Have a Blue Halloween: Blue Exorcist

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Greetings, ladies and gents!  Welcome to another review on another Sunday in October.  In continuing with my annual supernatural/horror theme of the month, I move on in my string of reviews with a well known series that’s barely ten years old but surprisingly good.  It’s actually been on my watchlist for some time and after giving it a shot, I now get to talk about it.  I can’t wait to get started so let’s hit the ground running with this week’s review on Blue Exorcist!
The overlying plot of the series revolves around fraternal twins Rin and Yukio Okumura who live seemingly normal lives with their father and priest (and later revealed to be an exorcist) Shiro Fujimoto.  However, things drastically changed when it is revealed that not only are he and Yukio are the sons of Satan, but that Rin has also inherited much of his father’s demonic powers.  These powers are further enhanced after he uses a sword called the Kurikara to fight off an attack by Satan himself. Following the death of Ft. Shiro, Rin vows to kill Satan and become an exorcist.  Surprises continue to get thrown at Rin when he later learns that Yukio is one of the top and youngest exorcist as well as his teacher.  From there, the series follows Rin, Yukio, and a cast of colorful classmates as they learn to become exorcists.
Overall, this series has been a lot of fun even though I have yet to finish it.  Still, there were a few storytelling elements to it that could have been better, but I’ll talk about those in a minute.  But for now, I give Blue Exorcist an 8 out of 10.  One thing about this series that I thought was surprisingly well done was the animation.  Now I know that I usually give praises to animation in almost all of my reviews, but what was unique about Blue Exorcists animation was that it was very well done.  And I mean well done.  Like this animation should and probably is used in film.  Granted, it’s not that fluid, but it’s very vibrant and clearly has some serious work put into it.  Plus given that the show only came out in 2011, that’s actually pretty impressive.  Honestly, I feel like a lot of shows from the 2010s are lack luster when it comes to the animation and colors, with the exception of Trigger Studios shows like Kill la Kill and Darling in the FRANXX as well as Gurren Lagan (though not a Trigger property per se).  In fact, you could actually compare this and these other shows.  Besides the animation, I did enjoy the overall supernatural theme to the series with its lore and world building on demons and exorcists.  And, while admittedly strange, I liked how the series seemed to combine elements of Christianity and Shintoism; it was kind of nice to see references to the Bible as well as mentioning things like Satan being the ruler of demons and the reference to Gehenna.  And while I commemorate the author of the manga that inspired the series for doing their homework, I have to also give kudos to the creators for maintaining those elements.  And finally, all of the characters are likeable and/or have some relatable traits to them.  So yeah, it was all around a pretty strong show, but as is my philosophy to all anime, it’s not perfect.

Much like last week with Black Butler: Book of the Atlantic, I didn’t find anything glaringly wrong.  However, I did feel like the world building could have gone a different direction.  For example, the world of demons is referred to as Gehenna and the world of the living is referred to as Assiah.  Wouldn’t it have been better if the worlds were just referred to just Earth and Hell?  Again, kudos for the reference to Gehenna as it is in fact a place mentioned in the Bible, but it would have been simpler to just refer to the world of the demons as Hell?  In fact, demons do in fact come from Hell.  I just felt like if the series wanted to combine concepts from different religions, it’d be nice to be a little more accurate with some of the details.  But still, I’ve only made it through half of the series, so that’s likely to change.  Plus, there were more perks to the show that far outweighed the bad, so it’s definitely worth a go!
So if I were to summarize this review in one sentence, then Blue Exorcist is a sure fire show to watch!  The series is available wherever anime is sold and is even available on streaming services like Crunchyroll, Netflix, and Hulu.  And so, that wraps up this week’s review!  I’m well aware that I dropped the ball again on that Talkative Thursday I keep promising you all, but in my defense, I had a work related conference going on and understandably got busy with that.  But don’t worry, I will for sure have it in this week!  Till then, stay tuned and look out next Sunday for this month’s unveiling of Character of the Month!
-Hanime on Anime
Blue Exorcist Trailer


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