If you’re one to keep track of the latest anime announcements, you may have heard Blue Exorcist is getting a third season. Titled Blue Exorcist: Shimane Illuminati Saga, it looks to adapt volumes 10 to 15 of the Blue Exorcist manga, by Kazue Kato.
That said, now would be an excellent time to start watching if you’d like to catch up by the third season’s slated premiere of January 2024. It can be a task easier said than done, however, if you’re unsure of where to start, or what order to proceed in watching the Blue Exorcist anime. So, let’s break it down.
How to start watching Blue Exorcist
To be honest, it depends. If you’re not opposed to watching anime original content, you’ll have more episodes than if you insist on only watching episodes depicted in the manga. But, if you subscribe to the latter philosophy, it’ll be easier to catch up.
In either case, you’ll start with the original 2011 anime, Blue Exorcist. This season covers two canon arcs (the Exorcist Cram School Enrollment arc and the Exorcist Candidate Live Combat arc) and one original arc spanning episodes 18 to 25. There’s also an OVA included at the end of this season, entitled “Kuro no Iede,” but it doesn’t seem to be available anywhere to stream.
It’s then that, if you’re cool with anime original content, you can watch Blue Exorcist: The Movie, which was the next to be released sequentially, in 2012. Because this film is also non-canonical to the manga, it makes sense to watch it alongside the non-canonical story arc the first season ends with, as well.
Blue Exorcist: Kyoto Saga is up next, which reportedly ignores the events of the aforementioned original arc from the first season. So, if you’d like to avoid any confusion, it might be best to start Kyoto Saga after you’ve finished episode 17 of Blue Exorcist. In any case, Kyoto Saga runs for one cour of 12 episodes, plus two OVAs “Snake and Poison” and “Spy Game,” which, like with season 1, are not available for streaming.
After that, you should be golden to start Blue Exorcist: Shimane Illuminati Saga when it airs in January!
Where does the Blue Exorcist anime leave off in the manga?
If you’ve caught up with the Blue Exorcist anime and would like to pick up the manga, it might be a bit confusing, due to the rash of anime original episodes included in the first season. But, if you insist, it’d seem the first arc to be adapted by Shimane Illuminati Saga is the Academy Seven Wonders arc, meaning you’d start from chapter 38, titled “Exorcist.” This is the first chapter in volume 10 of Blue Exorcist.
