Review of Blue Exorcist: The Movie
The ideals of two brothers clash, as the lines between demon and human fades before their very eyes. A diverse journey of fun, exitement, amazing animation, beautyful music, feelings and mild symbolism? This movie is one of the few side story movies I could recommend for anyone, fan or not! Normally, I don't waste my time with movies attached to anime series. Lately though, I've been seeing alot of them, and it truly is like discovering one pearl after another, very much like discovering anime for the first time all over again. I will not waste your time with a lenghty synopsis, as summarizing the movieis not my intention. Nevertheless, the movie takes place somewhere between Rins classmates discovering his identity, and the end of the anime. A festival for a historic exorcism is about to be held and Mefisto puts the care of a demon, sentensed to exorcism in the care of Rin, for reasons I will withhold in this review. Rin ends up spending time with the demon and uncovers a side to demons he has never seen before.
Most of the cast from the anime return for this film, from Rins classmates, to Mefisto and his brother and even Rin and Yukinos father in more than one flashback. The voiceacting cast returns as well, and right there you have a plus in the movies favor.
The producers are mostly the same as in the anime as well, with some of Aniplex finest at the helm. The best description I can demiver on the animation is "cool and colorful". As those who have taken a look at my anime list, I drive a mostly unjustified crusade against the use of CG animation in my anime, but in this movie it is onky used as polished, and only when animating beings supposedly from a different world, something I actually can get behind.
It would be a crime to review this anime without a segment avout the music. Being composed by Hiroyuki, Sawano (Aldnoah.Zero, Attack on Titan) you know you can expect some over the top quality, and he does not disappoint. Being not only well orcistrated but also well delivered in terms of timing and corespondance with the art style, it brought a little tear to my usually stern, cold, eyes at the more crirical moments of the movie. Something I found bothersome as I was traveling on a public transport at the time, and what my neigbours saw was a 21 year old man crying over some cartoons.
Was there something lacking in the movie? Yeah sort of... An aspect I enjoy about sidestories, is when two or more characters that don't normally interact get to explore their relationship, prominantly seen in the Fullmetal Alchemist specials, where Winry and Hawkeyes relationship is explored. This movie didn't take this approach, but rather focused on strenghtening the already existing relations, and exploring the unique characters for the movie.
The film sould also profit from some finesse though as the "big reveal" is something that's already quite obvious from the get go, and with the movie "holding your hand" about it, this revelation just feels slightly
I mentioned "mild symbolism" in the introduction of this review, but I will not delve into that here, but rather let you figure it out yourself, if you are interested.
Are you a Blue exorcist fan? By all means, watch the movie! If you have not seen the show, I would rather recommend you watch the movie without having seen the show, I am not saying that the show is weak, it is a strong 7 in my book, but it's nothing substantial enough to make me go door to door about it.
Ao no Exorcist Movie, was a solid watch that pulled my heartstrings, and it might just pull yours. Still, there is actually room for improvement to be had. And for that I I'll give it a nine in this review, though In my book it's a ten, because every anime is better, if watched on a train.