Manga / Make the Exorcist Fall in Love

Can love bloom in the midst of holy war?

"An angel falls to Earth... by the graveness of their sin. And the gravest sin in this world... is love!"

—Imuri Atsuki to Father

A secret holy war is being waged between the clergy of humanity and the demons of hell. In this war, exorcists are all that stands between humanity's salvation and destruction as the Demon Lords attempt to spread their influence across the planet. In this time, a boy has been chosen by God to be his champion against the demons. He encounters the Demon Lord of Lust, Asmodeus, at the tender age of twelve and successfully exorcises her, but not before deep-seated scars are carved into him physically and mentally.

Four years later in The Present Day, the boy, now known as "Father", is the world's greatest exorcist, having faced and repelled three of the Seven Lords of Sin by the time he turned sixteen. When Satan, greatest of the Demon Lords of Hell and embodiment of wrath, invites the world-renowned artist Imuri Atsuki and everyone she holds dear into the halls of Gehenna, Father is summoned to protect her.

Unbeknownst to him, Imuri is in fact a demon herself, a "Lilin", one of the original breeds of succubus. Her complete lack of magical power lets her seamlessly pass as a human, making her the perfect agent to worm her way into Father's heart on Satan's behalf.

Make the Exorcist Fall in Love (Exorcist o Otosenai) is a Shonen manga written by Arumu Arima and illustrated by Masuku Fukayama for Shonen Jump. It follows Father in his quest to defend Imuri and the world from the threat of Satan and the other Demon Lords while Imuri attempts to seduce him as part of Satan's plans. It began serialization on Shonen Jump + on December 15, 2021, and can be read online on Shueisha's official site since June 21, 2022.

Make the Exorcist Fall in Love contains examples of:

