Ao no Exorcist Movie

I was expecting something more action-packed and thrilling, but this was by no means a disappointment. This movie was perfectly fine. Just a-okay. It's a lovely chocolate cake smeared with some questionable cream and devoid of the cherry on top. And when you haven't had a cake for a while, it's a bit of an 'oh-well' sort of downer. But if you've had your fair share of sweets- from revolting, stiff wedding cakes to drool-worthy masterpieces- you will find this cake to be an ordinary dish, its expiration date a bit too soon, but far off enough to leave you munching in contentment.

STORY (7)

The ... movie starts off by relaying a cautionary tale (which is repeated several times throughout) of a demon who was found by a villager. She fed him food, and the demon stayed and spent time with everyone. Soon, because they became busy in laughter than in their work, the villagers forgot the village. To solve this problem, an exorcist was brought in to seal the demon. However, the village remained lost. Thus, this tale was passed down for thousands of years, so that once every 11 years, a festival is celebrated for the demon.

You'd think with such a simple, straightforward tale, that it'd be easy to patch together what needs to happen and display it in the best possible manner. Instead, we get jumbled amounts of detail on action that does not seem to be going anywhere nor following any sort of pattern. The plot-line is laid out, you can guess what role the main characters play, and you do know what happens. Nevertheless, instead of being content with meeting the watchers' expectations, the producers try to overdo it by adding in some random mission at the beginning of the movie. Missions are commissioned throughout the whole movie. And you see a bunch of 'exwires' and exorcists going around, chanting stuff, shooting blobs of neon colored monsters, and wielding swords equipped with a classical battle cry. It's not even well-done action that slightly interests us- it just sort of drags itself on for a minute or two before flopping. It doesn't help that the city looks like a downtown slum to begin with.

Besides that, the main parts are executed well enough. Rin finds a little boy who turns out to be a demon. He befriends him after offering a bottle of water which is soon followed by a peeing session. They play games together, take baths, and basically Rin takes over the role of surrogate father/older brother. Either way, it's pretty cute and I laughed and aww'd quite a bit during the baseball scene. Then the kid's eyes start dilating. And even if you've never watched anime before, you know shit's bout to hit the fan. We're then faced with zoomed in faces, people staring, and a drunk act. You can bet your lucky stars it's the village story happening all over again. This time, however, there's a little twist. The ending is unexpected- but you expected it already. It's slightly tear-jerking at some moments (if you know the back story of the characters) and overall provides closure.

ART (6)

Characters look normal (except the fact that Yukio's moles are missing...) and sane besides the ones that clearly aren't. The drawing and coloring style from the anime was utilized and resulted in a faithful animation except for one detail. Why does the city look like a slum town? How is that even sanitary? Was that green swamp water we just saw?! Why are they performing magic in the sewers? Why is there no real explanation for any of this? The anime series didn't make it look dirty and grotesque at all. Everything was clean and vibrant despite the crazy architecture. But in this movie, even the festival was slightly disturbing- what with it's flashing lights and glowing-eyed rabbit faces. It's like a mixture of ancient Rome and Istanbul gone through dust showers, mud storms, and some shitload of hurricanes requiring practically everything to be rebuilt and what's left standing looks like it'd better to put it out of it's misery.

SOUND (7)

If you've seen Ao no Exorcist, you know the soundtrack is spectacular. The battle music injects adrenaline into your veins, the piano tracks make you sniffle into shedding a single tear, and the vocals encourage head bobbing. In the movie, you get some rip-off artist rapping while the characters are mid-discussion. No worries, you think, subs will do. But the subs are butchered beyond belief. I swear to God that if some grammar nazi was shown those sentences (one was, "How are understaffed, we with you, the division of Kyoto!") the poor soul would kneel over and scream "STOP IT! SPARE ME! PLEASE!" before erupting into a sobbing epileptic fit. It's as though the subber started out eager to learn the English language and halfway through decided, "You know what, screw this! I'll just stick it in Google Translate! Known by difference no one!"

The voice actors did their jobs, but the subber just stabbed their efforts straight in the gut. More importantly, the translators aren't the only pet peeve. The sound specialist has a nasty habit of incorporating a radio 'technique' at random intervals of a scene. Deciphering the subs is annoying enough but having to hear normal sounds being murdered through transmitters just made the process dreadful.

CHARACTER (7)

For those of you who haven't seen the anime before, here's some general info about the characters' personalities:

The main character (Okumura, Rin) is easy-going, open-minded, and easily convinced. He cooks really well, is the son of Satan, and breaks out in blue flames and a tail when he unveils his sword. His twin brother (Okumura, Yukio) is the younger of the two, but you wouldn't know it from his mature, dutiful, and serious manner. He wields two guns, wears a trench coat, and has wonderful glasses that compliment his face structure.

