“Blue Exorcist” is a 25-episode TV series released in 2011, adapted from the currently ongoing manga started in 2009, by Kazue Kato. It‘s directed by Tensai Okamura ( “Cowboy Bebop” movie, “Wolf’s Rain”, “Darker Than Black”) with art direction by Masatoshi Kai, who did background art for “Akira”, “Spriggen”, and “Jin-Roh”.

Devils exist within our world. While invisible to most of mankind, they torment the few who can see them. And, Satan is always lying in wait for the right moment when he can enter our world by possessing those weak of heart and soul. The human world, Assiah, is protected by the Vatican’s True Cross exorcists, who free the possessed, and send the monsters back to hell.

“Blessed be the Lord! … Thou shalt perish where thou standeth!”

Observing Satan in the form of a possessed wolf, unable to touch or hold anything in the human realm without it turning to ash before his blue flames, a young female exorcist, Yuri Egin, feels pity for the King of Demons. She strikes up an unlikely friendship with him, and is ultimately impregnated with his progeny; foolishly believing that her children will bring about an understanding between man and monster, and peacefully unite the human and demon worlds. Antagonistic to her desires, the Vatican orders her death. But, Yuri’s ultimate fate will be to die giving birth to twin boys, Rin and Yukio; and the man sent to kill her, Fr. Shiro Fujimoto, the True Cross’ finest exorcist, will choose not to destroy, but to secretly adopt them.

Fifteen years later, hot-headed punk, Rin Okumura, knowing nothing of his half-blood, demonic genealogy, is living along with his “goodie two shoes” twin brother, Yukio, under the care of their adoptive father, Fr. Fujimoto, and a group of avuncular fellow Priests. However, Satan eventually comes for Rin. In the midst of this fight over one of his sons, in a tiny moment of weakness, Shiro becomes possessed; and, to stop himself from doing Satan’s bidding and dragging Rin down to hell, he kills himself. Rin, having now learned something of his origins, tries to save his surrogate father’s soul from the fires of Gehenna by unsheathing the sword, Kurikara, which contains his forbidden power, the demonic blue flames that mark him as Satan’s Son. Vowing to vanquish Satan, and follow in Fujimoto’s footsteps, Rin joins the exorcist training school, the True Cross Academy, and finds that one of his teachers is the youngest ever full-fledged exorcist, his brother Yukio!

“I can’t take anyone else dying because of me!”

While “Blue Exorcist” definitely follows the solid “I want to be stronger” mantra of virtually all Shonen, Boy’s Coming of Age, action series, the real heart of the story is the fractious, one-upping, competitive, yet deeply affectionate familial bond between the two brothers; both of whom are still strongly affected by the memory of their loving, deceased foster father. And the show’s slightly fugly character designs give an authenticity to our awkward aged heroes. Unfortunately, True Cross Academy is essentially “Lame”warts, where Rin and Yukio gain a gaggle of largely uninteresting (’cept the cat…I like the scruffy cat), broadly defined, one-note, fan-trope sidekicks .

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