Ao no Exorcist – 24

Father against sons, friends against friends, and brothers against brothers…

Hoshi: INTERNET WHY DO YOU LIE TO ME? Whoever put that Exorcist would only be 24 episodes will get a severe beating from me, I mean, I was prepared for the ending and everything…

Hime: OH GOOD GOD. I WAS ALL READY FOR THIS TO END THEN THERE IS ONE MORE EPISODE. STOP TOYING WITH MY EMOTIONS A-1!!!!!

Hoshi: Rin, after waking up to find his brother engulfed in blue flames, realizes Yukio has been possessed by Satan. When he goes in to try and punch Satan out of him he gets knocked down. Satan admits his plan of wanting to make a new world by uniting Assiah and Gehenna using Yukio as his perfect vessel and the gate the priests opened up. Just as he’s about to shoot Rin before he can destroy the gate, Bon stops him, wanting to battle Satan himself. Shima and Konekomaru form a shield while Bon uses Shima’s staff. However, Satan easily deflects it and knocks all the cram school students down. Satan then goes to throw a fire ball at them, but Shura comes in to deflect it. As Shiemi uses Nii to take the students somewhere safe, Shura does a quick battle with Satan, that ends up in her nearly getting stabbed through the chest. Luckily she uses a decoy of snakes to let her and the others get away.

In a safe room, Rin tells Shura of Satan’s plan. Shura comes out with a plan herself to to destroy the gate and stop the demon invasion, but Rin focuses more on wanting to save Yukio, despite her protests that no one can be saved once they’ve been possessed by Satan. Shura finally agrees to help, creating another plan to distract Satan as Rin goes around to attack him from the east. Once Yukio/Satan is out in the open, they’ll both attack at once. Shiemi, meanwhile, hears their conversation from behind a wall…

As Satan looks on at the blue flames and smoke rising, he remembers Yuri talking about a world where demons and humans could live together so that everyone could understand each other like they do. Shura interrupts his thoughts however to distract him, trying to call out Yukio. The two fight intenesly until Shura is knocked to the ground. As the dust settles, Shiemi appears, wanting to bring out Yukio as well. Satan only laughs and tries to strike her down with fire, but Nii shields her with seven rowan, which doesn’t catch fire. However, Satan thrusts his hand through it to grab her neck. It’s the last straw for Rin and as Shiemi falls limp, he comes out from his hiding place.

Rin throws his sword away, not wanting to fight his own brother. Satan pummels him with punches and kicks, but Rin only keeps calling out to Yukio. Deep inside, Yukio begins to hear Rin’s voice and finally tries to pull himself out, but a horde of his youngerselves, filled with jealously and hatred, try to bring him down. He still tries to reach out both inside and outside, grabbing Rin’s attention. Rin reaches out towards him as well, but just as they grab each others hands, a shot is fired.

Realizing that he’s shot his twin brother in the stomach, Yukio screams while Satan still controls him, making him point the gun once again at Rin to kill him. He resists and instead brings the gun to his head to kill himself to protect Rin. Before he can do anything, Rin suddenly punches him, knocking him to the ground. He tells Yukio that he won’t let him do this, that he doesn’t feel what he felt when Fujimoto died. This finally rids Satan from Yukio, and the brothers hug, Yukio apologizing for what he almost did.

Satan isn’t complete gone however as he still hasn’t given up on his dream. The Gehenna gate suddeny rises into the sky; the war between demons and humans reaching its climax!~

End thoughts~

Hoshi: Just gonna casually skip the whole rescue scene with the cram school students in the summary; forgive me! But hey, we all know it’s about the bromance this episode anyways. Goodness, I don’t even know where to start with the bromance. I think that was the heaviest dosage of bromance (that wasn’t imagined) that we’ve gotten on Exorcist! All that akwardness from previous episodes, all that tension lead up to this glorious and delightfully sappy moment. I almost cried, seriously; especially when Yukio/Satan shot Rin. I was literally like, “THIS IS NOT HAPPENING…”. It was too much for my fangirl heart! This definitely made up for that 24 episode troll~.

