Introduction
Out of all the episodes of Blue Exorcist I have seen, none have puzzled me more than this one. Because this episode goes so far as to do something that just makes no sense. When I say it makes no sense, I mean it makes absolutely no sense.
In order to save Rin, Yukio tells Ernst he will take Rin’s place and gives some of his blood to form the artificial gate. To Ernst’s joy, the gate is created. The Esquires and Tsubaki arrive just in time to see the aftermath of the ceremony.
Ernst orders the Messiah to be dropped through the gate. The bomb is swallowed up by the gate, it starts to explode, but then nothing happens. Yukio hears Satan speaking to him as Fujimoto who tells him something like that could never destroy Gehenna. Yukio blames Satan for the death of his parents, but Satan tells him he did not kill the twins’ mother but that it was Ernst. Yukio refuses to believe him as Satan starts to recount the events of the past.
A younger Fujimoto finds Yuri living in a cabin in the middle of a snowy forest. He tells her to come back because she is being called a witch, but Yuri tells him she won’t and does not care. He returns to report to Cardinal Ernst who tells Fujimoto to resort to any means necessary to bring her back.
Yuri finds Fujimoto chasing off the demons and while trying to stop him, becomes engulfed in blue flames. Fujimoto learns from Yuri that she met Satan a year ago while on a mission. She did not burn in the flames as her comrades did and went to find the source of the flames. She meets Satan in wolf form and together, the two decide to work together to understand their worlds.
There's something wrong about all of this.
Through their time together, Satan learns about life and death. Fujimoto asks Yuri if she and Satan did get together. She tells him she is pregnant with his child. Fujimoto relays this to Ernst who has him incarcerated, thinking he slept with his daughter. Later Ernst finds out that Yuri is pregnant with Satan’s child and orders the doctor to abort the child.
Screw the doctrines, I'm the Cardinal!
Yuri refuses and is put on trial where she tells the court the truth, that she is having the kid in order for both the human and demon worlds to understand each other. She is sentenced to death by Ernst as Satan searches for a body to possess in order to save her, causing the events of the Blue Night. He settles for Ernst and frees Yuri from the stakes and tells her to escape.
Mephistopheles frees Fujimoto and tells him he is the only able exorcist fit to execute Yuri and her children. The two go to where Fujimoto believes Yuri escaped to. They eventually find a cave where she gave birth to the twins before dying.
Fujimoto, armed with the Kurikara given to him by Mephistopheles, finds that he cannot kill the twins and decides to raise them as his own. Mephistopheles finds this amusing and makes a bet with Fujimoto that should he succeed raising them without their powers awakening, he wins. But if Fujimoto loses, Mephistopheles will claim the kids. Fujimoto agrees as Mephistopheles seals Rin’s flames within Kurikara and Fujimoto goes on to lie about succeeding in his mission.
"If I do win, please cut off that weird strand of your hair."
Yukio finds it hard to believe Satan’s story. Satan tells him to ask Ernst for the truth. Ernst confesses to trying to sentence his daughter to death and refuses to acknowledge both Rin and Yukio as his grandkids. Ernst gets sucked up by the gate as Yukio’s moment of rage allows Satan to infiltrate his mind, taking over his body. Rin wakes up just in time to see Yukio cloaked in blue flames.
My Opinion
This episode has so many things I want to point out. Not because it's wrong. I understand what the animators were trying to do. Or at least, I have an idea what I think they were trying to do. They wanted to portray some kind of love story between the brothers' mother and the lord of Gehenna. Because if they went with what possibly really happened, it would really disturb the viewers. This episode was not bad; it was just weird.
What I have to wonder about is why they decided to humanize Satan. Did any of the animators study up on him enough? I cannot say much on the matter as this is a Christian-related mythos. All I can say is that the animators should realize they should not try to humanize everything they can, especially when said thing is supposed to be the great evil of all mankind.
Pictured: EVIL
And now for something a little different. In case anyone had not realized yet, whenever the text goes italic that means that I, Derek, am talking. I felt that I needed to take a moment and talk about my feelings towards this episode.
This was a really, really stupid episode. Humanizing Satan was one of the dumbest things they could have done. And I'm not saying that because I disagree with it as a Christian, there's so much in this series that breaks all doctrine of any Christian denomination ever, that there's no point in complaining about that now.
It isn't like painting Satan in a positive light is so unheard of, after all that was one of the major elements in Paradise Lost. The problem is that where Paradise Lost was written by one of the greatest English writers of all times, Episode 23 of Blue Exorcist - Truth, was written by some anime writer.
That's not to say that anime writers are incapable of writing deep material, but in this case, yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. As far as this anime is concerned at least. See, Milton wove a compelling tale of the sympathetic, yet ultimately evil Lucifer. This episode doesn't even get close to that and instead paints Satan as a misunderstood soul that only wants to be loved.
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| Satan? |
That's right people. I went there.
The problem with this is that we're supposed to be afraid of this guy, and that doesn't really work well when we see him portrayed so lazily. It's easily possible to portray a villain in a sympathetic light, but that really should not have been what was done here. And while the episode ends with Satan apparently tricking Yukio and using his story as a way to take over Yukio's body, I can't shake the feeling that this is not the last we've seen of pussy Satan.
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