Review for Blue Exorcist: Definitive Edition Part 2

Introduction

Talk about welcome upgrades. The first release of Blue Exorcist was enjoyable enough, but the idea of releasing a subtitle only version of a mainstream shonen action show was one of the dafter ones. First the US did it, then Australia and eventually the UK, by which time the inevitable English dub was announced. This year the dance began again, with first the US releasing the sub and dub version, then Australia, but when it came to the UK, at least we did something different. Rather than go through the expense of re-mastering the DVD release from scratch, Blue Exorcist’s English dub is a Blu-ray exclusive, as the show makes its HD debut in the UK. Adapting the Aniplex masters from the US also means that it’s one fine HD looking show. It may rankle at not having a dub version on DVD in the UK, but that’s what importing is for, or even upgrading your home cinema. Anyway, this is my second look at Blue Exorcist Part 2, and any text in italics is taken from my DVD review of the same. After all, the show hasn’t changed that much. For Part 1, my focus was on the Japanese audio, as there were some issues with the Part 1 DVD subtitles that needed addressing (They were addressed). No such subtitle issues in Part 2 though, so this time I’m giving the English dub an even chance; I’ll watch half the episodes in Japanese, and half in English.

How can one twin have a different father than his brother? It seems a logical impossibility, but for Rin Okamura, that is indeed the case. While his brother Yukio’s father was human, Rin’s father was none other than the Prince of Darkness himself, Satan. Yukio’s body wasn’t strong enough to handle all the demonic genes, so it was Rin alone who inherited his father’s demonic nature. Of course he knows nothing of this at the start of Blue Exorcist. All he knows is that he and his brother are orphans that have been brought up in a monastery, raised as sons by Father Fujimoto. While Yukio is the favoured son, hard-working and likely to succeed in his ambition to be a doctor, Rin is the delinquent, apt to be found brawling, when he isn’t being fired from his latest part time job.

All of that changes when Satan decides to take his corporeal offspring in hand, sending a demon or two to the world of the living to awaken Rin to his heritage. Suddenly Rin can see demons, is being hunted by demons. He also learns that his adoptive father really is an exorcist, and then he learns the truth of who his actual father really is. It’s a truth that is hard for him to handle, and he lashes out at those who care for him the most. That’s just the weakness that Satan needs, and disaster strikes. With his demonic nature wakened, it seems that there is no place in this world for Rin Okamura, but there exists a way out. Rin decides to become an exorcist himself, and deliver a smackdown to daddy dearest. That means going to the exclusive private school, True Cross Academy, where he will attend the secret cram school for would be exorcists. There are further unsettling truths to be revealed though, including first of all just who his teacher will be...


The concluding thirteen episodes of Blue Exorcist are presented across three discs from Manga Entertainment.

Disc 1
13. Proof
14. A Fun Camping Trip
15. Act of Kindness
16. The Wager
17. Temptation

Disc 2
18. Gufu
19. An Ordinary Day
20. Mask
21. Secret Garden

Disc 3
22. Demon Hunting
23. Truth
24. Satan’s Spawn
25. Stop, Time

Picture

Blue Exorcist gets a 1.78:1 widescreen transfer at 1080p resolution. The show spreads its 13 episodes across three dual layer discs, and really takes advantage of that format. Blue Exorcist’s transfer is to my eyes, close to perfect. This is the best I have seen a recent TV anime look in high definition, and it’s getting up there with some theatrical presentations. The image is clear and sharp throughout, line detail is excellent, colours are bold, strong and consistent, and there are no visible compression artefacts. That one slight bugbear about Blu-ray anime, digital banding, was wholly absent on these discs. I didn’t spot a single instance of it, even during the most dramatic colour and shade shifts. As mentioned, Aniplex go the extra mile to give value to their customers, and we are reaping the rewards of that effort here.


Blue Exorcist is a high quality animation for the most part, great character designs, clean and crisp colours, and detailed backgrounds. True Cross Academy looks like something from a Ghibli movie, while the character animations are energetic, detailed and vibrant. This is a splendid looking anime generally speaking, although there are occasions where you can see the consistency begin to waver, especially in the filler material.

The images used in this review are sourced from the PR, and aren’t necessarily representative of the retail release.

Sound

You have the choice between PCM 2.0 stereo in English and Japanese, with optional translated subtitles and a signs only track. My natural inclination is for the Japanese audio, and the action sequences come across well, the cast is memorable, including the inimitable Kana Hanazawa and Kazuya Nakai, and the show’s symphonic soundtrack gives it a big budget feel. The show’s pop music opening and end themes also add a bit of class. Given the lossless presentation, the upgrade in clarity over the DVD’s Dolby Digital offering is evident, although not as drastic as the improvement in the visuals.

Of course the selling point of this release is the dub, and I watched half of these episodes in English to get a feel of the show that way. It’s generally a good dub, one that flows well, with no awkward moments. The characters are cast appropriately, but it’s not a dub that stands out to me. It’s a dub which does what it needs to tell the story. One issue might be the inconsistency in name pronunciations, with even some actors unable to say their character’s name the same way twice. I’m thinking about Yukio’s pronunciation of Okamura.

Extras

The discs get some animated menus to present their content, while everything is easily accessible from the menu bar.