A to M

• Aborted Arc: Invoked. Satan declares that Imuri is a target of his, forcing Father to act as her bodyguard. But as the story goes on, Satan never makes good on his threat, which makes Leah and Barbara suspicious that they're somehow playing into Satan's hands. This is what keeps them on guard around Imuri and they tell the Vatican to be wary of her.
• Adopting the Abused: Father was a Death Seeker looking to martyr himself to escape the abuse and misery he suffered at the hands of the Catholic Church by the time he turned twelve. Being apprenticed under the exorcist Dante allows Father to experience unconditional kindness for the first time. Dante disabuses Father of his religious dogma and tells him to fall in love so he can appreciate the world that God created. While Father's physical and mental scars have yet to vanish, Dante's intervention gives Father a reason to live and the compassion to help others.
• All for Nothing: Leah very nearly succeeds in getting her long-awaited revenge against Beelzebub but suffers from a Heroic RRoD just as she's ripped Beelzebub's heart from his chest. This grants Beelzebub the chance to break free and take Barbara hostage, which compels Leah to give the Demon Lord his heart back and divulge the location of the purified piece of Asmodeus. Then it's subverted after Father arrives and helps to turn the tables.
• Armor-Piercing Question: When Dante realizes that Father has been abused into a Death Seeker with Blind Obedience to the Church, he forces Father to recognize this by asking, "Looking to martyr yourself so soon? Is living that painful for you?" Father initially shouts at Dante to shut up, but he's soon bawling in Dante's arms, admitting that it hurts and he can't go on living like this.
• Attempted Rape: Asmodeus, being the Demon Lord of Lust, promises to "to take [Father] to Heaven" when she prepares to have dozens of women rape him while she's using her powers as The Pornomancer to render him helpless. He only manages to stop her when he remembers Matthew 5:3, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven", after which he tears out his own eye and binds Asmodeus with the power of Archangel Raphael. But the experience left lasting physical and psychological scars on Father, who is specifically diagnosed with PTSD and grows physically ill when he sees naked women.
• Bash Brothers: Leah and Barbara are a team skilled enough that the Vatican believes they can hold off Satan for five minutes should they be willing to throw away their lives. The two of them deal a grievous blow to Beelzebub, restraining him and ripping out his heart, doing far more damage than even Father managed to accomplish years ago.
• Beat Them at Their Own Game: In his rematch with Beelzebub, Father attempts to exorcize the Demon Lord with a miracle that recreates the conditions of heaven to nullify Beelzebub's Home Field Advantage. That's when Beelzebub eats the part of Asmodeus that had been purified by Father at the start of the story, gaining the powers of an angel. Beelzebub quickly turns the tables back on Father by using the same miracle, only even more powerful.
• Beautiful Singing Voice: "Aria" is a world-famous pop singer with fans all over the globe and wealthy enough to use Imuri's art as part of her promotional material. Anyone listening to Aria sing is entranced by the beauty of her voice. Her concerts are packed to the gills and even world leaders will put all but the most pressing tasks on hold just to listen to her sing. One panel shows that Leviathan, Demon Lord of Envy, listens to her sing with a phone from the bottom of the sea. Father likes Aria's voice so much that he instinctively calls her cute after listening to her once when Imuri has spent months trying to coax the same compliment out of him.
• Becoming the Mask: While Imuri is under direct orders from Satan to seduce Father, she comes to love Father as his own person after seeing his selflessness and how seriously he takes his Declaration of Protection for her.
• Big Damn Heroes: Dante appears out of the blue when Father is about to be devoured by Beelzebub, saving Father in a nick of time.
• Cast from Stamina: The magic of demons and the miracles of the exorcists seem to be cast from a supply of stamina. Should this supply run out, the demons and exorcists won't be able to use their most taxing special powers. This is what causes the fight between Father and Mammon to enter a Combat Breakdown, as both of them had used up too much of their energy to do anything but fight each other with their bare hands.
• Church Militant: The Roman Catholic Church (and seemingly all other denominations of Chrisianity) are a global military organization that maintains The Masquerade while fighting off the demons of Gehenna whenever they appear. Father is the most powerful exorcist alive and the ultimate weapon of the Roman Catholic Church. He and other exorcists like Leah are also trained in military and rescue operations, such as when they head out to save the passengers of a cruise ship that was sunk by Leviathan.
• Combat Breakdown: After Father and Mammon expend all of their powers in their duel, the fight devolves into nothing more than bloody fisticuffs.
• Crucified Hero Shot: In Father's second battle with Beelzebub, the Demon Lord of Gluttony pins Father by his hands and feet to a dinner plate with kebab skewers, making a mockery of the crucifixion of Christ in the process.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Calling on the archangels for aid is considered this for the exorcists as the strain on the body is immense. Even someone as powerful as Father has all the skin flayed off his arm when he blocks one of Mammon's attacks with the power of Archangel Gabriel. Asmodeus says that using such powers will break mortals like Father and Barbara is seriously worried when Leah tries to do the same against a nephilim.
• Defusing The Tykebomb: After Father pulls out his eye in penance for succumbing to Asmodeus's powers over lust, Dante realizes just how abused and mentally damaged Father is. Dante then forces Father to realize this with an Armor-Piercing Question exposing just how miserable Father is before advising him to find someone he loves so Father can love the world that God created. While this does not remove all of Father's emotional baggage, Dante's intervention ends Father's martyr complex and restores his ability to love and show compassion.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: While investigating the case of a succubus in Northern Italy, Father and Dante are caught off guard when the Demon Lord Asmodeus reveals that she had taken the form of a small child to "play" the role of younger sibling with one of her minions.
• Double Agent: Despite appearing to be the highest ranking witch of Beelzebub, Vergilus is eventually revealed to be acting on Satan's behalf, as shown when he reveals that he swapped Beelzebub's finger with a fake and causes the fake to dissolve at just the right time for Father, Leah, and Dante to gain the upper hand against the Demon Lord of Gluttony.
• Dramatic Irony: This forms part of the drama of the story, as it ends up creating tension and makes the reader cringe on Father's behalf.
  • While the reader is already made aware that Irumi is actually a demon send by Satan to seduce Father, Father is currently in the dark about Irumi's true identity and reason for staying at his side. One can only imagine what will happen should Father find out the truth...
  • To make things even more tense and cringeworthy, the reader finds out that the famous singer Aria is possessed by Asmodeus, the demon lord responsible for Father's trauma. She intends to seduce him by threatening Aria's life, all the while Father has no idea that the girl he promised to protect from Asmodeus is the demon in question.
• Entertainingly Wrong: When Father first meets Leviathan, she constantly calls herself "Mama" and says that she'll have Father's child as thanks for helping her. This triggers Father's Trauma Button as he comes to the misunderstanding that Leviathan is a girl abused by her pedophile father. Meanwhile, Imuri is internally screaming about this exchange as the "Father" Leviathan is referring to is none other than God.
• Explaining Your Powers to the Enemy: As part of his belief in manly combat, Mammon explains that his rings let him manipulate things that humanity has expressed greed over, from treasure to technology to drugs and medicine. This bites him in the ass when Father cuts Mammon's fingers off and crushes the rings to deny him these powers.
• Eye Scream: When Father is nearly raped by Asmodeus, he punishes himself as per Chapter 5, Verse 28 of the Book of Matthew, declaring that any man who looks upon a woman who has commited adultery and feels lust in their heart is guilty of it themselves and should tear his right eye out as penance. Seeing this is when Dante realizes just how abused Father is to call himself deserving of such punishment. Four years later, Father wears a glass eye in public to avoid odd looks, though he used to wear an Eyepatch of Power as seen in glimpses of his previous battle with Mammon.
