The Winter 2025 Anime Preview Guide

Blue Exorcist: The Blue Night Saga

In the present day, Lucifer's attack on the Earth is underway. But Rin has his own journey to take to learn why he and his brother were born to Satan and a human woman. With the utterly untrustworthy Mephisto Pheles as his guide, Rin travels decades into the past, where he'll witness the long-hidden story of his mother, Yuri Egin.

Blue Exorcist: The Blue Night Saga is based on a manga series by Kazue Katō. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Saturdays.

Blue Exorcist is back. On the one hand, it's been only a fortnight since the cliffhanger end of the Beyond the Snow Saga, so that's hardly much of a wait. Some of us remember the eight-year gap between seasons two and three. On the other hand, we're in for a big change of pace.

Everything from last season's finale—the ambiguous but BAD things Lucifer was doing to the world, Yukio's going to the Dark Side, and the fortunes of Rin's classmates—has been left hanging. We have no idea how things are going in the show's “present.” Instead, we're accompanying Rin with his silver-blue hair makeover (suits you, sir!) into what looks to be a very long flashback.

This promises to show the full circumstances that led to the union between Satan and the human woman Yuri Egin, as well as the births of Yukio and Rin himself. This was all explained in anime before… in the now-retconned, never-canon ending of the 2011 TV series. For the record, I liked that version, and yes, you can call me a heretic. But I'm up for the “real” story as Kazue Katō envisioned it.

Visually, it's a very unassuming episode, and it'll infuriate any viewers who think it's high time Blue Exorcist stepped up to its old level of action spectacle. Not likely, I'm afraid, as long as Studio VOLN is animating the series, not A-1 Pictures.

But I'm still interested in the story. We're starting with Yukio when she was a child, abandoned as an infant, then raised by homeless people in a derelict part of town. Despite the harsh circumstances, the drawing of the homeless group smacks of a Toei kids' anime. That's until a fire kills the adults in a blink. (But their bodies were unidentifiable, so one or more of them might make a twist return.)

We're shown Yuri's first encounter with Shiro, Rin and Yuri's future adoptive dad. In this time frame, he's a super-surly tween, claiming he couldn't care if Yuri dies and only letting her stay because she can lead him to a porn stash. Watching the scene, the time-traveling Rin cringes—shades of “He's a peeping tom!” in Back to the Future.

It's all good enough storytelling to keep me watching. My mental yardstick for comparison going forward, especially given all the snow around, will be Emilia's harrowing backstory in Re:Zero's second season. Not that I'm demanding Yuri's upcoming story is as heart-rending as that… but a part of me is hoping.