Ao no Exorcist

Ao no Exorcist:  C

The antichrist reaches puberty and joins a school which trains exorcists for the Catholic church so that he can kick Satan's ass.

Ao no Exorcist (The Blue Exorcist) is a shonen series that has a similar concept to many other series like it, and that makes it difficult to criticize or praise.  I was fairly certain of what I was getting into with the first episode (Naruto with Christian demonology instead of ninjas) and I was neither impressed nor disappointed. It's competently written, the characters are effective and the series overall holds itself together, but it doesn't really do any more than that.

I feel a little bad for being completely unsurprised by this series.  I said after the third episode, "Huh, I think this is getting a C," and my opinion of it didn't change for twenty-two more episodes.  I don't think I gave it that grade because I want to be right, despite the fact that there were good, even awesome moments in the series, it just wasn't as brilliantly crafted or well-written as I've come to expect from my grading system, and the awesome moments were far outnumbered by predictable (but not bad) story and action.  But I feel kind of bad about it.

If you're into shonen and like to see the Japanese perspective on the 'fun' parts of Christian mythology and demonology, you can have some fun with Ao no Exorcist.  I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone who hadn't expressed a vested interest in either shonen anime as a genre or silly Japanese takes on Christianity as a theme.