Sousei no Onmyouji

Magano, a parallel realm filled with monsters known as "Kegare," is a place where exorcists deal with all impurities. Benio Adashino is a prodigy exorcist who is recognized for her strength and is summoned to Tokyo by the Exorcist Union. On her way, she plummets into the arms of Rokuro Enmadou, a young exorcist with a troubled past.

But the impurities of Magano do not rest. When these two exorcists witness a couple of children stolen by a Kegare, Benio rushes to save them, dragging Rokuro along with her into Magano. Engaged in a fight she is on the verge of being defeated in, Benio is saved by Rokuro, revealing himself capable of being her rival in talent.

Sousei no Onmyouji tells the story of two talented exorcists who are destined to become the "Twin Star Exorcists" and the prophesised parents of the Miko—the reincarnation of Abe no Seimei—who will cleanse the world of all impurities.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Adashino, Benio Main

Han, Megumi Japanese

Enmadou, Rokuro Main

Hanae, Natsuki Japanese

Amawaka, Seigen Supporting

Suwabe, Junichi Japanese

Ikaruga, Shimon Supporting

Ishikawa, Kaito Japanese

Otomi, Mayura Supporting

Serizawa, Yuu Japanese

Kamui Supporting

Ono, Yuuki Japanese

Ijika, Yuuto Supporting

Murase, Ayumu Japanese

Unomiya, Tenma Supporting

Shimono, Hiro Japanese

Tatara Supporting

Terashima, Takuma Japanese

Suzu Supporting

Wakai, Yuuki Japanese

Simone, Jamie Producer

Jitsumatsu, Teruaki Producer

Hijikata, Makoto Producer

Fukui, Youhei Assistant Producer

Reviews

Jun 8, 2017

Kya_Foxy

Recommended

** Spoiler Free **

~ If I had one dollar for every time someone said "I want to get stronger" during the anime, I would have been rich!~

Characters: I liked the affectionate involvement of the main characters, Benio and Rokuro. They grow and mature throughout the series, they support and motive each other in order to achieve their goal.

Story: The plot unfolds slowly and personally I got bored. It got a bit tedious and monotonous as we watch the protagonists "getting stronger" while more and more opponents appear. Unnecessary scenes and characters.
The comedy was funny. Maybe it was one of they best aspects of the series. ...

Art: The style and quality of the art change during the series. The characters design was really poor in some episodes, their faces looked like they were drawn by a child. However, other scenes were detailed designed with beautiful colours.

Sound: The music caught my attention! The #3 opening song is my favorite:)
The background music was fitting the atmosphere, very good work!

Overall, it's 7/10. I suggest you give it a try!

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Mar 29, 2017

3xTripple

Mixed Feelings

I feel that these 8.5 words describe the entirety of this anime:
“Cliche Archetype-filled Exorcist Shounen With Many Crappy Plot Twists”

I have very mixed feelings about this show…
- Sometimes I thought, “Oh, this is such a cool kiddy shounen!”
- Sometimes I became angry at how stupid and immature the characters were.
- I often skipped through some of the many slow scenes and flashbacks.
- Sometimes I even said, “Whoa! Didn’t see that coming! Is this really a kids show? wtf?” when some pretty dark things happened
- However, most importantly, by the end I thought to myself “Wow, this is pretty fucking bad.”

I honestly thought this show ... was going to be pretty average at first (5 out of 10). Then I thought, “Oh wow! This is actually pretty good!” from 9 to 37-ish (7/10). However, towards the end the show started pulling both random and shitty plot twists out of its ass, and then shooting them at us like it’s a “shit machine-gun” (2/10)...

TL;DR at the end

Story:(4/10)
The story mainly follows two cliche and initially overpowered main protagonists named “Rokuro” and “Benio” as they overcome many hard trials thereby growing stronger and closer together displaying mild romance. They’re prophesized to be the “twin stars” or two chosen exorcists that will get married, have a baby, and the baby will be the most powerful exorcist called the “miko” (basically something like a baby Jesus that will save the world from all of the evil kegare monsters). The evil kegare monsters are sealed in an alternate dimension called “megano”, where the exorcists must go to fight them. Almost all of the characters are slowly introduced with background stories that are supposed to be tragic, but their backgrounds came across as overly done to the point where it was kind of just stupid-silly after a while. The story emphasizes that Rokuro and Benio both want to get stronger... and they do... At a snail’s rate anyways, but no worries because they often get sudden power ups out of nowhere. Mm~ sudden power ups. My favorite… (sarcasm)

