Ao no Exorcist: Shimane Illuminati-hen – 11 – His Precious Pieces

Shima’s brother Juuzou tells Bon and the others that Renzou has been a double agent all this time. Even before he started at True Cross Academy, Pheles wanted him to accept a recruitment invitation from the Illuminati. Due to his black flames (second only to Rin’s blue ones in power), he’s an enticing target for recruitment, and Renzou also just has a gift for duplicity and spycraft, and a desire to prove himself his way.

That’s how Shima now finds himself aboard the Illuminati’s gigantic flying aircraft carrier, with the chimer-ified Gedouiin prostrating himself before Lucifer, and Lucifer doing all of us a solid and eliminating Gedouiin once and for all. The fact he was wearing a toupee all along really adds icing to the cake. Lucifer’s Number Two, the lady I don’t believe has even been named yet, orders Shima back to True Cross to gather intel.

That’s how Shima finds himself back in Yukio’s class with his buds, including a Rin who is wearing a pink wig and trying to pose as Shima so his absence won’t be felt. Bon gives him a hug, then a brutal headbutt; Izumo uses “Expel Scumbag”, and even Konekomaru can’t help but give him a smack for worrying them so much. And for making them think he betrayed them.

Everyone is suddenly summoned to Pheles’ office so Lewin Light (AKA Lightning) can question Shima and gauge his trustworthiness. Most of the rest of the episode unfolds in this office, with everyone sitting around, which is not all that interesting or dynamic, but the air is cleared about a great many things.

Most importantly, when pressed about the timing of Shima becoming a double agent and everything that’s happened since then, Pheles admits it: everything they’ve gone through these past three arcs has been, in effect, a series of trials to toughen them up for the battle against Lucifer. Rin can bear his fangs and flames all he likes, but Pheles isn’t the enemy. As for Shima, his friends vouch for him, which is all Lightning needs for now (i.e., no torture).

After the meeting, Yukio walks away from Shima to attend to some things, and Shima says he knows Yukio has spoken to “the Commander”, AKA Lord Lucifer. Yukio’s unhinged reaction seems to suggest that he too is an Illuminati spy. But with only one episode left, that seems like a tale for a part two. Here’s hoping it arrives before 2030!

Ao no Exorcist: Shimane Illuminati-hen – 10 – Alone No Longer

Nine Tails is an ancient intermediate demon Holy Cross has never figured out how to exorcise, but the Kamiki clan is a different story. Freed from Nine Tails, Izumo’s mother Tamamo is able to see, stand, and perform the dance needed to dodge Nine Tails’ attacks, and transfer it right back to her own failing body.

This way, when Tamamo dies, Nine Tails dies with her. After years of, shall we say, somewhat shabby parenting, Tamamo comes through as a mother when it counts most: when the choice comes between her daughter’s death or her own, there is no choice. With her final breaths, she tells her beloved treasure that she’ll be okay, because she’s not alone: she’s surrounded by friends.

While this death scene is unfolding, Gedouiin prepares a last-resort device that will transfer Nine Tails directly to his body, with predictably grotesque results. I’m not going to linger on how out-of-left-field this is. Suffice it to say, just when Izumo believes she’s powerless, her fox-brothers Uke and Mike return to her. Turns out Shima “went easy” on them, but they still needed time to recover.

Now that Izumo knows she’s no longer alone and doesn’t have to fight alone, she asks her friends for help fighting off the waves of zombies while she recites the most powerful incantation of her life, one that transforms the foxes into fox-men. Resplendent in golden regalia, she rejects Gedouiin’s assertion that they both hate all humans. She once did, but not anymore. With the slash of her fan, she lets Gedouiin have it.

Shima pops in to grab what’s left of Gedouiin before disappearing, and the other Holy Cross branches arrive to bring the situation under control. Rin & Co.’s mission to rescue Izumo is a success, so it’s off to the hospital to heal the many wounds incurred from their exertion.

Izumo comes to in a hospital, still worried about the fate of Tsukumo, but Takara grants her a magic key that she uses to access Tsukumo’s new home. Her adoptive parents are Takara’s relatives, making her his cousin, but when Izumo appears before her, Tsukumo doesn’t recognize her.

