Blue Exorcist: What Exactly Is Shiemi Moriyama? Theories Explained!

After many years, the third season of Blue Exorcist is finally back, and in this article, we have decided to start covering the series. This article is going to discuss a popular character who’s been present from the very beginning of the series, Shiemi Moriyama, and who is one of the protagonists of the series. Shiemi Moriyama is a very special character in many ways, and in this article, we have decided to tell you all you need to know about her nature in the series. What exactly is Shiemi Moriyama in Blue Exorcist? Well – keep reading to find out!

Fans have long speculated about the true nature of Shiemi as a character

As far as the theories surrounding Shiemi’s role in the story are concerned, the fans have long speculated about what she is. Most of the theories were focused on her connection to Shemihaza, with Shiemi depicted as either a reincarnation or a clone of her. Such is the Quora theory presented by user Frankie Wiz:

I’m glad you asked! Awesome A2A!

Manga spoilers up to chapter 103 ahead

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I believe she is either a direct reincarnation of Shemihaza the Emperor of creation through natural biological means.

Or (and this my pet theory)

She is a nephilium clone of Shemihaza (just enough human genetics to give her a natural body in Assiah), the same way Shiro Fujimoto was a clone of Azazel, making her the de facto vessel for Shemihaza’s powers in Assiah.

With all of her exposure to high level demonic energy she just keeps getting stronger. Her abilities, demonstrated when she literally creates a forest from thin air (or um dirt through greenmen who aren’t even her familiars) to protect the exwires when Rin goes critical mass, are staggeringly impressive for a fifteen year old girl with less than a year of training as an exorcist but *no* formal training with her own powers.

She’s operating off of instinct which is just, woah.

Amaimon’s straight up temper tantrum over Mephisto passively withholding the truth of who Shiemi really is from him is also telling.

Aside from the fact that he acts like a five year old, complete with the boo hoo crying and flailing of limbs, for the first time you can see how completely and utterly betrayed Amaimon feels.

Significant.

Mephisto has manipulated him into sort of double crossing Satan, who Amaimon is clearly afraid of, controlled Amaimon’s comings and goings (as much as someone like Amaimon can be controlled). Amaimon has been censured, castigated, punished and flat out tortured by Mephisto.

I mean, Amaimon is a demon and all, but his body is at least marginally human in Assiah. Mephisto ran a bunch of spears through him and just left him to bleed and suffer for ummmmm how many chapters? I could go back and count but it’s irrelevant considering Mephisto can control time, he probably made it feel like 100 years just for the lolz.

Basically Amaimon is his errand boy, whipping boy and scapegoat all rolled into one.

But despite this rough treatment Amaimon seems grateful towards Mephisto, he is secure in his place enough to tease and harrass (like the little brother he is), he seems to genuinely care about his Anuie, as much as he is able.

So for him to have a massive meltdown because Mephisto didn’t outright say “Hey Otouto, that little blond girl is…….” is like WOAH HOLY CRAP! AMAIMON IS PISSED!

As Mephisto pointed out he gave Amaimon plenty of opportunities to figure it out on his own, hell, he even enrolled Amaimon in the regular classes at true cross as Ambrosius Faust so he could blatantly stalk Shiemi.

It’s not Mephisto’s fault that Amaimon was too busy playing to see the forest for the trees.

But this also brings up some other possibilities that haven’t exactly been elucidated in the manga.

This is straight up birdwalking based on my observations.

Shiemi mentions obliquely that she remembers being somewhere other than the exorcist shop when she was really young but then quickly blows past it with a smile and talks about her grandmother’s garden.

The people who come for her when she is talking to Izumo after Rin’s awakening are dead ringers (just aged up) for the kids in the unit 13 Shemihaza group.

Shiemi’s “mother” seems to harbor a weird resentment towards her while her “grandmother” treats Shiemi like a daughter.

Mephisto is the Demon king of Time and Space and has somehow taken the Asylum “off line”, giving it it’s own little bubble reality. And while the facility is derelict Neuhaus is clearly doing *something* there at Mephisto’s behest and the experimental bodies are not as dead as Ryuji and Lewin would have hoped.

Ambrosius the test subject in the Amaimon group was *suprisingly* well adjusted, not insane, and able to interact with others.

It is obvious that a demon possessing a host can access the host bodies memories and feelings as needed, I’m sure it’s a bit of a defense mechanism that helps the demon ape being human as needed, but the more powerful demons like the Baal seem to be able to use it offensively against the host as well. Asteroth very quickly stirs up Shiratori’s rage towards Rin and promptly repossess him.

