Blue Exorcist: The Blue Night Saga

Episode 9

The cliffhanger to the previous episode, with Shiro facing up to a re-embodied Satan, had me worry this week would be just a big fight. I didn't think it could top the emotionally-charged, visually warped conflicts involving the demon baby Rin, and could dissipate the show's momentum.

Thankfully, the showdown was short; Shiro truncated it by the simple stratagem of cutting his own throat after Satan merges with him. That's the Shiro we know. What's more arresting, though, is how Yuri musters the strength to defy Satan, even from the bed she's been stuck on for the last two episodes, forcing out lines in sobbing screams. They include one to cut Satan dead: “What you're talking about is not love!” Readers, I give you voice-actor Megumi Hayashibara, owning anime episodes thirty years on from Rei's debut in Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Shiro expels Satan, but no-one even pretends he won't be back. The rest of the episode has Shiro and Yuri on the run from an establishment that's decided the best way to deal with this mess is to take out Yuri themselves. Then again, they don't actually have to. The matriarchal Shemihaza, newly arrived on the scene like one of Dune's pitiless Bene Gesserit, pronounces that Yuri has little time left.

That gives the following scenes an air of Grave of the Fireflies – the small moments between Shiro and Yuri gain instant poignancy because they're running out fast. We're sorriest for Shiro who doesn't know that, whereas it appears Yuri does. Of course, some viewers will snigger, the smug types you hear in cinemas saying Cry now! But the scenes are earned after the last eight episodes. Even when Yuri lets herself dream of the family life she won't have, it feels fitting, sad without being bitter.

Hey, she got more time with her twins than Padmé Amidala.

The snowy wastes are a fitting backdrop to tragedy – fans of Wolf’s Rain may think of that saga's denouement, down to a hero howling at the sky. But they're lent an interesting ambiguity when Shiro, realising Yuri has gone, lifts up the sack holding her squalling children. They're not Shiro's offspring, of course, but Satan's. Will Shiro's love for Yuri transfer to them, or will he be a dick again, as he's been so often in the past?

After all, the episode started with Yuri telling Satan he's a dad now and Satan's blank incomprehension – What the hell are those hunks of flesh? Selfish genes be damned; all Satan cares about is Yuri. Moments later, Satan taunts Shiro that they're the same. I hope the show has more to pay this off than a heroic “I'm not like you!”, now Shiro no longer has Yuri to tell him what's right.

It's finally confirmed Satan caused the fiery deaths of Yuri's homeless foster parents from the season's start. And if you're wondering about Yuri naming Rin's brother Yukio, “short for yukiotoko,” that's a call-back to Yuri's nickname for Shiro in their first meeting, when he wore a fleecy coat that Yuri found so warm. (The scene's here).

More broadly, “Yukiotoko” is a Japanese name for the fabled creatures called Yeti or Abominable Snowmen, though the word “Yeti” is also used by the characters. Maybe that summons the Yeti which appears at the unexpected cliff-hanger, swatting Shiro in a trice and leaving him beaten and broken. Has your cue come at last, Rin from the future?

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