Blue Exorcist Episode 34

Review:

You would think now that they’ve all got their assignments and the battle is on that the excessive group chats would have ended, but Blue Exorcist is very attached to lengthy dialogue at this point. Each pair or group have plenty of time for heart to heart conversations usually right before they get surprised by an actual attack from the enemy they are supposed to be fighting.

That doesn’t actually make this episode bad, but it does make the pace a little choppy as we switch between groups, wait for their conversation (while they half-heartedly swat at the enemy), and wait for the inevitable life threatening danger to befall them. The shame is that some of these moments are quite revealing as characters are connecting and finally being truthful about how they feel and yet because they get just one moment before we move to fighting or a different pair, each of these moments feels squashed by a narrative that has wasted a lot of air time and now feels like its trying to compensate by having every poignant character moment in one episode.

Shiemi finally succeeding at a summoning this episode was a moment that should have got more attention than it did. Rin and Suguro needed more time to really bond, you know after fighting for over a season and a half. Not to mention, Suguro was going through the whole my father is nearly dead, I’ve been entrusted with this chant, I’m not even sure I know how to do it moment, but rather than build any tension around that he just casts the spell and we move to the next thing. Even Shima had a half-decent character moment that was utterly crushed in the rush of the episode.

Oh well, I’m not expecting anything much from this show at this point and it is still watchable so I’ll stop complaining and just wait for the next episode. And no, I’m not ignoring Yukio’s moment, but I completely ran out of words about two paragraphs ago so I’ll see what happens next week and comment then.

Blue Exorcist is available on AnimeLab.

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Karandi James.