English Dub Season Review: Blue Exorcist Season Three - Bubbleblabber (2025)

Another season of the sporadically released Blue Exorcist has come and gone, with another on its way later this year! As mentioned in the individual episode reviews, I first watched the first season back when it initially came out in 2011, over thirteen years ago now, and while I’d like to think I’ve changed quite a bit since then, the story being adapted has remained in 2010’s for better or worse. As that beginning season (or at least the sixteen episodes that remained canon because they were directly adapted from the manga) focused on spawn of Satan protagonist Rin Okumura, and the second season mainly gave attention to rival Bon and the timid Konekomaru, this third season primarily gives the spotlight to the tsundere Izumo Kamiki and the two faced Renzo Shima, both of whom are revealed to have much more dimension and depth to them than initially thought, as well as introducing a new major threat in a force of rogue human Exorcists, the Illuminati, led by another child of Satan Lucifer. So, how does this season handle things compared to previous ones and what is there to look forward to for the next? Let’s eat some Butt of Christ or whatever Christians do and find out!

The first quarter of the season is primarily about the main kids of True Cross Academy doing smaller missions against less significant spirits, all while there’s something building up in the background. While it’s not so satisfying to go through if you’re binging through everything like I am or trying to come up with reviews week to week, it does serve the function of setting the status quo and recalibrating what you know about these characters, which is actually pretty useful for those who may have waited six or seven years between seasons. Everyone seems to be working pretty well together, though with some present dysfunctions that, while kinda cliche feeling, do end up coming into play after the other shoe drops and the plot kicks off. And BOY, does the plot kick off by the fourth episode, where the Illuminati are fully revealed, Shima turns out to be a spy for them, and Izumo’s past connections with them end up basically revealing why she’s been so stuck up and at arm’s length the entire time that we’ve known her. Though sadly, Rin is a bit more in the background than previous seasons, with his main significant bit of development being that he learns that it’s okay to kill humans if it’s a mercy kill to put them out of their misery after being turned into monstrous zombies. Maybe that’ll be more significant later, but…it’s not a whole lot right now.

Still, if you liked the last two seasons, then I don’t see much reason you wouldn’t enjoy the third. All the characters are consistent and it continues to progress the story at a pretty even clip and towards something potentially interesting. Aside from the lack of focus on Rin, the only real issue I can think of is that all the talk about double agents and traitors basically ends up with everyone who seemed good still turns out to be good and everyone bad turns out to be bad, but we do at least learn interesting things about everyone in the process, along with a promise of more neat stuff in the future season. Apparently, from what I’ve heard, next season will shift focus to Yukio, which makes sense considering how this one ended hinting at his insecurity about lacking the devilish powers his brother Rin has, but we’ll have to wait and see how all that plays out later this October (which is only months away, SHIT where does the time go). Anyway, happy Sunday and see you all at the church bake sale or whatever. Is it apparent yet that I don’t go to many Christian functions yet?

Score

7/10

Green Lynx (David Kaldor): Aimless 20-something given a paid outlet for his thoughts on cartoons. Fears being boring slightly more than being outright disliked.