That only makes sense, as she was only three when they were last together. Even so, Tsukumo remembers the fox doll Izumo returns to her, as she was told she had had it since she was a baby. It’s a bittersweet experience for Izumo, who returns to the hospital room she shares with a now-awake Shiemi.

For so long, Izumo had feared the worst had happened to her sister, but she was safe and sound all along. It’s a lot to process, and as a result Izumo starts to bawl her eyes out, while lashing out at Shiemi. But Shiemi’s smile is undefeated, and she’s relieved Izumo is able to cry, and be angry, and laugh. They cry it out together, and when Izumo hears Bon, Rin, and Koneko talking in the hall, she unleashes her foxes to playfully punish them.

After paying her respects to her mother’s grave, vowing not to feel sorry for herself any more, Izumo returns with her friends, has a tearful reunion with Paku at the train station (that also makes Shiemi cry, natch), and the whole gang (sans Shima) heads home together.

Despite some crosswinds, Ao no Exorcist managed to land the plane with an emotionally resonant and satisfying end to the Izumo rescue. While Gedouiin is still out there somewhere and the threat of Lucifer remains, all is well where it counts: in this circle of friends, and in Izumo’s heart.

Ao no Exorcist: Shimane Illuminati-hen – 09 – Cry for Help

Gedouiin, who I’m thoroughly sick and tired of because he’s such a pathetic joke of a non-character (he’s just evil incarnate), fills in our baby exorcists on just how freakin’ evil he is, getting tourists hooked on drugged food and then using them for human experimentation. But things take a turn for the bleak when they actually parade Izumo right out in front of Rin & Co., and when he rushes in to save her, she refuses to be saved.

We know Izumo’s deal: not only is she going through with this on the slight chance it saves her sister, she also doesn’t believe she deserves to be rescued. Instead, she believes her only path is alone, specifically in a one-on-one battle against the Nine Tails. If she can manage to dominate and control it, she can rescue herself. Dressed to the nines and outfitted with a special “Mask of the Chosen”, Izumo begins what might be her last dance.

The dance brings the Nine Tails out of her mother, but just as she’s steeling herself for the fight for her body, in her mind’s eye she’s impaled from behing by several giant claws. The claws are only in her head, but she undergoes pain unlike anything she’s ever experienced, and boy howdy does Kitamura Eri ever sell the agony. All the while, Gedouiin is barking at her to go ahead and die so the Nine Tails can take over.

Izumo eventually becomes (somewhat) numbed to the intense pain, as she lies on the ground covered in necrotic lesions from the process. Now she has longer nails, fox ears, and those telltale tails. She remembers Shima saying he was “tired” of his friends and family, and Izumo feels the same way: tired. She tells herself she always hated the people who surrounded her. And yet, at the same time, she was sad to see them argue. She finally tearfully accepts that maybe she liked them after all.

She asks somebody, anybody, for help, assuming it’s far to late for anyone to hear. But Rin hears her, escapes from the fleshy prison of a berserk chimera, and crashes down to where a shocked Izumo lies. Rin gives Gedouiin a punch that sends him flying, but honestly I’d have preferred a swift decapitation.

Instead, he’s only wounded, and decides to buy more time by dumping hundreds of zombies into the area. Izumo urges Rin to take her mother and leave her, but that’s not happening. After several episodes of mistery and hopelessness, things are finally looking up. Rin just has to hold out long enough for the others to arrive, and then they can all save Izumo together …  because it’s never too late to ask your friends for help.

Ao no Exorcist: Shimane Illuminati-hen – 08 – There’s No Going Back

Gedouiin may be the Absolute Ruler of Illuminati’s Far East Laboratory, but in the presence of a temporarily conscious Lord Lucifer he devolves into a blubbering, idolizing supplicant. He wants nothing more than to help his lord accomplish his goals, and more importantly, that he is more important an asset then the “sow” commander or anyone else.

