There is even a stage musical.
The prequel material gives the ending an odd shape. Guren Ichinose’s story already finished in manga form more than four years ago, which leaves the main line as the last part of the franchise still running. After December 4, that stops being true.
Why it matters
For Jump SQ., this is the closing of an anchor title, and the timing is worth noting: the same December issue that carries the Seraph ending notice also confirms that Kemono Jihen is heading into its climax. Two long-runners moving toward the exit in one issue is a reminder of how much of the magazine’s 2016 lineup has aged out at once.
Vampires have been busy elsewhere on the manga schedule too. Babanba Banban Vampire entered its final stage with a December volume, and Julietta Suzuki’s Otaku Vampire’s Love Bite is getting a TV anime. Different tonal worlds, same bloodsucker shelf.
English readers get an unusual deal here. Simulpub means the ending arrives in English almost immediately, which is not true of the collected volumes. Viz has not announced a date for volume 36 yet, and with volume 35 only landing on November 10, the final book is unlikely to reach English shelves before 2027.
The 37th volume will close a series that outlasted its anime by more than a decade.
Source: Anime News Network, citing the December issue of Jump SQ.
Featured image: Art from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign by Takaya Kagami, Yamato Yamamoto and Daisuke Furuya (© Shueisha), via Anime News Network.