The story really doesn’t have any depth, and it certainly isn’t realistic. For example, one of the main antagonists is basically just some psychotic kid with attachment issues. One thing that really pissed me off is that all of the villains kept saying phrases like:

"I am all powerful! and you are weak!"
“It is no use for you to try to win!”
“Oh, but it was all part of my master plan!”
“THIS TOO IS PART OF MY MASTER PLAN!”
and then the shitty plot twist that I mentioned earlier would be another antagonist saying,
“But your master plan was part of my SUPER master plan ALL ALONG! I have been using you, lesser antagonist, this whole time!”
I often just sat in my chair, apathetic to all of the bullshit that the characters kept pulling out of their asses.

I feel the story’s pace was much too slow, often dwelling much too long on the characterization and development of the twin stars. It wasn’t really exciting, so I didn’t feel like waiting to watch each new episode once a week. I actually ended up binge-watching once every four months. It had its ups and downs. It’s a pretty a pretty bad story overall. Towards the end, we randomly got hit with some pedophile plot twist shit, and I honestly don’t know what the hell to make of this anime anymore. It had its moments, but the story was actually pretty bad overall.


Art:(5/10)
The art in the fight scenes sometimes looks like it’s from a game where they pause and call out the name of their attack with an epic pose before actually doing it. Everything freezes when this happens, so it adds a certain "style" to the art.

The art's okay overall, but I feel that the series would be more appealing if the characters weren't so... bright and cute...? Except there's one thing that gets to me every time... It's Rokuro... There are scenes when his art turns into something out of a horror movie. The animation is not the best with many still-frames and lack of dramatic camera angles. The art's fine overall.

Sound:(8/10)
What can I say? They did a pretty good job on the sound. The OST is mainly dubstep, which threw me off at first, but I kind of like it now. The fighting works well, background music fits completely and enhances the setting. Openings and endings are also very fitting. It's actually relatively unique, but it's not special or powerful like something like something Yuki Kajiura or Sawano Hiroyuki would make. Only one OST was memorable for me until episode 27's opening theme. But now that I finished the anime, I actually occasionally catch myself thinking about their OSTs! (I guess 50 episodes of an anime will do that to you).

Characters: (4/10)
The characters were okay, at best. However, towards the end, they ended up having little to no real depth at all. In general, they’re pretty much just average characters with nothing much special about them except for Rokuro's shark teeth (main male character). I initially hated both Rokuro and Benio, but, I actually started liking the main characters around episode 14/15 after they unnecessarily spent all of that time developing the twin stars. However, they're basically just kids with sad background stories tasked with saving the world from Kegare. Honestly, they probably could have made this series into about 24 episodes if they skipped the unnecessary development episodes.

There are a lot of side characters with the potential to be interesting, but they all got little to no development. The dynamic between Benio and Rokuro is pretty nice to watch, but there's nothing too special here. Rokuro's starts off as kind of annoying, fiery, not that smart, and overpowered, but the enemies do get much stronger and Rokuro matures quite a bit and actually becomes a pretty cool character. Benio is the typical smart, cool, amazingly strong, but lonely character. She too grows as the series progresses.

Enjoyment: (?/10)
This show… is hard to describe in terms of enjoyment... At first, it was fun because it reminded me of a cool game (7/10). As it progressed, the initial excitement died down (5/10). It was very predictable up until a certain point, but things started becoming less predictable as it progressed (7/10). Some of the plot twists were cool, but the plot twists towards the end were just plain stupid (2/10). In fact, I was legitimately shocked by how ridiculous and incoherent it started getting. It's definitely more suited to a younger less mature audience, but there are some aspects of the anime that are unexpectedly dark for a kids show. An older audience may still enjoy it because it's somewhat entertaining (maybe), although you probably won't be able to relate to it much as an older individual.

TL;DR
Overall: (5/10)
The story progressed too slowly, they took too long to develop the MCs, the characters were too cliche, but the anime wasn’t all that bad and actually had a decent amount of good moments. The show is bearable, but I wouldn’t recommend this anime to you unless you’ve already seen a bunch of the other top shounen out there. So basically, it was pretty bad and I think your time would be better spent elsewhere.