There’s just a small hiccup: despite him reporting that Kamiki Izumo is extraordinarily compatible with the Nine Tails, extensive testing has revealed that in fact she has a 99.92% chance of dying instantly during the transplant process. Gedouiin is going to run with those terrible odds, because he has to, but just in case Izumo dies, he at least wants to report to Lucifer that he was able to subdue the Spawn of Satan.

Yet, even on that front Gedouiin fails, at least this week. While the chimeras he keeps locked away are the stuff of nightmares, even Konekomaru is able to escape their jaws when he snaps out of his state of panic and anxiety and remembers what his friends told him he was capable of. He lures his chimera to a hatch and once the hatch is smashed open, he slips out of his cell and reunites with Kuro, who is very hangry. He also checks in on Yukio, who was able to subdue his chimera by literally stitching its body to the ground.

Bon initially tries to use his Dragoon’s bazooka, but when he realizes the chimeras can not only speak, but his chimera in particular wants to “go home.” He learns he’s dealing with an entity that still has a shred of humanity. Summoning a mirror of water, the chimera sees itself and collapses in distress. Bon then uses his Aria skills to help the poor wretched creature pass on in peace. I couldn’t help but thing of poor Mitty after Bondrewd’s experiments in Made in Abyss.

Shiemi is saved by Nee, who breaks them out of their cell by growing a huge tree and turns their chimera to dust. At the end of the ordeal, Rin can tell Shiemi is shaking with exhaustion and exertion, but still won’t give up on saving Izumo and Shima, if its the last thing they do.

Konekomaru is troubled that Rin, their ace in the hole, still won’t commit to using killing force against even things that were once human but can never be human again. Of course, if Rin does start killing humans, even to save his friends, it puts him on the path to losing his humanity.

But just as the chimeras can’t go back to their human lives, neither Rin nor anyone else in this lab can go back to who they were. Shima knows Rin’s weakness all too well, and as he counsels an increasingly desperate and unhinged Gedouiin, he’s counting on Rin’s inability to kill humans as the lynchpin in the fight to defeat True Cross and make Lucifers plans a reality.

Rin & Co. have escaped their cells, but they’re still deep within Gedouiin’s twisted madhouse. Things are likely to get much uglier before they start looking up, while the life of Izumo, who is probably feeling more defeated than ever after the loss of her fox-brothers, now hangs by the thinnest of threads.

Ao no Exorcist: Shimane Illuminati-hen – 07 – Mall of the Damned

Now that we’re up to speed on the horrific circumstances of her past and torturous circumstances of her present, what does the future hold for Kamiki Izumo? Can she, like, maybe catch a fucking break at some point? The last couple weeks have made clear that she’s not just a prisoner of the Illuminati, but also convinced she is the only one who can and must bear this awful fate.

As she’s walked in cuffs down a long hall to her eventual doom, All Izumo can do is laugh and try to mess with Mr. Pink Hair, asking if he’s enjoying this. When he says there’s a chance she can walk away from this if everything goes well, she tells him there’s no hope for her: she’s a dead girl walking regardless of the results.

Her nihilistic attitude only lasts as long as the corridor, for when they reach Gedouiin she makes such a big loud outburst she’s able to swipe the pen from a guard, stab them with it, then cut herself with the spring and summon Uke and Mike.

When they tell her that people from the Order are coming to rescue her, she doesn’t want to hear it. The only one she’s relying on is herself and her foxes. She’ll escape, find Tsukumo, and get her to safety. It’s a terrible plan with little to no chance of success.

Pheles leaves the operation in Yukio’s hands, promising backup at some point but unable to tell them when. Inari Peace Town is full of brainwashed people who eat all day, like the pigs in Spirited Away. They’re then bussed off to a mall, for some unknown purpose. While Rin and the others ate food from Inari Peace Town, they’re saved from its effects thanks to Shiemi’s medicinal herb sandwiches.

Once they get past the first few guards and infiltrate the creepily deserted mall, they learn what happens to the people bussed there: They become Gedouiin’s experiments. The ones that fail become zombies, and he’s unleashed those zombies onto Yukio, Rin, & Co.

