The Official MSBS Anime Review: Blue Exorcist

I honestly don't like that A-1 Pictures is getting a lot of hate nowadays. I can see that the animation studio kind of suffers from "quantity over quality", but I still think A-1 Pictures is pretty good nonetheless. A-1 Pictures has made some pretty great anime series, and the one I'm about to review now just so happens to be one of them. Now that that's taken care of, happy people of TheTopTens, I would like to begin my third anime review of Aniplex's August Lucky 7. So for said third anime review, I will be reviewing the anime series Blue Exorcist, known in Japanese as Ao no Exorcist. For this anime review, I will be reviewing all 25 episodes of Blue Exorcist as a whole. Now let's get ready for the take off, fellas!

Blue Exorcist takes place in a world of two different realms. The first realm is called Assiah, which belongs to the humans. The second realm is called Gehenna, which belongs to the demons. In Blue Exorcist, the story revolves around our main protagonist Rin Okumura, an average teenage boy who is one day attacked by demons and learns that he is the son of Satan, who wishes for him to return to Gehenna to help him conquer Assiah. Not wanting to join his father, Rin begins to train to become an exorcist so that he can defeat Satan and protect Assiah with his younger brother Yukio Okumura.

Okay, guys. You know the routine. I'll begin with analyzing the animation, art, and music for Blue Exorcist. Now as I mentioned at the beginning of this anime review, A-1 Pictures was the animation studio that animated Blue Exorcist. As always, A-1 Pictures does pretty well with its job of animation production. The action sequences are awesome, the fight scenes are intense, the computer and traditional animation worked out just greatly, and I liked how they animated the blue flames that Rin Okumura possessed for his powers. Next, the art itself is pretty much nice to look at and it's quite distinguishable in comparison to most anime series. The same could be said for the character designs. Now you can see where I'm going with this, but a lot of the characters had very unique and fun designs that made them stand out as I watched the entire show. After all, that reason is just one of many reasons why I compare Blue Exorcist with Soul Eater aside from them having similar premises and genres. Finally, the music is pretty memorable and catchy to listen to. As for the opening songs and ending songs of this anime, both me and my sister were actually trying to sing along with the lyrics of the opening and ending songs as we were watching them play. Consisting of Core Pride by UVERworld, Take Off by 2PM, In My World by ROOKiEZ is PUNK'D, and Wired Life by Meisa Kuroki, all of these songs bring me some great memories of watching this fabulous demon anime. As for the OST, it's composed by Hiroyuki Sawano, who is not only known for his later compositions for anime such as Attack on Titan and Kill la Kill, but also his composition for the video game Xenoblade Chronicles X. Now while I can't name all of the soundtracks he composed off the top of my head, there were a few that really stood out to me. One soundtrack in particular being Me Creed, which was really badass and cool to hear as it played in the anime and on my headphones. All in all, all I can say is that they really nailed the animation, art, and music of Blue Exorcist.

Moving further, I'll continue by analyzing the story of Blue Exorcist. Now when explaining the story of Blue Exorcist, let's just say things are a bit complicated when it comes to breaking down the story arcs of this 25-episode anime series. So the first arc of Blue Exorcist is the True Cross Academy arc, which focuses on Rin enrolling into the True Cross Academy as an Exwire so that he can train to be able to defeat Satan, being adapted in 13 episodes. I would talk more about what happens in this arc, but that would just give away some major spoilers, so no. Anyways, the next arc of Blue Exorcist is the Training Camp arc, where Rin and his friends go to a training camp in order to put their skills as Exwires to the test, only being adapted into 4 episodes. Now here's where it gets hard: After the Training Camp arc, the anime series strays off from the original manga source and comes up with its own anime-exclusive conclusion that occurs in just 8 episodes. Now while that may be a major pet peeve for readers of the original Blue Exorcist manga who may have wanted the Blue Exorcist anime adaptation to be better faithful to the original manga source, I still thought Blue Exorcist had a pretty great story regardless of not staying true to the manga in its last episodes. Especially if you're someone who only watches the anime adaptation like me, I'm sure you would enjoy Blue Exorcist just as much as I do. I really enjoyed seeing how the characters developed and grew stronger. That, and many of the subplots that popped up throughout Blue Exorcist, though often relatively short, were pretty fun and interesting to watch even if they didn't have a major impact on the main plot, because at the end of the day, I really enjoyed them nonetheless. Unlike how most filler episodes of mainstream anime shounen anime series are boring to sit through, I authentically and actually liked the 1 or few more filler episodes that Blue Exorcist had. Heck, there was one episode about this cooking demon that I really loved watching and didn't even feel or notice that it was even a filler episode until I researched it myself! To put it in words, I loved the entire story of Blue Exorcist, right down to every episode in the entire series!

