Onmyouji

lasthavenmedia Dec 10, 2023

7

Onmyoji is about as solid as a show can be. It never stretches outside of its given narrative, but it also stays watchable until the end. Going a little bit deeper, we have the setup of a buddy cop-style exorcism anime about an exorcist kind of shunned by the palace and a noble from the court as they tackle various demon sightings in the capital. Our two leads have good chemistry; they bounce off each other pretty well, as you would need in this type of show, but their relationship never feels as deep as it wants us to see it. The episodic cases they follow are kind of hit and miss, as some are entertaining and some are just okay. Things do improve once an antagonistic female onmyoji enters the fray; she injects a lot of life into the story as she is the type of antagonist with no real goal, just likes to mess with the main lead. They do kind of go easy on her in the narrative, as a lot of issues stem from her. I did like the way they depicted demons in the story, as it was a different approach than most demon-based shows. The pacing is a little off as this show is 13 episodes and probably could be a lot shorter; 8 episodes would probably work for a show like this, as the narrative really drags in the last arc. Speaking of the final arc, an event occurs setting up the final arc that the way the characters reacted baffled me. Our noble from the court is your standard nice guy to balance off the more stoic nature of the onmyoji, and when this event occurs, he stays nice and forgiving when it would have made more sense for him to be a little mad. This is what I mean when I mention the show never stretching further than its boundaries of the genre. It never goes deeper or digs into these characters the way I would have liked, but if you are looking for just a solid anime with some interesting stories and likable characters, you could do worse than Onmyoji