• Fan Disservice: Chapter 54 shows Father masturbating on his bed as he begins fantasizing about Imuri's naked body and having sex with her. Rather than titilating, this is treated for horror as Father realizes he lost himself to his base impulses after lecturing so many people on treating women as more than sex objects. His already fragile mental health nosedives out of disgust for himself and he's unable to keep intrusive thoughts of Imuri's body out of his head.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: Father unleashes the one of the plagues to counter Mammon's Midas' Hands attack, blasting Mammon's constructs apart with the same thunder, hail, and fire Moses brought to bear against the Egyptians.
• Full-Name Basis: Father always refers to Imuri by her full name, which keeps their relationship strictly professional. When she sees how comparatively casual he is with Leah and Barbara, Imuri insists to be called by her first name as part of her attempts to get closer to him.
• Good Is Not Soft: The exorcists of the Church can't afford to hold back against the demons who can and have done much worse to humans. Father disemembers Mammon's arms and fingers repeatedly and shoves his arm through Mammon's chest, Leah reverses the flow of water in Leviathan's blood to injure her, and Dante reduces Vergilus's base to salt in their battle.
• Go Out with a Smile: The nephilim Golem perishes with a smile on his face after realizing that his Heroic Sacrifice kept Imuri safe from Beelzebub's wrath.
• Half-Human Hybrid: The nephilim are the giant, monstrous offspring of humans and the fallen angels that make up the ranks of the legions of Gehenna. They have heads covered in eyes and are slow-witted and child-like in their intelligence. Seeing one serves as a harsh reminder of what would happen if Imuri seriously pursued her feelings for Father.
• Handicapped Badass:
  • Father tears his right eye out as penance for succumbing to Asmodeus's powers as The Pornomancer. This does not seem to hamper his ability to fight demons as the strongest exorcist in the world.
  • Mother Rosa, the previous strongest exorcist before her death at Beelzebub's hands, had two clearly prosthetic legs by the time of her final battle against the Demon Lord of Gluttony.
• Harmful to Minors:
  • A twelve-year-old Father is nearly raped by dozens of women controlled by Asmodeus, the Demon Lord of Lust, in the first issue. His response is to tear out his own right eye to punish himself for feeling lust and the experience has left him with a Paralyzing Fear of Sexuality. Even before this, Father was whipped into compliance and starved until he was Nothing but Skin and Bones by people who were supposed to be taking care of him in order to make him the ultimate Tyke-Bomb to be used against Satan.
  • Leah suffers intense Survivor Guilt for an incident from her childhood where she unknowingly invited Beelzebub into her village, allowing him to slaughter everyone inside including her parents. Even worse, she's Forced to Watch and then compelled to devour the remains of her little brother. The incident scars her for life, leaving her unable to stomach meat and making her single-mindedly devoted to taking revenge on Beelzebub.
• Heavenly Concentric Circles: Mammon, Demon Lord of Greed, attempts to turn Tokyo into a reenactment of the scorching of Sodom and Gomorrah as a mockery of God's judgment and to challenge Father to a duel. Mammon's Kill Sat-style attack takes the form of multiple black concentric rings all rotating amidst walls of dark clouds. When Father rushes to stop the attack, he calls upon Archangel Gabriel for aid, with the resulting miracle consisting of similar concentric rings but made of holy light instead.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In the past, Mother Rosa, the strongest exorcist before Father, sacrificed herself along with 79 other elite exorcists to hold off and send back Beelzebub and save Leah's life.
• Have We Met?: This is Leah's reaction when she meets a young boy in a dream where she meets the spirits of all of her friends and family members. When she asks who he is, he responds that he's her younger brother, Leo, who would be that age if he were still alive. He gives a Diving Kick to Leah to keep him from succumbing to her injuries and joining him in Heaven because he and everyone else from her village want her to live and be happy for the times they couldn't.
• Horrifying the Horror: While battling Father for the second time, Beelzebub decides to peer into Father's mind to try to Mind Rape him with his deepest desires. What he finds instead is a twisted hellscape that Beelzebub initially mistakes for his corner of Gehenna. Father's heart is bound in chains representing his enormous emotional hangups and mental health issues as cancerous blobs resembling heads constantly berate Father. The idea that the so-called Child of Hope can hold onto his compassion when his inner psyche so clearly curses and hates the world bewilders the Demon Lord of Gluttony. Furthermore, there's a strange, black figure nestled in Father's psyche capable of forcibly removing Beelzebub from Father's mind.
  Beelzebub: What... The hell... was that?!
• Humans Are Bastards: Beelzebub believes that human civilization and principles like "justice", "kindness", and "empathy" are nothing more than hypocritical lipservice. In his eyes, all humans are simply suppressing their instincts to devour, kill, and steal from others because society makes them believe in being "good". He mocks the church and the teachings of God for this reason, asking if any humans can find true happiness by restraining themselves so.
• Innocently Insensitive: The horny teenagers at the high school Father starts attending while guarding Aria ask if he gets to stare at Imuri's boobs all day. They then tell him he's so lucky and wonder aloud if he's ever seen her naked, unknowingly mashing Father's Trauma Button about naked women. Rather than take the hint about how uncomfortable he is, they assume Father slumping against the wall is because he's overstimulated and continue chattering away until Imuri and Aria interrupt them.
• Interrupted Suicide: Following Mammon's defeat, Tachibana attempts to join him in Gehenna by slitting her own throat with a broken wine bottle. The bottle is knocked out of her hands by one of Mammon's crows, emphasizing that he won't allow his subordinates to come to harm.
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: The abbot who raised Father as a weapon and a "tool" for the Roman Catholic Church refers to Father as an "it" and a "thing" while telling Dante to not let "it" play, engage in leisure, or do anything immoral.
• Jedi Mind Trick: Leah convinces all the survivors of a sunken cruise ship to forget exactly what they just saw on account of her "cuteness" to help maintain The Masquerade. Barbara points out the folly in this approach, as even though she destroyed any photographic or video evidence, the police, insurance agencies, shipyard, and the ship's owners are going to want a real explanation for what happened.
• Kid Hero:
  • Father, Leah, and Barbara are all teenaged exorcists who fight the demons of Gehenna and save the world from evil. Notably, Father never drives a vehicle himself, presumably because he's too young to do so. Lampshaded by a priest in Rome, who laments that the fate of the world is in the hands of a couple of teenagers when Father, Leah, and Barbara leave to fight Beelzebub.
  • Marco is Father's secretary in Rome and one of his biggest fans. Despite his apparent lowly position, Marco is on the frontlines when Beelzebub's return causes demonic attacks around the world, defending the Vatican from numerous demons and stacking their bodies in a pile.
• Ludicrous Gibs: Golem is blasted to gibblets by one of Beelzebub's attacks, spraying his body all over the place save for his head. What's left of him is just conscious enough to ask if he successfully protect Imuri before that too explodes in a shower of gore and detritus.
• The Masquerade: To prevent worldwide panic, the religious organizations of the world are secretive about the nature of miracles and demonic forces, covering such events up as best they can to maintain a sense of normalcy around the world.
• Masturbation Means Sexual Frustration: Father has long wondered what it's like to fall in love, but as an ordained preist he's sworn to celibacy. Not to mention that masturbation is forbidden in the Bible. Chapter 55 has Father experiencing lewd dreams about Imuri, eventually tempting him to rub one out to relieve himself. He only realizes what he's doing after he's finished, resulting in him declaring himself disgusting and vomiting. Meanwhile, Asmodeus feels his lust and declares her awakening of Father's sexuality her victory.
• Murderous Thighs: Asmodeus attempts to lock Father's head in her thighs in order to stop him from moving in their second battle. He responds by crushing her thighs in his grip and forcibly prying them apart.
• My Significance Sense Is Tingling: Exorcists are capable of detecting demonic power in their vicinity to scope out demons Hidden in Plain Sight.

