Rewind: Blue Exorcist

Every Saturday night, my Twitter feed floods with Tweets from Toonami faithful. I only follow three or four actual Toonami tweeters, but they send out more tweets that there are minutes in the shows, and they retweet others for good measure.

I could get annoyed with these tweets... but I don't. I find them entertaining, especially since I've already seen a lot of what's airing. I was especially entertained as Sword Art Online aired, and I'm kind of sad it's over. Those 140 character rants were often more fun to watch than the actual show, which I watched over the summer. 

As the Toonami Faithful said goodbye to SAO, some sadly, some with relief, they mentioned the next anime coming to Toonami: Blue Exorcist. 

I know that anime, too. I wrote about it two years ago, in one of my most popular posts. Apparently, I'm not the only one who was initially wary about its treatment of Christianity. Since it pops up in my stats, I've re-read it several times, so it's fairly fresh in my mind. Plus, Silvachief just posted a review of Blue Exorcist last week.

Basically, Blue Exorcist was the easy choice for today's Rewind post. Plus I think this might possibly get me a couple extra views, since it's more of a "current event" now. 

Rin's adoptive father, Fujimoto Shirou, tells him more about his
heritage in episode 2. I'm surprised to realize I remember this scene,
and I know it's because of the lovely visuals.

That 2012 post I linked to, "Blue Exorcist - My thoughts upon finishing it," could be called an informal review from a religious perspective and a just plain critical perspective. Looking back, I think it was a good for me to write that. It gave me practice in looking at religious elements in anime. 

I have an embarrassing moment attached to that post, though. For some reason, I assumed the original mangaka, Katou Kazue, was a man. She's not. A commenter corrected me, I thanked them, and I went back and changed all the pronouns. I now do my research properly before I list names.

My old post gives a pretty good idea of my opinion of Blue Exorcist. But I can elaborate on it. Over the past few years, I've started to see Blue Exorcist in a more positive light, probably because of positive comments and posts around the web. So, when I look back at my Anime-Planet rating, I'm surprised to realize I only gave the show a 3.5 out of 5 stars. I guess I was starting to get a little harsher with my star ratings by then. Not long before, I'd been terribly generous, giving out 5s like free candy.

I enjoyed Blue Exorcist, but, in my [past] opinion, it didn't get very far past mediocre. I plan to re-watch a few episodes on Toonami, to see what I think now. In fact, I already re-watched through part of the second episode on Crunchyroll, and I definitely looked at it in a slightly different light. It will be interesting to try the English dub. Plus, it's an excuse to use the TV in my rented room - that thing has been useless since the last episode of Sherlock aired on PBS.

I plan to use Blue Exorcist as practice more purposefully this time around. I've been thinking about what it means to thoughtfully consume media, and, in the past year, evaluating worldview and religion in media has been a theme in my classes. I've also grown a little more aware of how things look on the screen and who's behind it (only a little - baby steps). For example, I'm starting to take note of studio names; Blue Exorcist came from A-1 Pictures, as did Working!! and Servant x Service. Sure, I got it mixed up with Production I.G., but hey! I'll take the improvement, even if it's embarrassing that something so small is still a very recent accomplishment.