It’s not even a back to basics moment for Rin but rather an introduction to the basics as he gets caught up on the structure of the student body at True Cross Academy.
What They Say:
To overcome her shyness, Shiemi secretly vows to “Make friends!” But she’s foiled by her klutziness. After displaying her Tamer skills in class, she finally asks Izumo to be her friend! Soon after, the Exorcist Cram School holds a boot camp.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With Rin having been at the True Cross Academy for a bit now, going through classes and some of the more active physical sessions, he’s still very much the new guy. Enough so that he really doesn’t understand anything, which makes sense because nobody has told him anything. It’s the kind of infuriating moment with most shows as they go through this by having the lead character look like a fool as you get the minor infodump from frustrated classmates about how the whole place works with the different classes and skills needed in order to become an Exorcist. He’s so far out of the realm of knowledge at this point that you can easily feel the frustration everyone else exhibits. When the info dump frustrates the viewer, it’s not a good thing.
Some of the fun does come back into the show quickly after that as one of the instructors works with the class on doing familiar summoning. Not all of them are good at it while others excel to the point of invoking two familiars by their side. Rin does have something of a country bumpkin look about him as he finds all of them to be pretty cool and the instructor as well, what with his eyepatch and rugged good looks. As the kids are all getting used to each other, we’re definitely starting to see the dynamics taking place as it’s not a big happy family kind of thing. The most frustrating aspect comes in the form of Shiemi as she’s so completely in her own world that she doesn’t even realize some of the very annoying things she does as she’s just being herself. But she’s so earnest in wanting to be friends with people that it’s hard to be really upset with her when she makes her wishes so honestly.
Where a lot of the episode focuses on is how Shiemi manages to befriend Izumo, but Izumo is just using her for her own ends by basically making her an errand girl at the least. It’s cute in its own way because she’s so happy, even knowing what she’s doing, because she’s never had a friend before. It’s interesting to watch how others are watching this unfold though as they go through their normal school days and we see Rin getting really upset it, and confronting Shiemi about it to poor results, but also the actual friend that Izumo has thinks that it’s all going too far as well. Izumo’s back story does flesh things out a bit as to why Izumo is like this, but it doesn’t excuse it. Seeing how everyone works through it in their own way gives us a decent little glimpse into who these people are.
In Summary:
Blue Exorcist does bring a little action into things and it does feel forced at the end when they do so. Rather than focus on the character drama, it has to nudge in the attack aspect with the demon creatures that invariably will start a shift in how these characters deal with each other. It’s a tried and true approach, but one that I had hoped would be avoided in this episode with how it was turning into a good dialogue driven piece as Shiemi and Izumo are confront about their actions. The show has a lot going for it, especially in its character designs and animation, but it’s still playing by the usual story points for a series of this nature. When it shows us a bit more, such as Izumo at the end here or other character moments, it shines more and makes you want it to go down that path more than the heavily trod path.
Grade: B
Simulcast By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
