First Look: Ao no Exorcist

Title: Ao no Exorcist
Genre: Action, Comedy, Drama, Supernatural

Summary: This world consists of two dimensions joined as one, like a mirror. The first is the world in which the humans live, Assiah. The other is the world of demons, Gehenna. Ordinarily, travel between the two, and indeed any kind of contact between the two, is impossible. However the demons can pass over into this world by possessing anything that exist within it. Satan the god of demons, but there’s one thing that he doesn’t have, and that’s a substance in the human world that is powerful enough to contain him!! For that purpose he created Rin, his son from a human woman, but will his son agree to his plans? Or will he become something else…? An exorcist?

First Look: Nice, a good shonen anime for the season too. I’ve tended to believe that anime that make any sort of religious references are much deeper in meaning than they lead out to be, but this anime is just a good ol’ action series. It’s not exactly quoting anything from the Bible, so I guess saying it is religious is a bit off. It takes the idea of exorcists who rid of the world of demons or perform rituals to extract evil spirits from someone who is possessed, and puts a spin on it. Instead of the typical exorcist chanting from religious texts or splashing bits of holy water, Ao no Exorcist decides to give them weapons. Not the expected holy cross or staff, guns. Lots and lots of guns.

Let’s start with what I like about Ao no Exorcist before I nit-pick it later. The action and characters are both pretty fun to watch. The anime is doing a good job so far mixing comedy and action to keep the viewers entertained. They have had  a couple side stories already to get better character development. A new, rather cute girl, played by the voice of Nessa from Fractale was also introduced. From what I can tell she is going to be the “girlfriend-type-girl-that-never-happened”. Let’s be honest, in these shonen shows there is always that girl who is obviously best matched for the protagonist but never actually dates him. Because who seriously wants cute, lovey-dovey romance in an action series? Either way a neat new character who isn’t all that great. Her only real knowledge is in plants, which serves its purpose from time to time I’m sure. The protagonist is probably the most likeable with his hot-headed attitude and strong determination. I’m only hoping that it doesn’t turn into one of those “if you believe you can do anything” type series.

The series is pretty fun to watch and I like the premise of it, but it doesn’t entertain me as much as I would like. Ao no Exorcist seems to be a lot slower paced than I initially thought. At first the series throws you into the world of exorcists and demons, even summoning the mighty Satan in the first three episodes. After which it throws you into a pseudo college setting where Rin needs to learn to be an exorcist. Of course with his impatient attitude and inability to sit down and study, that is proving quite difficult. While the studying problems and poor grades brings about some comedy it also slow the series down quite a bit. It is obvious that we wont be able to see any hardcore action till quite later, if at all. Word has it (and I’ll be looking this up later) that the manga isn’t terribly far ahead. This either means the series will do an anime original ending, or continue on past the manga. I can see the series adding more fight scenes and side stories to better complement his “training” until the manga continues further. This is all hear-say, however, so I’ll be checking that out myself later.

The artwork and soundtrack are quite enjoyable. I’m a huge fan of the opening mostly for the lyrics. Of course I needed to read the English translations so I might not get the full effect, but it is still quite empowering. The talk about pride always bringing you back up to your feet to continue fighting and so on so forth. The artwork is doing a great job keeping the action entertaining. I wouldn’t say it is above and beyond my expectations have some of the anime that has come out recently, but it is definitely nice to get away from some of the bad CG.

Final statements: I’ll keep the series on watch till the end but I don’t expect it to be the best of the Spring 2011 season. It’s a good shonen series with a nice story, but nothing more than that.