Short answers, pulled from the story.
Blue Exorcist was written and illustrated by Kazue Kato. It began serialization in Shueisha's Jump Square magazine on the 4th of April, 2009, preceded by a prototype one-shot published on the 4th of August, 2008.
Blue Exorcist follows Rin Okumura, a teenager who discovers he and his twin brother Yukio are the sons of Satan, born from a human woman. After their guardian Father Shiro Fujimoto is killed by Satan, Rin enrolls at True Cross Academy to train as an exorcist and defeat Satan.
By December 2022, Blue Exorcist had over 25 million copies in circulation. The anime adaptation directly boosted manga sales, leading Shueisha to increase the print run for the seventh volume, which became the first Jump Square manga to have a first print run of one million copies.
Blue Exorcist has four anime television seasons. The first aired in 2011, produced by A-1 Pictures. The second season, Kyoto Saga, aired in 2017. The third season, Shimane Illuminati Saga, aired in early 2024, produced by Studio VOLN. The fourth season ran across two parts in 2024 and early 2025.
Kazue Kato took inspiration from Terry Gilliam's 2005 film The Brothers Grimm, wanting to build a story around brothers fighting monsters. She settled on demons and exorcists as her framework, which drew in heavy Biblical references that she decided to embrace rather than avoid.
Aniplex of America licensed the Blue Exorcist anime for North America. The series has aired on Adult Swim's Toonami programming block and was simulcast through Hulu, Crunchyroll, Anime News Network, and Netflix beginning the 20th of April, 2011.