Blue Exorcist: Anime Review

After talking with a friend about good beginner anime shows, Blue Exorcist came up in our conversation. I realized that I haven’t done a review on it and thought it would be great to go ahead and start. When I put the show on to watch though, I realized it was much harder to watch it to do a review rather than just for fun. But isn’t that the whole point with ANIME BLOGGING?

Now, it could have been that I was running on less than 5 hours of sleep and started watching at 1 am but I digress…

Blue Exorcist (Ao no Exorcist)…watch it or leave it?

I found more things to criticize in the first 5 episodes than I did when I first watched a few years ago. BUT…I do still love this anime and I DO recommend it for people just starting their anime journey. Just want to go ahead and point that out since this post will seem like I don’t like the show and I do!

Blue Exorcist Cliché’s Are Everywhere

If you like anime with demonic elements and conspiracies of the highest order (basically every anime) and kids with superpowers, then I highly recommend this series. It has a lot of elements that make every action/adventure anime likable. You have your typical carefree and dense main character, Rin Okumura, who is born with an affliction that is willing to put his life on the line for his family and friends despite having a tough childhood. He is commonly paired with his super-intelligent and logical twin brother, Yukio.

The rest of Rin’s friends are there for comic relief and moral support. Mephisto, who acts as Rin’s guardian, is always funny, carefree, witty, and resourceful. One of those aloof characters that the audience has a hard time figuring out his intentions. Is he a good guy or a bad guy? Of course, there’s a big-breasted supporter of Rin that cares for him deeply. Which is another cliché but anyway.

While it doesn’t entirely match the manga I fell in love with, I think the adaptation does the series justice and adheres to the different audiences that anime caters to.

As many people say, Blue Exorcist is heavily clichéd in many aspects so I might as well point them out first…this list was compiled by the fans on Reddit and I have to say that I agree with every single one of them!

We have a hot headed protagonist(+1)
who holds immense power he could not quite control(+1),
use’s a sword(+1)
that is not any random sword but a special one assigned especially to him(+1).
Protagonist is fighting against the biggest embodiment of evil there is(+1)
for revenge of his father(+1)
who died trying to protect him(+1).
The protagonist has a brother(+1)
that is smarter and more skilled than him(+1),
including more popular with the girls(+1),
and he appears to be wearing glasses(+1).
The brother have higher rank than the protagonist in their job(+1),
and the protagonist wants to surpass his brother(+1).
Now we also have a heroine who is a klutz(+1),
A group of people who are seemingly unfriendly at first(+1),
which one of them took position as the protagonist’s rival(+1).
The group grew closer to the protagonist but become hostile more than ever when they learned of the protagonist’s secret(+1),
and so the protagonist must try to convince them 1 each at a time(+1).

They were very cliche, even when fleshed out. Some developed more than others, but nobody grew up too much. They all stayed their same old selves, with their same old goals and things. But they were entertaining somehow. The cliches are something that anime fans are either going to love or hate.

Maybe because I was watching with the intent of reviewing as I mentioned above, I found more things to criticize. When I do a review of something that I just watched for the first time, it tends to have more positives than negatives but I think this article might lean more towards the negative? This is conflicting since I did enjoy the show and recommend it to everyone.

One of my favorite episodes is actually when they find Kuro, who was Father Shiro Fujimoto’s former familiar. For one thing, Kuro is insanely cute and I think he deserves his own point, I think the episode shows that fighting and beating everything up isn’t always the answer. Sometimes you just need to share a drink, haha!