Blue Exorcist

The first episode of Blue Exorcist sets you up with an intriguing and thrillingly dark premise, then goes on to plot the remainder of the series with just the right balance of humour, romance and horror, animating it in a way that draws you right into the story. It plays to expectations certainly for this genre, but knowingly, and always with the possibility of taking it in unexpected directions. This is one of the reasons why A1-Pictures are currently my favourite anime studio.

Episode One then. Lord knows, Rin Okumura tries hard, but life just never seems to cut him any breaks. Not like his smart, handsome younger brother who is about to go to High School at the prestigious True Cross Academy to train to be a doctor. Forever getting into fights with other kids even when he is just trying to do what is right, showing up at home with cuts and bruises, the young man now can't even seem to hold down a job as a dogsbody in a supermarket without getting into a terrible mess. Something always goes wrong and Rin is just one of those people who always seems to get into trouble - or is it that trouble just has a way of being attracted to Rin? Well, there could be something in that, since Rin has just started noticing malevolent little sprites lurking around and causing trouble for others. No one else seems to see them, but that could be because - as he is about to discover in a quite dramatic fashion - Rin is not actually really human. He's actually the offspring of a demon. And not just any demon. Oh, no. Rin is actually the son of Satan.

It's a good job then that his father, Fr. Shiro Fujimoto, is an exorcist, and that he lives in a monastery protected by wards and spells, and by monks who are trained in the arts of exorcism, because they are about to be attacked by the forces of the demon Astaroth, who has become aware of the nature of Rin's identity. It's a revelation that is to have grave repercussions not only for Rin, but to the wider struggle between the worlds of Assiah (the real world as we know it) and Gehenna (Hell), and even between various factions of demons struggling for domination within Gehenna itself. Only becoming aware of his true nature and the power that he is unable to unleash with the aid of a powerful Koma sword, Rin however is untrained and ill-equipped to deal with the important role he will undoubtedly have to play in the coming battles, but his education will also be taken care of by the best trainers in the exorcism at the most prestigious school - the True Cross Academy.

Well, you can't deny that Episode One of Blue Exorcist sets the series up with a powerful hook. It's a thrilling situation with enough gaps to be filled in on Rin's origins, as well as the unusual situation where an offspring of Satan has been brought up in a monastery with the intention of using him as a force to defeat Satan himself. With this kind of premise, as with any demon-slaying anime, you can also expect things to turn quite dark as Rin's potential grows exponentially to deal with the threat of increasingly more powerful and dangerous demonic forces. That's a way off yet however, and before we get to that stage, Blue Exorcist settles down rather for a rather more Harry Potter-style education for the volatile youngster at the True Cross Academy. The remainder of the 13 episodes that make up the first series then deal with Rin's unconventional education, alongside his brother Yukio - who is also not entirely what he seems - and the mixed bunch of students that share exorcism classes with him under the mentoring of a certain Mephisto Pheles.

Evidently there's nothing really new here at all. Blue Exorcist goes through most of the expected conventions of the High School drama, even if the educational syllabus is a little bit different for someone training to develop skills that will help them fight demons. There are some comedy missteps, some conflict and competition between the students, some romantic situations. Each evidently have their own personal secrets and reasons for wanting to become an exorcist, which will gradually reveal unexpected aspects of their personalities, and each have distinct talents for particular roles that will be useful as part of a whole team. Evidently, Rin still remains a target during this time, and his training is interrupted with occasional tussles with minor demons which - since he can't reveal his true identity to his classmates - he must defeat in ways that doesn't rely on the tell-tale blue flames that mark him of demon blood.

The animation, it has to be said - much like the tone of the series and the predictability of the story arc - is also fairly generic, Blue Exorcist looking like a close relation to A1-Pictures' Fairy Tail, which in itself isn't anything particularly original. This particular animation studio seems to specialise in this sort of thing, working competently to meet the expectations of the genre - often with a little bit of flair in the animation style - borrowing good ingredients from other similarly themed series, and then spicing it up with a bit of style of their own. Thus far, Blue Exorcist doesn't distinguish itself from any number of demon-slaying anime series in its First Season, but rather it works hard to establish its set-up well, taking that crucial first episode to lay out its intentions and then spend a little time in developing its characters. Having done that, one can expect Season Two to take a darker turn towards the other implications and twists that are hinted at in the premise and the very title of the series.

DVD
Blue Exorcist is released by Manga Entertainment as a two-disc set on DVD only, containing 13 episodes spread across two dual-layer discs. The release is in PAL format and encoded for Region 2.

Blue Exorcist looks fine in Standard Definition DVD. The image is slightly soft, but clear and with strong colour tones. There are no significant issues with the quality of the 16:9 widescreen transfer other than some colour banding and perhaps a little more macro-blocking noise than I've seen on an animation series for a while. None of this however is by any means significant and will probably remain unnoticeable unless you are looking for it.

Eliminating the need to choose between dub or subs, there is only one audio option for the series, which is the original Japanese Dolby Digital 2.0 track. There is no English dub available. The Japanese track is fine, but you'll have to watch it with yellow subtitles. The subtitles are thorough, translating overlapping background dialogue on occasions as well as translating on-screen captions, which means that you can have three or even four lines of subtitles on the screen in a few places. This can be a bit hard to keep up with, but it's not often enough to be too distracting.

Among the Extra Features is a full-length 23-minute Unaired Special Episode where Rin's familiar, Kuro runs away from home in search of Shiro and encounters other characters from the series outside of their normal routines. The six-minute long Ura-Ex (Bonus Short Movies) features the characters from the series in five short comedy routines of variable humour. Web Previews contain 13 teasers for each episode introduced by a demon-of-the-day. The usual Textless Opening and Textless Closing sequences are included.

Overall
Blue Exorcist blends the usual demon-slaying conventions with High School drama in a way that can't help but draw comparisons with Harry Potter. So far, so predictable then, but the set-up is strong, the development is well managed, the animation of the usual high standard and there is every indication that Blue Exorcist has the potential to build on this and develop into a very fine series in its own right. Definitely one to keep an eye on.

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