#ao no exorcist kyoto saga

[notninani]

"We're gonna win this"

"I believe in you!"

[okumurasarchive]

source

[hootiee]

viz just straight up forgot to add text here. took them an entire year to release the eng volume btw. 😐

[dailyfigures]

Okumura Rin & Okumura Yukio ; Blue Exorcist ☆ MegaHouse

[nesbiter]

Who's 39 and why is he thanking them?

[everyryuujisuguro]

[anime-of-the-day]

Anime of the day: Blue Exorcist: Kyoto Saga OVA

Alt title: Ao no Exorcist: Kyoto Fujouou-hen OVA

Released: 2017

This is a two episode OVA. Each is based on a section from the light novels. The first connects to the ending of the Kyoto arc. The second will make more sense if watched after the Illuminati arc.

[musicinanime]

Itteki no Eikyou - UVERworld

Anime: Ao no Exorcist: Kyoto Saga

[d-internet-corner]

Ao No Exorcist [Blue Exorcist]: Kyoto Saga

[Ep.11]

[translationandbetrayals]

Demons and depression: mental health in Ao no Exorcist

Introduction

Mental illnesses are not pretty. That’s a fact. They are debilitating and overwhelming and they make your life hell.

I have seen multiple people asking for realistic and raw depictions of mental health issues in the media, yet when they actually get it, more often than not they do not have an understanding of it past surface level nor try to offer empathy. And it’s sad, honestly, because I think we need less sanitized portrayals of the times when your brain is against you.

Whenever I think about poor mental health done right in animanga, I think about Okumura Yukio, one of the main characters in Katou Kazue’s Ao no Exorcist. Every single time, he will pop into my head.

When I started reading the manga in 2021/2022, after finding my way back to Ao no Exorcist following my first encounter with it in 2017 pre Kyoto saga, I was immediately drawn to his character like a moth to a flame. There were layers upon layers to his arc and misadventures, and I thought it was beautiful because of how ugly it was.

Imagine my surprise, however, when I started seeing online discussions and found out that people not only misunderstood—or just straight up didn’t try to understand—his arc, but were actively hating on him. I got whiplash, honestly, because to me it was nothing short of amazing.

Who is Okumura Yukio?

Yukio is one of the sons of the Demon King, Satan. He is a fraternal twin to Rin, who is the oldest of the two and the only one who inherited satanic powers, also known as the blue flame.

He is shown as a calm and collected person, despite his young age, and he’s been quite successful. He is the youngest exorcist in the history of the Knights of the True Cross, a world-wide exorcist organization, and a highly skilled fighter.

However, there are dark emotions manifesting within him, and a lot of them that have surfaced after Father Fujimoto, their guardian and previous Paladin of the organization, passed away protecting Rin.

[ Manga spoilers ahead. :) From after the Impure King arc. ]

Demons and depression

Yukio is depressed. Like, severely. And it’s been brewing since before Rin’s power was unleashed or Shirou passed away, like a time-bomb set into motion since the moment he was old enough to grasp the world around him.

It shows subtly at the beginning: bitter comments towards his brother, exhaustion, lack of drive… and it makes sense, honestly, because not only was he completely orphaned, he was also thrown into the workforce at the young age of 15. Before he could drive or buy a pack of cigarettes, he was already a teacher at the cram school on top of being a high school student and a teenager—which, let’s be honest, is already hard and also kind of sucks. And who wouldn’t be depressed after being caught by capitalism and not being able to afford lunch in the school where you live, study and work at? I know I would be.

And things only go downhill from there. After always feeling inferior to everyone around him and constantly going through medical check-ups to make sure he was “normal”, to make sure he hadn’t inherited the blue flame, he realizes he is not, and he doesn’t know what to do about it. He couldn’t fathom the idea of letting the Knights of the True Cross or his brother know, and because of that he projects his insecurities onto him—because accepting Rin’s demonic side would mean accepting himself, and he can’t unless he is completely sure. Slowly but surely, he begins to isolate himself.

Before you realize it, Yukio becomes obsessed, and it’s scary to see how human and crude the process is. His curiosity is both his greatest strength and his worst weakness, and when he tries to discover by any means necessary what the blue flame coming from his eyes is all about or what his heritage actually is, he starts to lose himself. He begins to be consumed by the desire to become stronger and to satiate the lingering question about his existence.

He grows apathetic, as he tries to achieve his objectives no matter how far off the deep end he goes. He stops caring about his friends, about his brother and himself, and so he becomes imprudent in plenty of ways. The only things that keep him somewhat sane are his obsessions, as it’s the only fuel he has to keep going—it’s his reason for existing.

He is grasping at straws and there’s nothing he can do to help his situation. He had vowed to keep his somewhat incompetent older brother safe from those that wanted to take advantage of him and also from his own power, making that his mission and basically his reason to exist—but then Rin became strong enough to take care of himself despite his recklessness and his lack of knowledge, and that tore Yukio’s world apart even more than it already was. Once again, Yukio found himself without a purpose.

As he tries to test how far will his demonic eyes protect him, he becomes suicidal. Time and time again, he tries to put an end to his life through different means—from jumping off very high from the ground, to risking his safety by exorcizing demons all on his own, to kneeling down on the ground with a gun against his head and ready to pull the trigger.

Yukio becomes reckless as well, going way too far to get the answers he desires—he points a gun at his own friend/student, violently pins his first friend to the ground to shut her up and puts a gun against her head, intimidates the people who had raised him, and shoots his own brother in the face to get him out of the way. He grows desperate to know and he hopes to die trying.

He also has no sense of identity or personhood. He’s always Rin’s brother or Rin’s next guardian, or the protégée of the Paladin, or a teacher at the Academy, and so on and so forth. But who is Yukio as an individual? He doesn’t know. And he can’t even begin to comprehend it because he has no idea of where he comes from.