With analysis of the story completed, now I'll proceed to analyze the characters of Blue Exorcist. Now Rin might look quite troublesome and immature at first glance, but he's actually a very kindhearted and well-meaning male soul who is pretty supportive and protective of others. Even when put down constantly, he still manages to get back up again and maintain a positive outlook on life, which is something I really like about his character. After all, he even has a soft spot for animals as well. Then we have Yukio, Rin's younger brother, who is not only well-mannered and mature, making him a character foil to Rin, but also a serious and hard-working person. Truth be told, he can be a bit bi-polar sometimes, but still manages to have a strong bond with his brother Rin and his friends as well. Even though I prefer Rin over Yukio, in my honest opinion, I think they're both really fun and likable characters that anyone can relate to. There's also Shirou Fujimoto, who is Rin and Yukio's guardian at the beginning of the anime series, who was a pretty awesome character for the duration of the episodes that he starred in. Not to mention Mephisto Pheles, the Chairman of True Cross Academy, who is perhaps one of the coolest characters I've ever seen in anime when it comes to him being a character that wears pink make the color pink look badass! Don't believe me? Look up any image on Google Images or a video of him on YouTube and you'll see why I love Mephisto Pheles so much. Finally, there's Rin's friends Shiemi Moriyama, Ryuuji Suguro, Konekomaru Miwa, Renzou Shima, and Izumo Kamiki (even though my sister finds her annoying) who were really interesting and unique in their own ways, making the ensemble cast for Blue Exorcist pretty great. I honestly want to talk more about the characters, but once again, the risk of spoilers hinders me from doing so. Either way, I liked a huge majority of the characters of Blue Exorcist, whether they were the good guys or the bad guys.

Alright, now I was initially going to try to find some flaws that may have been present in Blue Exorcist, but after thinking it through, I don't think there's really any flaw in the entire anime series that could have ruined any viewer's experience. Like I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of subplots in Blue Exorcist, which might frustrate some people who just want to get on with the main plot, but as for me, I still actually found enjoyment in watching the subplots of Blue Exorcist. Other than that, I actually went on my MyAnimeList.net profile just to give this anime a higher score than what I previously rated it.

Even as I endure the fact that now A-1 Pictures is being given the Studio Deen treatment (what that means is that now A-1 Pictures is being bashed for most of its released anime adaptations nowadays), I still believe that A-1 Pictures has the potential to produce many great anime series if they do them right. Just this year at Anime Expo 2016, the Aniplex booth held an entire A-1 Pictures exhibit, featuring many anime produced by A-1 Pictures such as Sword Art Online, Erased, Your Lie in April, and you guessed it, Blue Exorcist, all on display with monitors showcasing artwork of them. And with an upcoming second season of Blue Exorcist adapting the Kyoto Impure King arc coming somewhere in 2017, that makes all my love for Blue Exorcist all the more greater. Blue Exorcist is an awesome anime series for anyone to watch, whether they be shounen fans, anime beginners, fans of demon anime, etc. Awesome animation, intriguing story and subplots, an unforgettable cast of characters that can be considered on the level of Fullmetal Alchemist's characters, and having absolutely little to no flaws whatsoever all make Blue Exorcist something that you should watch if you haven't done so already. Now if you wanted to know what I previously rated Blue Exorcist, I initially gave it a 9 out of 10 on my MyAnimeList.net profile. However, now here's the final score that I changed that score to:

10.0 out of 10.0 stars

Next anime review: The Official MSBS Anime Review: Gurren Lagann

Until then, peace!

Comments

Good review - Skullkid755

Blue exorcist that show is awesome - HollowArrow

Purge this if you want don't really care and post comment me if you want : Hi you seem like a cool user I like almost all you profile pic and by the way bro you don't want to rate all the anime you post 10 out of 10 that will be kinda dumb and useless to rank them if you just going to put them all 10 stars but besides that pretty cool posts - HollowArrow

Blue exorcist Is oming back with more eps in 2017 - HollowArrow

I've only read the manga up to volume 7, but I love this series! - MLPFan

Also, season 2 happened after episode 17 of the anime - MLPFan

I REALLY need to watch this show. My friend even stayed up all night watching it. - Absolite

Watch it watch it watch it - MLPFan

Actually, now that I think about it, I should change it back to a 9 out of 10. After seeing Kyoto Saga, I kind of found a few flaws with the ending, so I'll be sure to edit this review later on. Still love this anime, though. - visitor

The Kyoto arc was better in the manga to be honest - MLPFan

I also would like to say that Izumo's one of my favourite characters in this anime. She may appeared like some generic spoiled show off, heck even the manga says that her hobbies are shopping, reading romance novels and such making her look like some generic teenage girl and how she took Shiemi for granted once, making her look like an alpha batch(censored word), but later on she was a lot better and a lot more likable. She still acts like a jerk, even calling Bon a gorilla once (read the manga, It's definitely there) but there were less portrayals of her as the kind of person people would love to hate on. I mean, one time she was trapped into a demon and the only person with her was Shiemi. I mean, If she still sees Shiemi as a slave, she'd yell like "HELP ME, GEEZ! ", Instead she frontally pointed out that she hated Shiemi and she didn't deserved Shiemi helping her. Izumo's a jerk with a heart of gold kind of character, and her taming skills were awesome as well. And when the others were afraid of Rin because they knew he's the son of satan, she wasn't afraid of him and accepted him. Never read the Illuminati arc, but I heard that more things about Izumo would be told there - MLPFan