Mephisto has been Johann Faust for damn near 500 years now……Johann Faust the fifth, lololol…..also:

Landsknechts, the devil’s own mercenaries, created by the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I; who was never actually crowned by the pope in Rome b/c he was at war with the Venetians and they would have murdered him dead if he tried to travel through their land.

Instead Maximilian I was proclaimed Emperor elect by Pope Julius II, who gave his blessings from afar, thus breaking the tradition for the Emperors of Rome.

I’m pretty sure Mephisto as himself, alongside Johann Faust, was behind the Sack of Rome in 1527 which was carried out by the mutinous troops (Landsknechts among others) of Charles V (grandson and successor to Maximilian I); the angry mercenaries imprisoned Pope Clement VII who was so scared of Charles V (he believed the Emperor sent the troops after him) that he pissed off Henry the 8th (wouldn’t grant his divorce because he was afraid Charles would take umbrage) and sparked the English reformation, with the Martin Luthers reformation already underway.

Charles eventually abdicates, because fuck absolutely everything, and this indirectly leads to the eventual dissolution of The Holy Roman Empire as the empire splinters into factions.

The moral of the story: If you hire mercenaries that are so bloodthirsty they are widely reputed to be demons……pay them! (Also, don’t ask Mephisto via Faust to raise your ancestor Alexander the Great from the dead for shits and giggles and expect to walk away from the encounter not owing anything, looking at you Charles V……or possibly Maximilian I, depending on whose propaganda you believe.)

Everyone wonders what Mephisto has over the Pope that got him into the order with the rank of honorary knight back in the day…….how about ‘because of me you no longer have an Empire, play nice and I won’t burn the rest of it to the ground’…..I don’t know about you but if I was Pope I would jump to make a deal with that particular devil!

Not to mention that Mephisto *still* dresses like a Landsknecht, with a top hat and tails nod to his Victorian aesthetic from the flashback to his deal with Lucifer, which led to the creation of unit 13 (and omg poor Amaimon in that scene, he looks like a mummy……or a necrotized burn victim……). This makes every time Rin calls Mephisto a clown extra funny IMHO (Rin *seriously* underestimates Mephisto).

I could go on all day, but I will stop here and leave you with this.

Faust: My Soul be Damned for the World, Volume 1 By E. A. Bucchianeri is a fantastic literary analysis of Faust and Mephistopheles in their historical context. Worth the read if you are into that sort of thing.

Sorry for the sideline……..back to your question.

Amaimon never outright says that he has Ambrosius’ memories but in the manga bonus materials, which were little fan comics put together by other artists, there is a strip that is about Amaimon’s expressions, or lack of.

Basically it posits the idea that Amaimon, the demon, has a full range of emotions (well demon emotions, you get the idea) but is unable to express them physically through his host body because when his host body was simply Ambrosius he had no concept of things like happiness, hope, love, joy……normal human feelings.

Well shit. If you were a person, created in a lab for the sole purpose of being a meat suit, who just inconveniently happened to have a soul of your own and was somehow not insane, you would be *very* unhappy with your life as well.

I mean hell, look at Shiro; he’s practically *rabid* he’s so fucking angry at everything.

Amaimon in the body of Ambrosius only seems to have five primary emotional expressions:

• Ennui

• Hysterical laughter

• Hysterical temper tantrum

• Hangry

• Play mode……..

Ah yes…..Amaimon’s obsession with playing games…

Granted demons play games, Mephisto is a prime example, but Mephisto himself doesn’t think of it as a game so much a he thinks of things in theatrical terms (all the world is a stage) and chess (which is an analogy for war).

So where does Amaimon get this literal obsession with games?

Ambrosius.

Imagine being institutionalized, the only time you see anyone, even the doctors, is for evaluation. What is the best tool to evaluate a child? A game, or several….with candy as a reward for good behavior…….which is a paradigm that Mephisto fully engages in with Amaimon.

But Ambrosius is well adjusted, he is allowed to interact with other children……….

You know who else is well adjusted and desperately wants friends?

Shiemi.

This is straight up head canon but it fits.

Ambrosius and Shiemi were playmates in unit 13.

Ambrosius was older than Shiemi (physically Amaimon looks to be about 16-17 to Shiemi’s 15) and his memories are a bit stronger but I think they were separated at a fairly young age.

