Ao no Exorcist – 11

Anime studios should never do a beach episode, EVER.

Hoshi: Another Sunday has come and gone, folks, and in this episode’s case, THANK GOODNESS…

Hime: I’M BACK, but my internet still hates me. I totally missed AnE’s coronation into double digits last week. It wasn’t a particuarly thrilling one, but Kuro (I am NOT calling him Blackie) was so adorable that it wasn’t all bad. But this week…*JAWS music*…it’s the …the …BEACH EPISODE! *screams*

Hoshi: The unlikely combo of Rin, Shima, and Izumo appear at a beach, ready to hit the water, but instead are forced to manage a fried squid stand instead as a ‘mission’. While the boys watch the stand, Izumo heads to the water to relax. She suddenly has a leg cramp, and her cries catch the attention of a boy swimming near by. He goes over to help her, but he accidentally touches her breast, making her fight back against him. With one headbutt, he knocks her out. Izumo comes to just as he puckers his lips to give her mouth-to-mouth. She returns the headbutt so he can back off, which he does and the two immediately start arguing.

EXTREME headbutt 2!

CHILD, WHAT DID JUST YOU SAY?

Rin and Shima finally appear, but as they see people running, the three decide to follow. Upon arriving at the lighthouse, they see the ocean turning black. An old man next to them tells them it’s a demon, specifically a squid. Later they run into the boy again, and show him the way to the pet store, where he tells them that it was his father that sailed out six months ago to face the demon, but hasn’t come back yet. He believes the demon took him away and is determined to defeat it.

The next day the sea has turned black once again, and the kid, Yohei, is nowhere in sight. Izumo decides to check on him alone after they were given orders to watch him and make sure he doesn’t do anything rash. He ends up just looking out all day. Towards the evening the squid finally appears and Rin and Shima decide to defeat it themselves before Yohei does. Shima tries a hymn, but when it fails, Blackie in its larger form attacks it. However, once it takes a bite of the raw squid, it becomes sick and transforms back.

Izumo comes by, asking if they’ve seen Yohei pass by. When seeing the squid right in front of them, she tries to summon her familiars, but with a splash of water, the papers are useless. Suddenly, something is shot at the demon. In the water is Yohei, standing on a speed boat holding a harpoon. Rim immediately goes after him, trying to stop him. Of course, he tells him to stop getting in the way and jumps in the water to shoot again. Once hit, the squid flings the boy back and he starts sinking to the bottom of the ocean just as Rin pulls him back up. Luckily the squid is big enough to cover Izumo and Shima’s view, so Rin finally opts to taking out his sword. Suddenly however, a man on a raft appears, calling out Yohei’s name. The man turns out be his dad, finally back after six months.

Yohei’s dad tells Yohei about living on islands and drifting on his raft for those months. He even explains that he and the squid were looking for Japan together, that it had a changed for the better. It turns out Mr. Tsubaki had brought the three of them to learn that demons can have a change of heart. They get ready to leave the next and as they wait for their ride back, Yohei comes by with his dog. Izumo immediately goes over to him, only to find out his dog has the exact same eyebrows as her…~

End thoughts~

Hoshi: Oh goodness, where do I START? You already can tell that I’m extremely displeased with this filler episode. I hate fillers in general, but this one was just…baaaaaaaaad. It’s like they took ever possible anime/beach/summer cliché moment that would work and mashed them into one very muddled, anti-climatic, bland episode. The ending was so effort-less I wanted to cry; “The demon had a change of heart” HOW CONVENIENT. I guess can understand that their teacher was trying to “teach” them that demons can have a ‘change of heart’ but come on, really? That’s so…lame. And then there’s that thing Izumo had for Yohei. Was I the only one who felt a bit concerned about that? (I’m probably the last person who should be saying this actually HA) It felt very odd to me, like they were trying to force Izumo to have some sort of ‘romantic’ moment at the beach. One thing  I actually enjoyed was when it turned out Yohei only thought Izumo was cute because she had the same eyebrows as his dog. HIS DOG. I busted up laughing at that scene. KARMA WORKS IN ANIME TOO, IZUMO~