“Do I recommend this to you personally?”
Personally? Absolutely not. I could never wholeheartedly recommend this anime to anyone. It’s just something I watched to kill time.

However, if you like exorcists and shounen anime, are younger than 16, and like slow stories, then maybe you should give it a shot someday.

If you want realistic and mature characters, then no you should look elsewhere.

In fact, you probably should just look elsewhere unless you’re out of anime to watch.

I strongly recommend that you check out these other similar, but better exorcist/demon-related shounen anime first if you haven’t already:
1. D. Gray Man 9/10 (103 eps) The second season 8/10 (13 eps) came 10 years later
2. Bleach 9/10 (366 eps)
3. Ao no Exorcist 9/10 (37 eps between 2 seasons)
4. Nurarihyon no Mago 9/10 (50 eps between 2 seasons)
5. Shakugan no Shana 8/10 (76 eps between 3 seasons)

(if you agree or enjoyed reading, let me and others know by clicking helpful or commenting on my page~ If you disagree let me know why you disagree so I can do better next time! thanks~)

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Mar 29, 2017

PyraXadon

Not Recommended

The word 'adaptation' for anime has quite a flexible definition. Most often, the term 'adaptation' means that the production company takes the source material and tries their best to make a carbon copy of the series that they decided to make in animated form. But at the same time, the word 'adaptation' can mean "based on" the original source material, and have their own anime-original plots and endings that contradict what the original series may have entailed. Twinstar Exorcists, or Sousei no Omnyouji is an example of the latter.

Story: The world we live in is a place that exists parallel ... to its antithesis, a place known as Magano. In it, the negative thoughts of humans merge together and form creatures of corruption and sin known as 'Kegare'. Kegare feed off of the spirtual power of humans and are destructive creatures that threaten the world we know. In order to combat this, there are people known as Omnyouji with high spiritual power and battle the Kegare in a never-ending war to save humanity from their power. To save humanity, the power of the Miko, a being born from the twinstar exorcists must be brought into the world. Who are the twinstar exorcists? Some shithead named Rokuro and an equally prissy girl named Benio. Oh boy...

Omnyouji's story is in short, arduous. Spanning 50 episodes of content, what we're given as a plot is, in simple terms, a slew of shonen tropes that span from the power of friendship, all the way to wanting to save everybody, and sudden bursts of power because, plot convenience. Despite being an adaptation of a relatively popular series, Omnyouji doesn't have much to offer. It becomes painfully easy to see what comes our way, and a lot of what it is boils down to ham-handed philosophies of two opponents fighting each other with fists clenched while shouting each other's names. Rinse and repeat that process over twenty times over, and you have what roughly equates to the entire show's runtime in a flash.

The main attributer as to why the show is so devoid of any originality or interesting developments is because, rather than following what the manga had already mapped out for Perriot to adapt, the studio decided to take a different turn and by Episode 20, change the show's path down an anime original path that has no connection to its original source material at all. This proved to be a very big contributor as to why the show has such big flaws with its story, as the saga we're introduced to turns the show into a display of power as our protagonists "get stronger" as more and more opponents get introduced for no other reason than to make the penultimate plot of "The end of the world is coming" a reality for the end so that the show would have some form of grand finale.

Another problem comes with how I feel as though the show had too much time. Most often than not, the case of screentime boils down to not having enough time for a series in order to tell the story that was intended. Many episodes felt like throwaway episodes, as the show would squander its screentime with flashbacks that have already been shown many times over, recaps of what happened in the last ten or so episodes, or would have episodes solely devoted to talking just to fill up the twenty-four minutes that were allotted for the episode. As such, episodes like this added to the weariness of how Omnyouji displayed itself, making the what was already tedious, even more tedious to watch.

Omnyouji's problems arose when trying to milk what had already been drained dry. The show doesn't try anything new in the realm of shonen anime, as the roughly twenty five hours it takes to watch this series can be described with just a tropes that almost every shonen anime uses in its plotline. That, combined with how slow some of the episodes feel, and how predictable everything is, ultimately creates a tiring experience that isn't worth the time or effort to have.

Overview:
- All the shonen tropes
- Predictable story
- Many pointless episodes
- Deviation from the source material did not work

Characters: Likewise, characters have the similar problem with being your run of the mill shonen tropes without what seems like little to no thought with how to make them interesting beyond what they're given.