While the general zombie mall atmosphere is pretty creepy, it can’t really compete with, say, Jujutsu Kaisen, especially when the spooky zombies in question are lame CG models, some of which have identical blood splattering on their tunics. Some hand drawn stuff would pack more of a punch.

When Gedouiin learns that Rin and Yukio are among the Order intruders, he changes up his strategy, ordering the floor of the mall opened and all the intruders shunted into the foreboding-sounding “feeding area.” Feeding what fell beasts, I ask?

Izumo, flanked by an Uke and Mike determined to protect her they disobey her orders, try their best, but Shima is able to summon a demon that not only disperses the fox spirits, but eliminates them. Just like that, the foxes Izumo thought of as brothers are gone from her life.

Her spirit newly-crushed, Izumo is re-shackled and her long walk to her doom continues. As for Shima, if he wasn’t before, he’s truly an irredeemable villainous scum now, right?

As if the zombies whose head wounds healed wasn’t enough, now the exorcists are separated in different dark places, next to some kind of horrendous beasts that are excited for food. Rin recalls Shima telling him he’s going to have to be okay with killing humans if he’s going to have any chance going forward. The time for wavering and half-measures is over.

Saving Izumo means Rin will have to do a lot of horrible things and will have to live with himself. Even then, so as long as Tsukumo is in the enemy’s clutches, Izumo doesn’t even want to be saved. It’s just a big old downer. The good guys need a win somewhere in the worst way. Hopefully they can score one next week.

Ao no Exorcist: Shimane Illuminati-hen – 06 – Outfoxed

This week is given over entirely to the story of Kamiki Izumo’s childhood—if you can call it that—and it’s a tough watch, even during its more comedic moments. At no point does anyone in this episode treat Izumo like the child she is. We open with her ostensible mother, Tamamo, crying on her shoulder about Souji, Izumo and Tsukumo’s father. Meanwhile, all of the household duties are handled by the foxes, who love Tamamo unconditionally.

That’s because no one in the long line of Kamiki Tamamos throughout the centuries has performed a more powerful or beautiful dance of appeasement before the Killing Stone, where the Fox of Nine Tails dwells. Even Izumo is in awe of Tamamo when she’s doing her dance, even if the rest of the time she’s a complete train wreck of a mother unable to subordinate her forbidden love of the high priest Souji for anyone, even her daughters.

Tamamo takes every opportunity she can to pawn Tsukumo off onto Izumo, who must serve as a surrogate mother while she hangs out with Souji. When Izumo is at school, she has to leave Tsukumo in the care of other priestesses, who consider the girls bastards who sully the shrine. She’s made fun of and isolated at school for being able to see fox spirits. It’s a lot for a little girl, but this is Izumo; even she smells something shady-af when reps from Illuminati roll up to ask her some questions about the Killing Stone.

Even so, Izumo takes the business card of Illuminati’s Yoshida Maria, just in case she needs advice from someone else who can see what they call “demons.” As for Tamamo, she is responsible for appeasing the Nine Tails, a job that requires extreme emotional focus and stability. All that is destroyed with a few words from Souji, who as high priest should’ve really known better. When Tamamo asks if he’ll visit their children, he says he doesn’t want to, and if she keeps bringing it up, he’ll stop letting her visit him.

In the present, Izumo can’t stop blaming herself for everything that happened that has placed her and her sister in such a predicament. But she’s wrong. This is the fault of one person, and one person only: Souji. He sent Tamamo over the deep end, and eventually the Nine Tails took advantage of her heartbreak, anger, and despair, and possessed her, and transforming her into a murderous demon. That night, it’s all Izumo can do to run off while the foxes protect Tsukumo from Tamamo. She doesn’t even have time to put shoes on.

Izumo calls the only person in the world she can call: Maria, who takes her and Tsukumo to Illuminati, while her Nine Tails-ified mother is captured. Maria promises they’ll all be taken care of and protected from Holy Cross, who will want to eliminate Tamamo on site. But Maria isn’t in charge of Illuminati, and even though Izumo eventually comes to trust her a little bit, Maria never had the power or authority to make any such promises.