Shiemi may have been 4-5, just old enough to leave an impression but young enough to not have a clear mental image. Ambrosius would have been 6-7 and had a much stronger memory of her, but as a little girl, which also explains Amaimon’s confusion towards Shiemi. IE why does this fragile human who is friends with my loser baby half brother seem so important/ familiar? Why, out of all of the Exwires did he choose to play with her?

The easy answer is that she is the weakest but that is absolutely not true if this is considered from a demon perspective. What would be easier prey?

The literally smallest human who doesn’t have a familiar (Konekomaru) whose only ability is reciting arias…..against a sub king…..or the sweet but fierce Shiemi who he had already bumped into before (indirectly, at Mepphyland) who has an affinity for earth demons…….obviously Konekomaru would be the logical choice but something about Shiemi seems like a challenge so that’s who Amaimon chooses.

Oh sure, part of it could be because of Rin’s macho protective display over Shiemi and Amaimon’s desire to fuck with Rin as much as possible but Amaimon really does get carried away with Shiemi……what a convoluted plan! Chuchi larva mind control and ‘she’s my bride’ villian monologing, smh……sheesh Amaimon get a room! I would blame it on Mephisto but he seems both surprised and entertained by Amaimon’s antics making it likely that Amaimon is improvising within Mephisto’s directive of ‘play with Rin but don’t kill my students or break my school’.

Anyway…..

Ambrosius was taken to be groomed as Amaimon’s new vessel along with a few other potential candidates and Shiemi was removed and hidden with her “mother” and “grandmother”, possibly just before the Blue Night.

I’m not saying Mephisto knew what was coming but…….ya know…..demon king of Time and Space…….he isn’t ominicent, there are way too many possible futures, but he is capable of making an educated guess. So Mephisto jumped her forward in time a bit and used Shiemi’s mother’s reputation as a bit of a wild child as cover.

So hell yeah Shiemi’s “mother” is a bit shitty towards her; she thought she was free of the exorcists and the shop, that she could be her own woman until Mephisto roped her into raising a little blond brat, who is most likely her sort of half sister…..

Meantime, Ambrosius misses his playmate and first friend passing the longing and desire onto Amaimon, who really isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed and seems to just act subconsciously on it.

Shiemi is both attracted to, and repulsed by Amaimon because she thinks he should be someone she could be friends with, but paradoxically he reminds her of something that scares her, buried way down deep in her psyche, so she rationalizes that she feels that way because he is mean to her friends.

But hell, some of her so called friends are just as mean to her! Izumo comes around eventually but she was seriously horrible to Shiemi for a while. Even Rin with his ‘naw we aren’t friends’ bit is like, ouch.

Also, Shiemi is not exactly afraid of demons. She acts scared when confronted but part of that is a knee jerk reaction based on how she thinks she should act and the other part of it is her just being overwhelmed by new things. Continuously she doesn’t see the potential harm in the demons around her; her feelings are hurt by Rin, not because he is the son of Satan, but because he didn’t tell her his secret and she begins questioning their friendship.

Nothing is more important to Shiemi than friendship. Amaimon only feels happy when he is playing a game and Ambrosius is reminded of his first friend (even if he didn’t know why for the longest time) so in a roundabout way, nothing is more important to him than Shiemi’s friendship.

Granted, this may not be where the manga is going, only time will tell, but if that’s the case I hope we get a reunion where they recognize each other.

That would be amazeballs!

Even better if we get little chibi Ambrosius-chan and Shiemi-chan playing with blocks (omg so cute! :::dies a little inside from cuteness overload:::).

Oh well……just another set of possibilities in a literally endless series of possibilities.

As Mephisto would say, Auf wiedersehen!~☆

(Source)

It is a lengthy theory, but it makes a lot of sense, so we hope you had fun reading it since it sums up the gist of the fans’ theories about Shiemi. But, while Frankie was close, the truth is a bit more… simple.

Kato ultimately confirmed that the fans were close, but the solution is less mysterious than we thought

Namely, the series did confirm that Shiemi was related to Shemihaza, one of the three legendary demons. Her whole family is, in fact, Nephilim, which means that she is the product of a Demon mating with a human. Of course, not her directly, but her ancestors are. In that capacity, she is actually also a descendant of Shemihaza and can use her powers, just like her grandmother could. This is all we know from the official manga, so it doesn’t seem like she is actually a clone or a reincarnation.

She does have Shemihaza’s powers, and the two of them are directly related, but she seems to be just a regular relative, and that is that. Sadly, the solution to this mystery seems to be much less mysterious than we had hoped for.

Have something to add? Let us know in the comments below!