English Dub Review: Blue Exorcist “Determination”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Lucifer discusses his plans with other Illuminati members: to gain a new body to meet his father Satan with, but tells Gedoin not to harm Rin or Yukio. When Gedoin finds out that Izumo has suddenly become incompatible with possession, he instead decides to isolate Rin and make use of him somehow. Meanwhile, Rin and the other True Cross students each face a giant zombie on their own, with each managing to defeat theirs in some way. Konekomaru is helped by Kuro, but notices Shima observing him. Eventually, all the students reunite in one spot, but are addressed by Gedoin over an intercom.

OUR TAKE

This episode ended up a lot more substantive in terms of giving the students something to actually do, not just as a group, but also as individuals who have their own character arcs that need developing, if only a little. Rin is still hesitant to harm humans, even zombified ones, which ironically makes him the only one who needs to run from his giant zombie. Konekomaru, who is a bit too self-aware of his supporting character status, still has to remind himself that his life is worth preserving and fights to survive. Ban, who is used to looking after his friends, has to reckon with the idea that they might move on from him one day, and not just through switching sides to the genocidal fascists club. And Shiemi and Yukio…don’t really get anything to chew on, instead just narrowly managing to defeat their monsters through their own skills, but that’s still something. So yeah, after beating up zombies in a group last week, now they get to take on their own demon and their own personal demons, which then allows them to regroup as a team, stronger than ever and ready for the next test, which should take up a good portion of the remaining four episodes of this season.

On the Illuminati side of things, we finally get some dots connected as to what Lucifer wants Izumo for. We knew so far that his body was, for whatever reason, unstable and leaving him in a weakened state, and that the group had prioritized research on the Kamikis for the purpose of possessing their bodies with demons, but now we see that the ultimate goal is to put Lucifer’s demonic soul within one of them, currently Izumo. However, there’s a new wrinkle, as she has become totally incompatible somehow. Part of me wonders if this was caused by destroying her spirits last episode, at least based on how it cuts to Shima’s reaction to the news about Izumo, but we’ll have to wait and see to be sure. Regardless, this does buy Rin and the rest some time in rescuing her, which they’ll definitely need after all they’ve gotten through so far and have left to face. And it looks like now they’ll be facing Gedoin as directly as possible, so he’ll probably be the big boss to defeat at the end of the season. I mainly guess this because he’s the only one of the Illuminati that we’ve met whose gotten that much focus, so we’ll probably get more attention on the rest next season when they become more likely to fight. Either way, good episode continuing the plot.