Saturday, 7 November 2020

Blue Exorcist

Blue Exorcist or 'Ao no Exorcist' is an action shonen series about the age old battle between demons and priests. The anime finds its own niche in depicting a word where the church maintains order on Earth by exorcising demons and covers it up to protect normal people. It has a good art style, nice flashy battle animations and decently built characters. But here's the deal, if Blue Exorcist was a type of food, it would be toast. Nothing wrong with toast, everyone likes toast... but its just so plain. Blue Exorcist has the makings of a hot and spicy anime, but falls short in leveraging its own premise to become something exciting. And that's why while it's a decent watch, that's all it will ever be.

This toast is all about a boy called Rin Okumura and his brother Yukio. Their guardian is a priest called Fujimoto who wants them to live normal lives and loves them like a real father (pun intended). One faithful day Rin learns that he is actually the spawn of Satan, and has massive demonic powers sealed inside of him. Rin's emotional turbulence puts stress on his relationship with father Fujimoto, and before he can make amends, he witnesses Fujomoto being killed by Satan himself. Determined to get revenge, Rin goes to the True Cross school of exorcists and tries to master his own abilities, only to find that his brother is an instructor there. He faces a lot of resentment from others for being Satan's son but still tries to prove himself to his exorcist peers. It's interesting to see how these relationships develop, and it helps that the show keeps things pretty light and funny when portraying his life at True Cross. Furthermore, the anime has good action sequences with many power ups and flashy sword play, so definitely give it a watch if you usually enjoy action and humor combinations. 

One massive annoyance about Blue Exorcist is that season two resets the events that take place in the second half of season one. They just decided that they didn't like the ending and re wrote a season two, which completely changes the character's traits and relationships. Why destroy what you've already built? I could not be more irritated by how badly this was done. It also has a god awful English dub, but you shouldn't be watching dubs anyways. 

     

My personal ratings are:

Story: 3/5
Character Development: 1/5
Dialogue: 2/5
Music: 2/5
Enjoyment: 3/5

Overall recommendation: Severe Daddy Issues 

Blue Exorcist is on Netflix and Amazon Prime in selective regions. You can use a VPN to stream it online.         

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