Blue Exorcist: The Blue Night Saga

Episode 3

As Deadpool observes, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is at a low point now, but that can't erase its greatest moments. One was in the 2012 Avengers film, with its confrontation between Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow and Tom Hiddleston's Loki. Loki demolishes Black Widow's psyche, till the punchline where we realize Black Widow was playing him all along.

There's a lovely little echo of that in this week's Blue Exorcist. For most of the episode, Shiro (Rin's future adoptive dad) is your turd-level power-trip delinquent, snarling and sniping at the infuriating girl familiar trainer Yuri, who for some reason cares about him. Over the episode, she stands up to him, tells him she loves him, and then he very reluctantly mellows enough to grumpily agree to be friends. Then as Shiro stomps off, he hears Yuri's classmate say he can see why Yuri is such a good trainer of demons. Like Loki, Shiro has been owned.

It may be an imperfect analogy. We're still inclined to believe that when Yuri told Shiro she loved him, she was telling the truth. Anime doesn't often go for fake-outs, though I'm wondering if Yuri's declaration might be more like the Misato-Shinji kiss scene in Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion. That was (a) tender and heartfelt and (b) absolutely not any declaration of romantic love. "There's more when you get back," indeed! Then again, this season's title credits suggest it will be a love story between Yuri and Shiro. (I've not read ahead in the manga.) We'll have to see if later episodes play up any potential ambiguity in Yuri's feelings, which she might not even realize herself. Is she confusing her pity for him, and perhaps her physical attraction, with something deeper?

As a one-note boor, Shiro's instantly boring—like a Family Guy misogynist caricature. Still, there's the deft exposition in the garden scene, where Shiro effectively says he's an abused child who's passing on abuse. He's been raised by Section 13 as a tool to be tortured or killed, so why on earth should he treat demons any better? And yet there's the episode's first scene, in which Shiro shows he's developed a basic empathy, even as hides it with thick layers of bravado. As I said in my review of Blue Exorcist's previous season, the show's storytelling is obvious but enjoyable; and effective, too.

A pity the trip to Mexico is so brief—blink and you'll miss the priests in their local dress. On the other hand, it's great to see a Golem monster; I can't recall seeing one in anime since Somali and the Forest Spirit. Its visibly CG movements may irk some viewers, but for me, it felt as natural, or as naturally unnatural, as the jerky stop-motion monsters in the Ray Harryhausen films which the scene evoked.

And poor Rin—he was embarrassed enough to glimpse his foster dad's porn stash in part one, and now it seems he's watching scenes so sultry they must be mosaicked to spare our eyes. Though I'm already envisioning an omake joke scene where the mosaic is removed and it turns out Shiro and his lady friend were making daisy chains and giggling.

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Blue Exorcist: The Blue Night Saga is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Saturdays. lmnopb04 ed eep eid nt