Both of our main characters, Enmado Rokuro and Adashino Benio start off the series hating each other's guts. With the series intentionally pairing them up in order to bring the Miko into the world, it's no surprise by what the end result of the series becomes. The pair of Omnyouji are as expected. You have the reckless, brash boy who listens to no one and wants to get stronger with his own strength and his own merits, and you have the girl who doesn't like the boy (at the beginning) who also wants to get stronger and basically has the exact same goals that the boy does. The character progression for the relationship between these two is noticeable and gradual, which is something that I believe that the show does well on. However, as far as everything else is concerned, that's about where the positives end. Their goals are nothing special, their progression is somewhat minimal, and the show makes it very hard for them to lose. They may struggle, but everything turns out extremely ok at the end. They're boring. They're boring because the show doesn't even attempt to make their pains and struggles seem minimal when everything just comes to them so easily, and it becomes very hard to care for characters who despite everything, have plot armor so thick that not even someone who is virtually god can't break through it.

As far as villains go, most if not all can be described as characters who have a single goal that serves as an obstacle that can easily be overcome once given enough episodes. Become the best, take over the world, destroy humanity; all of these goals have been done over and over again in more interesting ways that have been displayed here. It doesn't help that the villains spend more time talking than executing their evil plan, or hell, let the protagonist live when they could easily kill them, so they become minor hurdles that the characters have to jump over to continue on with the story.

Side characters are a wide bunch that, like most long-running shonen series, are either the friends that the main protagonists are fighting for, and are the less than stellar characters of the same kind who will never amount to anything when compared to the feats that the main protagonists have achieved. They're your standard group of side characters in a shonen series, and there're very few if any noteworthy characters to talk about since they're largely tropes like; the third wheel, the mentor, the annoying mascot, and rivals.

Overview:
+ Character development for the protagonists
- Entire cast feels like a giant soup of tropes

Art: Perriot's art shines as an example of inconsistency and quality issues. While normally the show has a lot of blunt and bright colors that are less than stellar in quality, the main problem with Omnyouji's art is how consistent the company is with making their scenes.

When the show wants to, the lighting and the shadows can make the scene look good enough to actually look good. However, when the show doesn't want to, the art looks like a mess of colors combined with clear flaws in the details when it comes to characters' appearance. Fight scenes in a supposedly action heavy series are mostly characters standing and talking about each of their side and philosophies while not mercilessly beating the crap out of each other. A one-two punch, a lot of talking, some more punching, a lot more talking, and end the fight. The fight scenes hardly have any 'fight' in them, so they feel very disengaging and unexciting to watch.

Overview:
+ Can look good
- Largely inconsistent
- Minimalistic fight scenes

Sound: Omnyouji's soundtracks are not memorable. Being roughly 4 cours long, the show has 4 pairs of OPs and EDs that help run the show's opening and ending bits to section off each of the four parts that the show's in. Despite having watched all of the songs in full, none of the tracks stick out to me in my head as something that was both enjoyable or memorable. So if you ask me, the tracks are not worth your time.

Personal Enjoyment: It's been about a year since I started watching the first episode, and I honestly can't remember the reason why I even started it in the first place. Coming out of it though, Omnyouji stands as a show that ultimately was a huge waste of time. Nothing about it made me excited about watching the next episode, and slogging through episode after episode felt like a tiring excavation to find any glint of originality to make me interested in the series. The shift from the source material certainly didn't help its case, as the random encounters with new anime-original villains didn't do anything but make the series even more difficult to like.

Did I like this series?

For me, there's nothing to like. You can find better examples of everything this show did elsewhere.

What didn't I like about this series?

Though I'm tempted to say 'everything', the biggest problem I had was with Benio's shikigami, Kinako. Kinako's high screechy voice shouting at the top of his lungs was like nails on a chalkboard. He wasn't cute, was extremely annoying, and became a huge hindrance to the series because his constant shouting and attempts at 'helping' had me in a tizzy on whether or not I should finish the show, or quit halfway.

Would I recommend this anime?

To me, Omnyouji is not worth it. Reusing almost every shonen trope that exists, Omnyouji's adaptation has almost nothing original about it as its largely anime-original plot turns its 50 episode runtime into a bingo game to see if you can get a bingo from all of the tropes that they shove into the series. Its lack of originality makes it a tiring experience to have, and I for one am thankful that it's over. Because there is no way I'm ever going to watch a 50 episode on-going series ever again.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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