English Dub Review: Blue Exorcist – Beyond the Snow Saga “As If Begging for Tears”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Rin and Yukio finally defeat Hachirotaro and free Shura from his curse.

OUR TAKE

And that’s another Blue Exorcist arc in the books…except not really because apparently next episode, or at least part of it, is going to be wrapping up the arc fully. But this is definitely the climax since it ends the battle, concludes the whole deal between Shura and Hachirotaro, gives us full context on her relationship with Shiro (and all the kinda weirdness that thankfully he didn’t play into…although they did have a scene of her teenage self shirtless and putting her boobs in his face so no points for that) and made clear that she is ready to live her own life long past the age of thirty. As I’ve mentioned in the last few reviews, this whole arc is filled with pretty questionable things, even if the story ultimately condemns them, and it’s made worse when you remember that Shura is pretty much the main fanservice character in the show. Maybe you could have made some sort of point if you had her be the one to land the killing blow on Hachitaro but she ends up sort of being bait for Rin to do so. Heck, Rin himself feels kind of dumber than he usually does, which I guess is what happens when he’s not the focus of the arc.

Actually he hasn’t really been the focus of an arc for awhile now, which is odd. So far this season has started with some Rin centric plots but mostly on Yukio’s descent into darkness and then off the deal with Shura’s really messed up childhood. But now that’s all taken care of and the ending with Shima (damn, a lot of “sh” names in this show) nods further towards Yukio being desperate to gain some form of power through even the deadliest means, but in the mean time it seems like he’ll be recovering, so that’ll take us into what the wiki is calling the Blue Night Investigation Arc, staring Lightning and Ban. Sorry Rin, looks like you’re taking a back seat again. And we kinda already had plenty of Ban character development back in the second season that gave us a ton of focus on his family and their shrine keeping and all that so I dunno what we’re doing here if we’re not moving things forward with the Illuminati. But maybe the second half of this season will give us at least a couple hints.