Ao no Exorcist

Yukio, Rin and True Cross Academy's Shady Chairman Mephisto Pheles

Ao no Exorcist
"Blue Exorcist"

Episodes: 25 Episodes
Aired: Apr 17, 2011, Oct 2, 2011

Ao no Exorcist is a typical shounen anime that had great potential to be a top tier shounen, but ultimately falls to a little under average.. It started off great, and had high potential, but the plot never really went anywhere and things just didn't make sense plot wise. While the first half was okay the second half with it's fast pacing kinda ruined the series. It's like they just threw stuff after stuff there that wasn't really important and the story had no direction. It only has 25 episodes (pretty short for a shounen) but it managed to give its viewers, pointless filler episodes which leaves little time for the important details.

Young Rin, Young Yukio and their guardian Shirou.

L-R: Konekomaru Miwa, Renzou Shima, Takara Nemu(and his puppet), Ryuuji Suguro, Rin Okumura, Izumo Kamiki and Shiemi Moriyama

The setting is Assiah  which is kinda like our world (mix between fantasy and modern world), where exorcists are real and are treated like the army. The demons reside in a Gehenna (a mirror world of Assiah), the demons were able to pass from Gehenna to Assiah by possessing objects or animals (even humans) that exist on Assiah.

Satan's other offsprings, the mischievous and manipulating  Mephisto Pheles and the childish Amaimon.

Ever heard of a popular german tale about Faust (a human) having a contract with a demon named mephistopheles?

The story revolves around half-demon half-human twins (Rin Okumura and Yukio Okumura). The twins' mother is Yuri Frederick Egin a female exorcist (human) and their father is Satan himself (only Rin inherited Satan's demon powers). Both were adopted  by Shirou Fujimoto a world renowned exorcist. Fujimoto is one of the best exorcist in the world that earned him the title of "Paladin" (Strongest exorcist in the face of the planet). He has managed to shrug off Satan's possession attempts, but one day failed to do so (Kinda Rin's fault since he argued with Fujimoto) which resulted in his death.

Satan-Possessed Shirou covered with Flames

Out of Control Rin (as you can see those blue flames are flames he inherited from Satan)

The brothers, wanting to follow on their step father's footsteps and driven by the desire of exacting revenge on Satan, joined True Cross Academy which is an academy for exorcists (Kinda ironic since both siblings have demon bloods flowing in their veins). This is where their story begins. Like I said earlier, the plot has great potential to be a seriously good shounen anime, but then it sticked to the school setting and never really went far.

Shura Kirigakure and  the "Paladin" Arthur Auguste Angel aka. "Baldy" (Both are ,at present, the top exorcists)

Satan and Yuri's first meeting.

A lot of side characters were introduced (with dedicated episodes for backgrounds) and I kinda like the Idea that each of them had different exorcism skills and specialties but the plot never gave them justice, no character development for them and they never really had the screen time to build some depth on their personalities which leaves them flat and one dimensional. (again wasted potential). For a shounen anime involving demons and exorcist I was expecting more bad-ass enemies but the enemies that were presented were pretty weak and non were really memorable. The monsters and other creatures though were good looking and had good design. The art though was good and consistent.

Yukio, Rin and the adorable Kuro (Shirou's pet cat that was passed on to Rin)

One of the scarier Demons

Though the plot had minimal major events, the whole series was still a good watch for its quality art and animation, good humor and very nice action scenes (though limited). Each episode was still quite enjoyable  and won't really bore you even if most of them were fillers.

My Rating: 7/10

OP1: Core Pride - UVERworld
OP2: In My World - ROOKiEZ is PUNK'D

ED1: Take Off - 2PM

ED2: Wired Life - Meisa Kuroki