English Dub Review: Blue Exorcist “I Can’t Rely on Anyone”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Izumo’s familiar, Fox God Mike (pronounced MEE-KEH), explains to the True Cross students about the bloody past of the Kamikis. Izumo lived with her mother and younger sister, with a dad who didn’t want to be in the picture and a mother who seemed to see her children as vents for her drama. After a horrible incident where her mother became totally possessed by some of the fox spirits, the Inari Light Foundation of the Illuminati stepped in to experiment on her and later Izumo. One got cold feet and tried to free her, but was captured, leading Izumo to gain her general distrust in people and vow to kill all of the Illuminati.

OUR TAKE

We’re halfway through the season now, with it now getting to the point that it’s increasingly odd they haven’t changed the Opening in some way. SO MUCH has happened that surely some details of the kinda generic parts could be switched out for something plot specific, but maybe they’ve decided not enough big stuff happens in this part to be worth it, so perhaps the upcoming season in October will be more about the stuff happening in the plot. Anyway, this week is all backstory all the time, with Izumo getting the spotlight despite her not being the one telling the story. Expanding on the stuff hinted at last time, we see her mom was definitely a piece of work, apparently being so socially isolated that she relied on her daughters to mope about how her baby daddy didn’t want anything to do with her or her kids. And then when he bothers to show up for a scene, it’s basically to trigger her going full psycho and becoming totally possessed by some of the fox spirits. Knowing all that, I honestly can’t begrudge Izumo for turning out the way she did, especially after the whole business with the Illuminati coming and making them into test subjects.

In addition, being a backstory episode does provide us with a lot of important details, but I get the sense they’re leaving some other stuff out for later. For one, we do get hints that the little sister is also being held by the Illuminati, but she kind of just disappears after a bit, so she could show up later as an enemy. I dunno, maybe I’m just thinking the story in Fire Force is going to overlap with this more, but I could be wrong. But either way, we’re getting some big insight into the Illuminati’s ethos, specifically that they are working for a world that lacks demons OR humans, leaving room for…other animals, I guess? I mean, clearly they’re up to something bad if they’re working for Lucifer of all people, and the people we’ve seen in the group are not exactly the best people, but we’ve yet to see how they plan on executing on this goal. Luckily we still have another six episodes in this season to find out what they’re up to, followed by another twelve episode season in the fall, but this episode is definitely a good first step in clearing all of that up.