SHIEMI YOU ARE SO STUPID. WHY DO YOU DO THESE THINGS? I love Shiemi, but ugh, her character development in the anime made her into that predictable weak girl who tries to help but in fact becomes an annoying nuisance that makes it worse. I can admit she did become a little bit stronger, but occasionally they would make her default back to that weak-girl state, making her just unbearable to watch. This concluding arc is going ten times better than I expected.  Never would have I thought during that mid-season lull that I’d be freaking out and screaming this much on these last few episodes. I can’t even begin to imagine what’s in store for next, which is definitely a good sign; the less I can predict, the more potential for a satisfying ending. Now let’s see if A-1 can deliver that satisfying ending, or shock us all with one incredibly unpredictable end.~

Hime: Uguguguuuu~ stupid sexy twins…Huggin’ and cryin’ and being cute all over the place. Don’t you even know what that doesto me?!?! Unf. Well, that aside this episode was…oh, hey look! naked Yukio! …uh, I lost my train of thought there. Wait a minute, I was going to say- Holy-crap Shura, your boobs are so huge and hilarous when you are flying through the air! …What was I going to say? I have no idea. This is a really hard episode to sum up.

Well, when I look back I imagine two words are going to pop into my head when I think of this episode. TWINCEST and WEIRD. I’ll get to my weekly gushing (as this episode did have me as giddy as usual) but first I just want to say something about Yukio’s freaky little mind-chibis. That is what I’m referring to when I say that this episode was weird. The whole being trapped in your own matrix thing while being possessed/in a coma/high on LSD is nothing new, in fact this particular one was pretty much exactly the same as in an episode of Yu-Gi-Oh! I remember, lol. Which is both kind of sad and hilarious. I guess you could consider it some kind if shadow realm, either way I don’t mind as it’s as good a reason as any to get the character nekkid. Hubba hubba~ With all the tiny Yukio’s though I get what they were trying to do; that is symbolise all the angry, sad and jealous feelings of Yukio’s youth in order to stop him fighting Satan’s control, but just the fact it’s symbolism or a metaphor doesn’t make it GOOD. If they were going for creepiness then they got it down, (fuck that shit, I had nightmares for days) but I don’t think it worked in context. If this story had gone the manga route where these feelings are explored in more depth then maybe I could forgive it, but as it stands it’s not been very well addressed. Yukio’s want to protect Rin is the thing that’s been most emphasized lately which is why the metaphor feels out of place and just kind of stupid (it looks kind of stupid anyway). It sets up to a particularly powerful and yaoi-filled moment though so I can’t hate it too much.

FUUUUUUUU~ THIS IS WHY I LOVE TWINS. THEY ARE SO SWEET. Okay, was totally squeeing and making inappropriate noises of hilarity when they started their slow motion run towards each other. COULD YOU NOT JUST HEAR THIS MUSIC PLAYING? AHAHAHAHAHA. I wanted to take it seriously, I really really did. But my yaoi-programmed mind just wouldn’t let me. To be fair though my heart did a break a little when Yukio reached out to Rin asking for help. I’m a sucker for those kinds of moments (and Jun’s weak little voice) and it got me almost bawing, it really fucking did. Aw, man. SO MUCH EMOTION. I saw a motivational poster though that had that screencap of them hugging and underneath it it said “Nii-San! Satan took advantage of my body!” INTERNET YOU ARE DETERMINED TO RUIN THIS NICE MOMENT FOR ME WITH YOUR HILARIOUSLY APPROPRIATE INNUENDO. I actually really hated all the screaming though, it pisses me off when Jun has to do that. He is FAR better at the subtle stuff, the little emotions. Seriously, he is fuckin perfect sometimes at making your heart break. So it feels like a waste of his talent…not that I’m biased or anything, but with something like that, the over-dramatic scream just ruins it. It would be far more impactful to show despair/sadness/horror in a low key way than flying into an all caps rage.

But, D’oh! Shiemi, why are you so useless? Uhhhhh, seriously, she hasn’t been useful for so long, always getting in the way and needing rescued. She’s turned into Hibino. Blegh. On a more serious note, I don’t feel let down by this episode but I do think that the previous two were more exciting and adrenaline pumping. I suppose that is the curse of great build up; realising it. It didn’t quite manage it, but at least the last episode has been left open for some more action that will hopefully be better animated and staged. Demon!Yukio was cool and all but I don’t think they used it to it’s greatest potential. Also, I still don’t really get what the mark on his arm was supposed to be…

Preview:

THIS IS IT! No, seriously, this is it! How will this final showdown go down? Will Yukio and Rin succed in defeating their father? And has the contract really been made as Mephisto says? Until next week then, if our special plans work out (hint, hint)~!!

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.