Blue Exorcist

On paper, this show appears to be a number of clichés of the supernatural anime subgenre. Youths going to an exorcist academy to fight demons and the drama and hijinks that occur along the way. 9/10 times I find that type of anime to be very standard and underwhelming, but this series seemed to execute those cliche's in a manner that made this series surprisingly engaging.

I have a family member who went through film school who has told me that you can have the most derived and clichéd story, but it still can be superb, it's all about the execution.

Now this series was not even close to the stand out originality of series such as Cowboy Beebop, Attack on Titan, Trigun, and such but it stands on its own because of an engaging cast of characters, especially the two main characters. The twins.

This series may not go into the depth of some of the above mentioned series but it has great themes of friendship, being an outcast, family and such.

And I'm not much of a fan of the chibi thing, and it didn't at all get on my nerves or unnecessarily break from the drama as I've found in other shonen series with chibi.

Overall, not one of the top animes out there but highly recommend watching for any anime fans out there.

Season 1 (2011): When an action anime meets Christianity this happens. It's a really unique idea and it has some good scenes and sequences. I thought it could have done better at times and some parts were pretty predictable, but that's to be expected seeing as all the characters are high school age.

There's something for everyone to get out of it, however I wouldn't show it to someone who's never seen anime.

It had some potential but wasted. The MC is dumb. Big dialogs but doesn't give the vibe.

This series is very entertaining. There is a lot of action and interesting concepts. There are a lot of scenes and episodes that are really dumb, but I just find it funny. I know that a lot of people would get frustrated to sit though 5 minutes of backstory for a cat in a semi-filler episode, but I just laugh through it. The animation is pretty good for the most part, and there is a lot of attention to continuity. The story has a lot of plot holes and continuity errors, but the animation is great. I can see how a lot of stuff in this series would make people annoyed, but I just find it funny. Even if you don't like every episode, this show is really entertaining. I would recommend this series.

I first encountered this a few years back when I read a few volumes of the manga but eventually fell off track with the books as a whole, however I can happily say I'm glad I came back to this series. With this, the sequel film and follow up series "The Kyoto Saga" now available on Netflix I've decided to power through them and boy did I make the right choice! This show was truly a fantastic watch and easily up there with some of the best anime I've seen of all time. Fantastic character, deep and thoroughly established world, and an amazing spectacle/scale as the series unfolds it's a masterpiece to be honest. Apparently deviating off book much like Game of Thrones the handover is seemless and has a fitting end after setting the stakes at a ridiculous level, there's so much to say I could be here all day so I'll round it off by saying a few things, note that the final 6/7 episodes are discounted when watching the Kyoto Saga, secondly and finally definitely give this a watch