Blue Exorcist: Kyoto Saga Mid-season Review

When Blue Exorcist was first released, years ago, it gave me a special feeling. A feeling I find hard to explain. I guess I would label it as uncertainty. I walked away from the series wondering if it was good or not. The only series that I felt this way about was Death Note. Death Note was so good…until it was bad. Any Death Note fan could understand and possibly share my feelings. With Blue Exorcist I felt I was ripped off. I felt like the anime studio sold me on this great story and half way through said fuck it. Kyoto Saga is Blue Exorcist’s redemption, not going out without a fight.

When this season was announced I was beyond hyped. Blue Exorcist deserved more. It deserved the Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood treatment. The difference between this series and Full Metal Alchemist is they don’t try and retell you the story. They pick up right where the manga and the anime strayed from each other. This was very rewarding to me as the viewer. They did not try to give you any background story besides some small flashbacks. I can’t imagine how infuriating it must have been for Full Metal Alchemist fans to have to re-watch some of the condensed Full Metal episodes before getting to the Brotherhood storyline.

The three episode test should be used in this series by the people who watched the original to gauge whether this is something they would want to give a second chance. Just imagine Blue Exorcist was a boy or girl you are dating(hate to assume gender) and they cheated on you with your best friend. “Baby one more chance! It won’t happen again!” Usually, I’d say “Don’t go back to them they’ll only hurt you!”, but after watching 7 episodes of this show, I say give it a chance.

That said, there a few things that may turn you off from watching this show. It tends to be extremely predictable, as most shonen anime are. The entire first episode can be predicted 5-7 minute mark. Don’t believe me? Try it for yourself and come back. The “reveal” in episode 1 is as bad as the reveal in Erased.  That is all I will say about it to avoid spoilers.

This season starts off very slow. You will see little to no action mostly due to world building. Kyoto Saga does pick up where Rin lost control so currently, he is trying to win back his friends’ trust after destroying all of it in one moment. This gets really annoying really fast but if you stick around long enough it will all be worth it. Other than that there are no dips in quality.

 

Overall it feels great to have the gang back together. I always wanted this series to get a second chance and I feel that we’ll see a lot more if its ratings continue to do well. The manga is still going strong, currently at 18 volumes in print. I’m hoping that after reading this you will either catch up if you felt as I did about the first season or you will start Blue Exorcist if you have never watched it. The first episode of season one really got me hooked. I wanted to see Rin get his revenge and defeat Satan. Thank you for reading and as always please comment and like to let me know what you think and please check out our weekly podcast.