When Maria learns how mistaken she was about what goes on here, how much torture Tamamo is undergoing, and how Gedouiin plans to experiment on Tsukumo next, she make another unilateral call and has Tsukumo whisked away for adoption. When she did that, she automatically ruined any chance of Izumo trusting her ever again, no matter how good her intentions. Izumo asks if Maria will keep her cell door unlocked while she’s gone. She does, and Izumo leaves the room and is caught.

Once again, Izumo is subjected to sights and sounds a child should never see or hear, as Maria is beaten and begs for her life, only to be injected with an experimental immortality elixir that kills her after a few moments of unspeakable agony. The grotesque mad scientist Gedouiin is fearsome in his anger, and drunk with the absolute power bestowed upon him by Lucifer himself. Gedouiin doesn’t mince words with Izumo: submit to him entirely and he’ll leave Tsukumo alone … for a bit.

It’s a shit deal, and even young Izumo probably knows it, but she also knows it’s the best deal she’s going to get from this true demon in human skin. If becoming the next Nine Tails vessel will keep Tsukumo safe for a year, a month, or even just a day, she’ll do it.

Because if there’s one thing she learned in these hellish few weeks of her so-called childhood, it’s that she can’t rely on anyone. Not her mother, not Tamamo, and not Shima or Rin or Shiemi or Yukio. The gang rescuing her from Gedouiin and the Illuminati is one thing. Freeing her from the soul-crushing belief that she’s on her own in this wretched world, and always will be? That’ll be a far tougher task.

Ao no Exorcist: Shimane Illuminati-hen – 05 – On the Back Foot

“An unfamiliar ceiling…”

Both True Cross in general and the Exwires in particular are in a bad way. The former, decimated into disarray by the Illuminati’s Seraphim and scrambling to pick up the pieces. The latter, deeply shaken by Shima’s betrayal and Izumo’s kidnapping. The dark dream that precedes her waking up in a stark laboratory does not bode well for her immediate or eventual safety.

Thanks to Takara planting a doll on Izumi, he can pinpoint her location, so the other Exwires are off to find her. That means heading to her hometown of Inari in Shimane Prefecture. It also means Rin and Shiemi flying on an airplane for the first time, and Shiemi making everyone what amounts to grass sandwiches. The little travelouge snippets of their journey are fun, but felt misguided considering the seriousness of Izumi’s plight.

One scene that does resonate well involves Rin dropkicking Bon in the back for being so gloomy. Bon is upset like everyone else that Shima betrayed them, since Shima is family to him. Konekomaru feels the same frustration because his failure to see Shima’s hidden intentions reflects badly on his future as an Exorcist advisor. Rin is grateful Bon and the others didn’t give up on him, so whatever they end up doing about Shima, they’ll do it together.

While the group has their jolly jaunt and try to stay positive, Izumo’s nightmare deepens, as her mother is wheeled in looking like a barely-alive mummy, bandaged and deteriorating from head to toe, clearly the victim of horrible torture.

Then a horrible porcine-looking little mad scientist Izumo identifies as Gedouiin trots in, reporting he’s gotten everything he can out of her mother, and must now choose another Izumo woman. If the choice is between Izumo and her little sister Tsukumo, there is no choice.

Really, gang? Shouldn’t you get to rescuin’?

Going from the sickening body horror and the promise of similar horrors in store for Izumo to the gang digging in to Inari’s delicious local food is some serious tonal whiplash. I get Rin wanting to keep everyone’s spirits up, but there’s just no urgency to their journey. It feels like they’re on vacation or on a field trip rather than doing everything in their (admittedly limited) power to locate and rescue Izumo.

Even worse, Izumo doesn’t want to be rescued. She can’t be, because then Gedouiin will just use her sister. While she accepts this, she doesn’t let Shima slink away without some kind of explanation for why he betrayed her and the others. His explanation: that he simply “got tired” of the whole cram school milieu, is underwhelming to say the least. Is he putting on the brave heel face on purpose here, or does he have a long game in mind?

I don’t know; all I know is he’s able to get Izumo to admit that they’re the same; that they’re both traitors, even though that’s nonsense. Yes, Izumo has been unable to tell anyone, even Paku, the deepest secrets about her past, because she’s never been able to completely trust anyone.

