Ultimate Exorcist Kiyoshi Volume 1 Review

Ultimate Exorcist Kiyoshi tells the story of a shy teenager who happens to be the strongest exorcist… and also a scaredy cat at the same time.

Kiyoshi Harai is a 16-year-old exorcist who has been dubbed the strongest due to his abilities. He skipped grades and graduated from the exorcist academy as the youngest at 16. However, to reach that, he had to take private lessons and didn’t interact with his classmates, so he’s super shy and doesn’t know how to make friends… or talk to girls!

On his first mission, he ends up befriending and sympathising with a lower-class demon before a demon lord makes its appearance. Although Kiyoshi is really scared to have to deal with any ‘evil’ demon, when his new demon friend is in danger, he doesn’t hesitate to fight the demon lord to protect him. However, this fight starts a chain of revenge by the remaining demon lords, who want to face Kiyoshi, and decide to attack the graduation ceremony at the exorcist academy.

Once again, it’s only thanks to Kiyoshi that there are no victims (other than the demon), however, he keeps failing in making (human) friends. His shyness and naiveté are at odds with his tattooed and pierced appearance, so he keeps getting misunderstood.

Kiyoshi has a debt to pay to Master Sasaki, an exorcist who saved Kiyoshi’s life when he was a child, so he jumps at the opportunity to move to Naraku, and work for Sasaki at his Chinese restaurant, with the odd exorcism jobs coming up. As one of his new colleagues is a woman, this way he gets the opportunity to talk to girls and also experience school as a high-school student. However, when he makes friends with a classmate, he doesn’t realise that he’s bound to befriend a demon lord as well, and not all the exorcists are happy with that…

Ultimate Exorcist Kiyoshi is a mix of shonen and slice of life as every chapter can kind-of be read as a standalone—there is not a main plot continuing from start to finish in the volume. Each chapter has a start, middle and end, but what they do is introduce the characters that Kiyoshi will surround himself with. I assume the more the story goes on, the more it will develop a main plot.

Kiyoshi is a clumsy guy who is afraid of demons, but decided to become an exorcist after his parents were killed when he was a child. We don’t yet know why he has such strong powers compared to the other exorcists or what he went through to get them. His appearance – tattoos and piercings – clashes with his personality and makes us wonder how his look would be accepted in a Japanese high school, where generally they tend to be more conservative on appearances…

The character art is somewhat simplistic but together with the exaggerated facial expressions and the farfetched situations, adds to the comedy in the story.

What I found interesting is that in this volume, readers get a short bio of the artist which is not really so common in manga. Shoichi Usui, the artist, used to work for Eiichiro Oda and his bestselling series One Piece, but if you think that might create some similarities, the two series couldn’t be more different in terms of art and plot.

Ultimate Exorcist Kiyoshi is written by Shoichi Usui and released in the English language by VIZ with translation by Christine Dashiell. Volume 1 is out in the UK in June, and Volume 2 is slated for release in August.

Read a free preview at the publisher’s website here. 

Our digital review copy was supplied by VIZ and Edelweiss.