The audio options facilitate accurate selection, clicking English will also highlight the songs and signs track, while clicking Japanese will also highlight the full subtitle track, but the discs aren’t locked, and you can have any combination of audio and subtitles you choose, and you can also turn the subtitles off completely from the menu screen. Of course this is all accessible directly via your remote as well.

Disc 1 offers the following extra features.

You get 2:41 of Ura-Eku (Bonus Short Movies) that are those special omake that also wind up as Japanese DVD exclusives. These are more comedic and daft in tone, and aren’t part of the story. There are two on this disc.

There is 1:25 of Web Previews for the episodes.

You get the second set of textless credits.

Finally for disc 1, you get a page of credits, listing the Japanese cast and crew, and also the English dub cast, useful as the credits sequences on the episodes are left in the original language.

Disc 2 has one Ura-Eku bonus running to 1:36, and 1:08 of Web Previews.

Disc 3 has two Ura-Eku bonuses running to 3:03 and 0:51 of Web Previews.

The extras are in 1080p resolution, The Web Previews and the Ura-Eku bonus animations have all been dubbed in English as well.

Incidentally, I had a look at the listing for the Aniplex US Limited Edition of Blue Exorcist, and they do get more in the way of extras for their wallet busting price tag, including English Cast interviews, soundtrack CDs, and booklets. This time at least the UK release is a fair compromise between that and the usual Aniplex bare-bones regular release, and we do get some extra features. The same isn’t always true for other Aniplex sourced titles, Sword Art Online for example.

Conclusion

I like Blue Exorcist a lot. It’s fun, frenetic, action packed, with quality animation and a theatrical quality soundtrack. It’s got great characters with an excellent voice cast, an engaging story, and for a shonen action series, it’s delightfully shorn of excess baggage; no filler and flashbacks, and definitely no standing around waffling about with useless exposition. It’s a lean mean entertaining machine, that doesn’t waste any time in getting to the good stuff. The problem is that it’s a little too lean in this 25 episode TV series.

Blue Exorcist has a large cast of interesting characters, and a rich and detailed world to explore. There is a whole lot of back story to this that adds dimension and layer. In that respect it’s very similar to other shonen action shows like Full Metal Alchemist and Soul Eater. Just like those other shows, Blue Exorcist really needed an extended run, a good two series to properly explore its story and develop its characters. Twenty-five episodes is just too short a run to even scratch the surface of its story. What we then get here is a whole lot of set up, an introduction to the world, before the show jumps straight to the endgame. It’s over just as it begins to get interesting.

While the first half of the series could be considered the introduction to the main characters, it’s here in the second half that the characters begin to grow and develop, and you can see the first big development during a class training trip, when Rin’s nature is revealed to the rest of the class. What follows is a re-evaluation of their relationships in the light of this new information, and for some of the class it’s harder to accept the reality of Rin than others, leaving them vulnerable to temptation.

Once the new dynamic between the characters is set, there’s a two episode arc where they face their first test. A mysterious caped demon is swinging through the city like Spiderman, wrapping its victims in webbing that gradually suffocates, and it’s a race against time for Rin to learn to control his powers so that he can fight against it. This becomes doubly imperative when it transpires that the demon is after Rin specifically. The reality behind the demon explains one of the earlier arcs in the show, and reveals the truth behind a certain character, as well as revealing another aspect of the story which just serves to enrich the world.


At this point, I would have expected Blue Exorcist to continue in the same vein, testing the characters with new challenges, all the while drip feeding more and more exposition, and developing the over-arching story in the background. The problem is that at this point there are only four episodes left, and there’s no time to do any of this. Instead we go straight to the end of the story, the world is turned upside down, characters switch allegiance at the drop of a hat, and all hell, literally, breaks loose. It’s just too fast. There’s not enough time for any of the developments to really register, and as such, the emotional impact of what happens between Rin and his brother Yukio is lessened. It’s a grand finale, visually epic, and with a lot happening on screen. It’s just that it’s hard to care about.

In the end, I felt slightly cheated by the haste with which the conclusion was sprung on us, and while Rin and Yukio’s story arcs got good resolutions, other characters felt hard done by. There really needed to be more robust story arcs for the rest of the cram school, especially Bon, Shiemi, Izumi, while I was left with lingering questions about Mephisto, and also wondering what the deal with was Takara (the kid with the glove puppet). Maybe all of this will be explored in the Blue Exorcist movie. Blue Exorcist is great fun, has top notch production values, and never ceases to entertain, but it only scratches the surface of what ought to be an epic story. It’s like one expensive advert for the manga!

This isn’t the massive improvement over the DVD release that Part 1 was. After all, Part 1 on Blu-ray fixed a fair few subtitle problems that its DVD release had, and Part 2 has no such problems to resolve. What you get here are those episodes, in amazing high definition quality, with gorgeous lossless sound. Once again, using those Aniplex masters, four or five episodes on dual layer Blu-ray discs, ensures excellent technical quality. But these episodes are still the same episodes, it’s still the same Blue Exorcist that departs from the manga storyline and forges something original, and something that isn’t altogether satisfying. That’s why the overall grade remains the same this time, but if you are a Blue Exorcist fan, you shouldn’t hesitate in upgrading to Blu-ray. It looks fantastic! Hopefully the movie will get the same treatment.