There's a blond chick in a pink school uniform (Moriyama, Shiemi) who has a green little palm tree bud who sits on her shoulder and whom, for some odd reason, she dubs as 'nii-chan'.The green thing wields magical powers of herbs, medicine, and saving dead people's souls in peaches. Another female character is a purple haired chick with a reverse ombre look (Izumo, Kamiki). She's a pretty normal girl- ignoring the fact they all have some sort of exorcism powers.

The main character's good guy friends are: the carefree one who's afraid of insects (Renzou, Shima), a bald smarty-pants with glasses (Konekomaru, Miwa), and a hardcore looking dude (Ryūji, Suguro) who goes by Bon and is serious about work/studies. Though seeming a tad cliche, they're highly amusing when hanging out together.

We've got a snake-sword wielding, bra-wearing, drunk-loving gal (Shura, Kirigakure) who's pretty laidback and loose except for when it comes to getting the job done. There's also the new Paladin (Arthur Auguste Angel) who is in charge of the festival and you can assume to be powerful and grand by his stark white clothing, lustrous golden locks, and ridiculous last name. You'll meet a Taiwanese exorcist, the cute demon kid (who's named later on), and the main character's cat (Kuro) who can turn into godzilla.

All the characters are tolerable, one or two provide endearing moments, but they still feel distant, so when the unexpectedly expected ending plays out into a dramafest, it can be received with little to no response. It all really comes down to how much emotional piano you can take before breaking down in tears.

CONCLUSION:

Obviously, if you haven't seen the anime, it may be frustrating trying to understand what's going on, what's what, and who's who. If you have seen this anime, this is nothing exemplary. It's not spectacularly majestic nor is it worthlessly contemptible. This movie is such a blandly neutral display of work that I'll just hold my peace on this one.

Most Anime movies involve the usual characters fighting against a new threat. This one is very unique.

The anime is an action packed adventure, where Rin, Satan's son, fights against demons as an exorcist. The movie is almost completely different. While it starts with some action, it quickly turns into a more emotional movie. True Cross Academy is in the middle of holding a festival, meanwhile Rin, Yukio and Shiemi are busy exorcising a demon train. During the exorcise, something goes wrong and a small demon named Usamaro is released. The exorcists decide to deal with Usamaro after the end of the festival, and he is ... placed in Rin's care for the duration of the festival. Rin comes to love the small, trouble making, innocent demon as a brother. What he doesn't know is that the festival is actually the resealing of the prison meant to hold Usamaro, the demon from a ancient story who once destroyed a village by making its inhabitants forget about work and only play games all day, except Usamaro believes he was only having fun, and nothing bad really happened. He begins to 'help' Rin and his friends by making everyone forget about their work. As a result, demons begin to invade the city, destroying everything. Rin is faced with a tragic decision, whether to kill Usamaro, his close friend, or protect him from those who would kill him.

What worked:

The art and animation are outstanding. Seriously, I would totally pay to see this if ever it came out in theaters just to see the art. I appreciated how the flashbacks were linked with how the characters later on interacted and the events they went through. Also, the characters were given depth and personality... well some of them were. It was pretty entertaining.

What does not work:

One too many WTF moments here and there. Can someone please explain what happened here? I had a super hard time following the story. [was there even a structure to this thing to begin with?] Rin & Yukio ... Okumura start of this movie by screwing up their mission to defeat some wild phantom train and out of all this comes this devil [Usamaro] kid who Rin is entrusted to take care of. This leads to some kind of friendship..which leads to some kind of conflict...which leads to WTF IS GOING ON!? Is there a villain or something what the hell are these colorful blobs doing all over the place? What do Rin's painful flashbacks about his dad have to do with the story at all?? GAH! Oh and Shura's boobs looked like they were gonna pop out...what the hell was she even doing in this movie? I paid full on attention to this movie but yet, wasn't able to grasp any of the concepts nor the whole science behind works of Ao No Exorcist.

**So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna watch the whole entire anime and then re-watch the movie again so my view of how it sums up as a whole it more credible (?)

Holy smokes! Probably one of the best production values I've seen from an anime movie from art, sound, music, and just the way everything was filmed!

Just a little upset though that with so much potential for a great action packed and greatly styled set pieces this movie had going for it... it's mostly about 80% feelings for the heart and about 10% action (oh my goodness that opening scene was mind blowing! Seriously an adrenaline rush) then unfortunately the rest is a cliche'd but still a heart warming story.


Such an improvement though from the Blue Exorcist series though WOW. Would watch again only ... for the opening action sequence alone though... the rest is more of a heart warming tale for kids.