While Shima has justified that position, it’s also a product of her extremely fucked up family situation, which we’ll get into more next week thanks to Takara summoning Izumo’s familiar into a fox doll. Until then, I’m hoping the outsized goofiness of the gang is a sign that they’ve ultimately got this, and they’ll find a way to bring Izumo home without sacrificing her sister.

Ao no Exorcist: Shimane Illuminati-hen – 01 – Family Portrait

Hello, old friend. That’s not even a euphemism: I wrote about the first Ao no Exorcist episode back on April 17, 2011! I last wrote about it back in March 2017. When the second season came six years after the first, I said it felt like riding a bike. Now it’s been another seven years, and, as you’d guess, it’s still like riding a bike … Or like slipping on your favorite pair of pajama pants.

While this latest Exorcist features some re-introductory exposition, it feels like the previous episode only aired a couple of months ago, if not more recently. Rin gets what he thinks is a love letter but is just an invitation from Mephisto to join him for a “Congratulations on Getting a Stay of Execution” banquet.

On the way, he encounters his classmate Gedouiin being harassed by a demon only the two of them can see. Rin kicks up the intimidation to spook the demon away, and Gedouiin is grateful, and Rin is excited to have made a new friend, and wants to help him more by finding a way for him to stop seeing demons if he doesn’t want to.

Before Rin can bring it up to Mephisto at the banquet (which consists of instant ramen), Lord Pheles temporarily transports them to Gehenna, where he has a bit of news for Rin: Mephisto is just the name he’s used in Assiah for the last 200 years. His true identity is Samael, King of Time and second most powerful person in Gehenna.

Despite Mephisto being a demon, he’s on humanity’s side. As a member of demonic royalty and master of time and space, Mephisto wants to make sure Rin’s head didn’t grow too big after defeating the Impure King in the last arc. He also notes that most demons tend to hide their horns and hearts as a matter of etiquette.

Mephisto offers to give Rin a vial of eye drops to help his new friend if he can accomplish a mission for him. That mission turns out to be an extracurricular class involving Rin and all his friends: Bon, Koneko, Shima, Shiemi, Izumi, and Takara.

The class consists of the group dealing with a demonic painting called “Family Portrait” that has been causing several students mental anguish (among them Gedouiin). Rin’s first instinct is to run at the portrait and slash it, saving everyone else from getting into danger.

This…doesn’t work, and indeed only makes things worse for everyone. Rin himself ends up in some kind of dreamscape in which none of his friends remember him and recoil from his presence. Then Koneko pulls him back to reality, something he did for the others.

The spirit possessing the painting is a shape-shifter that projects peoples’ worst fears. When Bon suggest taking it down with fatal verses, Konekomaru interrupts him, and takes charge. Thanks to his poor vision, he didn’t look at the painting, so he’s not suffering any effects.

He proceeds to bark out frank but accurate assessments about everyone else, one by one. In doing so, he shows them how well he knows them, making it easier for them to trust him as their strategist. The group is packed with talent, but need someone to direct and coordinate.

That’s what Koneko does. Equally knowledgeable about their abilities as their personalities, he’s able to deploy the right people at the right time while keeping Rin in reserve as their trump card. Discerning that the “Family Portrait” is actually four separate paintings, he has Rin, Shima, and Izumi launch a simultaneous attack.

After a brief glance at what Arthur is up to in Yemen, Rin gets the drops from Mephisto and gives them to Gedouiin. When his new friend asks about his tail, Rin comes clean: he’s a half-demon. When Gedouiin asks if he’s scared, Rin’s answer is pretty much Ao no Exorcist’s mission statement: “Sure I’m scared. But I’m lucky, because I’m surrounded by some great people!”

Those people—Shima, Bon, Konekomaru, Shiemi, and Izumi—are waiting for Rin outside, all wearing the same paint stains of victory on their uniforms as he is. Seeing that they waited up for him brings a smile to his face. It’s a great group—at this point, they feel more like a family—and the main reason I keep coming back to this show even after multi-year breaks.