He knows he is one of Satan’s bastard sons, the weak one, but he knows nothing about how their mother came to birth them or why they ended up in Shirou’s care, and no one is offering him any answers. In fact, it is explicitly stated that what he has to come to terms with is the present, not the past or the future, but he doesn’t know how to accept the person he is today without knowing the circumstances that made him who he is.

He refuses help. People around him pick up on his weird demeanor and how he hides everything behind a smile, but he refuses to actually let anyone in. Yukio isolates himself from everything and everyone, too depressed to bring himself to care about the things that were once important to him. He pushes everyone so far away from him, they’re afraid they won’t be able to pull him back in.

It is not until a third party reveals everything that was going on with him to Rin—and they have a physical fight—that he is able to start moving on. But the consequences of his actions still linger, haunting him as he tries to make amends. However, despite the state of the world, the future does begin to look brighter for him.

Conclusion

Ao no Exorcist touches upon a lot of topics. Action battles and diligent training, romance, loss, messy family dynamics, friendship, and I could go on and on. It also has a lot of comedic moments, perfectly blending in with the narrative style, making them feel natural and organic. However, when it has to get serious, it does. Katou goes the full nine yards and gets the job done.

If anyone is interested in seeing a realistic portrayal of mental health issues and breakdowns, I fully recommend this story. The tragedy of Yukio is probably one of my all-time favorites.

Francisca Salgado. ☆

[okumurasarchive]

source

[someawesomeamvs]

Warning: Violence, spoilers

Title: Ways To Be Wicked

Editor: AnimeRaven99 Videos

Song: Ways to Be Wicked

Artists: Dove Cameron, Sofia Carson, Cameron Boyce, Booboo Stewart

Anime: Boku no Hero Academia, Soul Eater, Servamp, Kimetsu no Yaiba, K Project, K: Missing Kings (film), The Promised Neverland, Kuroshitsuji, Kuroshitsuji: Book of Circus, Kuroshitsuji: Book of Atlantic (film), Nanatsu no Taizai: Imashime no Fukkatsu, Ao no Exorcist, Ao no Exorcist: Kyoto Saga, Nurarihyon no Mago: Sennen Makyou, Danganronpa: The Animation, Makai Ouji

Category: Action

[dailyfigures]

Okumura Yukio ; Blue Exorcist ☆ Orange Rouge

[sailorstarr-chan4]

Anime & Manga Updates: 2022 Masterlist

Anime/Manga Master Lists: 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024

~~~~

Manga, All Included:

Inuyasha (partial reread to finished; vols 50-56)

Toyko Mew Mew (complete reread; 7 vols)*

Love Celeb (finished; 7 vols)

Mao (vols 2-15)*

Midnight Secretary (finished; 7 vols)*

Honey & Honey Drops (finished; 8 vols)

Seimaden (vols 1-2)*

Rin-ne (vols 1-11; reread 1-3)*

Umi ni Ochiru Tsubame (single vol)

Ao no Fūin (finished; 11 vols)*

Skip Beat! (vol 37)

Vampire Knight: Memories (vol 7)

Finished:

4 series (Love Celeb, Midnight Secretary, Honey & Honey Drops, Ao no Fuin)

2 complete(d) rereads (Inuyasha, Tokyo Mew Mew)

[Note: * means I did not read the series all in a row, but overlapped them with others, particularly with the ones I ended up finishing.]

Anime, Finished Only: 11

A Bridge to the Starry Skies (12 ep)

School Babysitters (12, +1 ep)

Eden of the East (11 ep)

A Dark Rabbit Has Seven Lives (12 ep)

Trigun (26 ep)

Gosick (24 ep)

Myself, Yourself (13 ep)

Magikano (13 ep)

Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple (50 ep)

Blue Exorcist (25 ep)

Blue Exorcist: Kyoto Saga (12 ep)

Incomplete titles below cut:

Unfinished in 2022: 32 (gave up 15; finished later 8; want to finish 9)

***: restarted (3 series)

(x)....(x): gave up

Anne of Green Gables***

La Corda d'Oro ~primo passo~***

(x)Bungo and Alchemist: Gears of Judgment(x)

Gurren Lagann

(x)Crescent Love(x)

Futari wa Pretty Cure

Chi's Sweet Home

(x)Hamtaro(x)

A Place Further Than the Universe

Tokyo Mew Mew New

(x)Read or Die the TV(x)

(x)Lilipri(x)

(x)Kuromajo-san ga Tooru!!(x)

(x)Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru(x)

Jing: King of the Bandits (finished in 2023!)

(x) The World is Still Beautiful (x)

The World's Finest Assassin Gets Reincarnated in Another World as an Aristocrat (finished in 2023)

Baccano! (finished in 2023!)

Urusei Yatsura (2022) (finished in 2024!)

(x)Accel World(x)

(x)Nerima Daikon Brohters(x)

(x)Petite Princess Yucie(x)

(x)Lupin the Third Part 1(x)

Kyoukai no Rinne***

(x)Magical Witch Punie-chan(x)

A Certain Magical Index (finished in 2024!)

(x)Brigadoon: Marin & Melan(x)

RG Veda OVA (finished in 2023!!)

Assassination Classroom

(x)Moon Phase(x)

Dragon Goes House-Hunting (finished in 2023!)

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha (finished in 2023!)

[kuramirocket]

“I’m going to die. S.. Stop! What's this? Everything's gone blue. What's going on? What's happening to my eyes?"

[heiskadraws]

Yo, it's everyone's favourite yaoi manga cover artist here! No, but seriously this ship needs me love and I'm here to deliver it~