There were just so many faulty things with this episode; it kind of pisses me off. I hate when they do something this lazy. At least put SOME creative effort if you’re going to waste a WHOLE episode and 20 minutes of my life on a stupid, pointless story like this. They could’ve done so, SO much more with this, maybe even add some ACTUAL action or Shima and Rin shirtless OR MAYBE EVEN CHAGNE THE SETTING! I think setting this at the beach was what caused this disaster. There’s not much you can do with Exorcist’s storyline, being the way it is, to set some sort of episode at the beach. A-1, you guys don’t HAVE to do a beach episode just because it’s a shounen and it’s summer. That first filler, episode 6, was actually quite entertaining and I loved it! But, what in the world happened this time around?! Oh well, thank goodness we’ll be back on track next episode. I’m going to have a major bitch fit if I have to sit through another lazily written story~.

Hime: An episode with no Yukio? Unacceptable! Unforgivable! Down right ludacris! Almost as ludacris as Izumo’s romance with a ten year old. It’s in the same vien as having a tencacle monster show up without any tentacle rape. God was this episode stupid. I have never known Blue Exorcist to so totally miss the mark in what is entertaining. I mean, a beach episode is bad enough, right? But this? This? If it was just to shamlessly showcase Izumo in a swimsuit then CONGRADUWELLDONE, it worked. There are now slews of fanart raping my eyes whenever I go onto image boards. THANKS A-1, THANKS A BUNCH. Oh, but maybe centering the episode around her (AGAIN) was for character delevopment? DON’T MAKE ME LAUGH. All it did was reiterate that she’s a useless bitch with a shota fetish. Seriously, the amount of time she spent flustered and blushing around that kid was disturbing.

Shima also doesn’t have much going for him at the moment, he’s the archetypial “horny guy”, and while I like him femboy pink hair he goes on about girls ALL THE TIME. He needs a twin like Rin, he didn’t spend all episode chasing tail. Probably becuase he’s already got one kekekeke…Okay, that was bad. BUT CAN YOU BLAME ME? This episode was horrible. It wasn’t exciting, it wasn’t funny. It wasn’t anything! And WHY O WHY was that squid thing even there? Seriously, all the build up…and the damn thing is friendly? WHAT. URGH. WHY. I JUST DON’T EVEN. WHAT WAS THE POINT?!

Don’t even get me started the self-congradulatory little speech at the end. Srsly, is A-1 trying to justify their own little romp here? When Izumo is commenting on just how STUPID this episode was, (for once I agree with her) but then goes on to say that no, it was fun. FUN? FUN?! WHAT FREAKING SHOW WERE YOU WATCHING? HOW DARE YOU TRY TO TELL US WHAT TO FEEL AFTER SUCH AN ABOMINATION OF ANIMATION. THINK OF ALL THE TREES THAT HAD TO DIE FOR THIS EPISODE TO BE CREATED. IT WASN’T WORTH IT MAN. I’M WITH THE OZONE LAYER ON THIS ONE. SAVE THE RAINFORESTS. LETS JUST ALL WATCH JERSEY SHORE AND -slaps self-…Okay, that’s too far. But you see where I’m coming from right? I would rather watch ALL of Dragon Crisis! again than watch this one episode a second time. THAT’S how bad it was, people. Boring, stupid and the complete anti-entertainment. So, yano, the same as every other beach episode done by any anime ever.

Preview:

Oh, an amusement park location! Looks fun, but hold up, will Amaimon finally want to play with Rin and makes his appearance to the rest of the Esquires?…Shiemi! Why you wondering around alone?! Until next week then~!!

About Tag Team

We live, laugh, enjoy and strictly believe on "more the merrier". When together, we usually come up with very chatty, conversation-based episodics and interesting posts.