English Dub Review: Blue Exorcist – Beyond the Snow Saga “Congratulations”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

The cram school class celebrates Shima’s brother’s wedding, but Yukio is becoming increasingly unhinged.

OUR TAKE

Just like last week ended up timing its dub release pretty well because it was close to Christmas, this one lines up well because it’s close to New Years! And as our final Blue Exorcist review for the year (and remember we’ve covered a season and a half this past year), this one actually gave me some anticipation for what’s coming next. Following up from the end of last episode, we see that Rin and Yukio’s argument about finding out more about their mother did not resolve very well, with Yukio basically losing a screw and going to bed. That would be concerning enough on its own, but the two end up going to Shima’s brother’s wedding and have a fun enough time…until Yukio starts trying to get classified intel out of Bon about his case investigating the Blue Night, and later tries threatening him for it with a gun pushed in his face. Things were already not looking great, but I think we have officially crossed into Yukio being a time bomb about to explode, not helped by the fact that every exorcist is going to need to leave the wedding reception to fight a massive demon invading in public.

Honestly though, I’m not exactly sure what else I can say about Yukio’s spiraling that I haven’t said already until we hit that next major development. Again, it’s mirroring what they ended up doing for the first season’s anime original arc back in 2011, back before the manga was even at the place the anime is adapting now, so that might be a sign that may have been the plan all along and they were giving it some chance to be animated if they never got that far. If that’s the case, that’s kind of odd to redo that and assume people who are watching wouldn’t have also watched that arc recently, but maybe now that this is its more authentic form, we’ll be seeing more going on with that than what we got last time. Though if we’re working up to a long pointy eared Yukio who is possessed by the blue flames of Satan, well…we’ve seen that. But for now, I gotta give it up to Johnny Yong Bosch for really bringing it with Yukio’s acting. Anyway, Happy New Year, see you for the rest of this arc in the new year! Apparently we’ve got more to go than I first thought!