Warning possible Spoilers

After finishing the first series, I was quite surprised to see that a movie had been made and was looking forward to seeing another hour and 30 minutes of Rin and the others. However this wasn't as fun as I was expecting.

Story (6/10)

Now I was really unsure whether the Movie is even connected to the TV series, true it has all the characters there, but nothing is said about Satan's defeat. Instead everyone is preparing for this special festival, while Rin and the others are guarding the academy from any Demons that try to interfere.
While trying to stop a demon, Rin ends up ... encountering a child called Usamaro, who turns out to a demon and Mephisto has Rin take care of him.
However once everyone had gotten closer to Usamaro, it turns out he had been making everyone forget their bad memories and feelings, which allowed the other demons to easily attack everyone.
Yukio and another Exorcist called Cheng-Long try to kill Usamaro, but Rin manages to convince them that he won't do it again, but when a giant swarm of Demons start engulfing the entire city, Usamaro sacrifices himself to wipe the demons away while making everyone forget in the process, except Rin and Cheng-Long who remember everything that happened.
Yeah I don't really know why this needed to be made honestly, because it feels entirely separate from the whole story we had in the TV series.

Characters (6/10)

Now the most disappointing thing about this Movie, is definitely the use of the characters.
The main focus is between Rin, Usamaro and Yukio, while everyone else gets completely sidetracked hell most of the other characters don't even do anything their just there for the sake it being Blue Exorcist.
True I did like the relationship that builds between Rin and Usamaro, along with the dispute between Rin and Yukio in what to do with Usamaro as Yukio wanted to kill Usamaro, while Rin wanted to befriend him.
However that doesn't make it fair for the other characters, who are just used for random jokes throughout the movie, which isn't ok for me. Shiemi could've actually been used here as a big role acting like a mother character for Usamaro, since Rin pretty much acts like a father to him and this would've made the movie a little more interesting.

Art (6/10)

Now I don't know why they changed the look of the Academy, at first I thought it was the damage being repaired after the end of the series, but it's actually the city getting ready for the festival and honestly it looks pretty damn ugly. They also changed a lot of stuff around too, like the position of Rin and Yukio's accommodation which just looks out of place now for some reason.
The way the characters look is also kinda weird, true this is from a larger budget because it's a Movie, but it just didn't sit well with me.
Also WTF was with the designs of the Demons, the demon train looked pretty cool, but what was with the demons looking like goddamn balloons. That isn't intimidating it just looks ridiculous.
One other thing, where the hell are Yukio's demon teeth and ears and this pretty much makes me think this is it's own separate thing and has nothing to do with the TV series.

Sound (7/10)

At least the soundtrack was still good to listen too, although without any significant changes there really wasn't much to say about this.

Extras:

The action was still pretty decent, but lacking mostly as it concentrated more on a slice of life aspect with supernatural stuff rather than action, but Blue Exorcist never really concentrated that much on action in the TV series either so it's no surprise they didn't do much with the action here.

Enjoyment (6/10)

Overall (6/10)

Overall this movie didn't really need to happen, I was fine with the way the TV series ended, despite the issue of it deviating from the manga, but it was still enjoyable.
This just puts a thorn in the Blue Exorcist series for me and definitely isn't worth anything now, because of the second season.

"Ao No Exorcist Movie" completely real deal... it's almost look like real life story.. about demon and human relation.. i love the hole story... i would wish to see one more movie and amazing story..

Usamaro is the cutest character that i never seen before.. for me i wanted to see more time Usamaro in the real story.. but however the the story seen pretty good without Usamaro.. Rin and Usamaro relationship as brother it's seem make things more complicated..


STORY: 8/10
i already told about how good this movie story... so i have nothing new,, but still wants to say that this story needs something more


Art: 7/10
Characters ... look normal and not high enough..sometime it looks like weird,, because the color is too bright because of that some scenes more difficult to understand that what their main object.. others scenes pretty cool and love them


Sound: 7/10
sound system not that bad.. but still sometimes makes sound very noisy... but still like it..


this is my first review... so not that good.. next review will make more details and make things more clearer

This was a generic movie i wouldnt recommend it it wasent that bad but its just ive seen this type of ending too much in movies.

spoilers ahead







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I found it a extremely generic movie where of course the new character gets erased right in the end where he couldn't keep a promise. its quite unoriginal but it might be enjoyable enough to pass some time but personally I don't think i would recommend it to others.

Liu, Cheng-Long was just a strange character I don't see the point really of him being there in the first place i found it not really a interesting character or anything special to him.

Usamaro was quite interesting with his ability to remove peoples memories I also found him to be quite a well put character. but of course in the end he isent there anymore and everyone except for Okumura, Liu, Amaimon and Mephisto remember him.