N to Z

• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: This is Father's reaction to Asmodeus trying to rape him a second time. He beats his opponent into a bloody mess, crushing their legs in his grip, sending them into the sky before punching them back to the ground, and mangling his foe's torso, face, and limbs with stomps heavy enough to be mistaken for earthquakes. By
• "Not So Different" Remark: Mammon declares that men are "apostles of violence" and that to be a man one must fight and kill for the things they want. He goes on to say that Father isn't so different, having carved out his lot in life by proving himself the strongest exorcist through battle and encouraging Father to revel in the violence of his profession. Father is shaken when he sees his bloodied reflection after dispatching Mammon, asking Imuri if he's "manly" in the way Mammon described him.
• Now What?: After Leah gets her revenge on Beelzebub by taking a bite out of him and helping to banish him back to Gehenna, she's at a loss at what to do. She even considers succumbing to her injuries from the fight and dying. But the spirits of her family and friends in Heaven all encourage her to keep living and be happy for the times they couldn't.
• Older Than They Look: Golem's child-like personality and mannerisms make him seem as young as a multi-eyed giant nephilim can be. But flashbacks imply that he is in fact a survivor of the Biblical flood that drowned the world as told in the story of Noah's Ark.
• Parting the Sea: Father recreates the parting of the Red Sea to protect civilians at an aquarium when Mammon and Leviathan drive the marine life on display mad to attack the attendees.
• Perpetual Frowner: Father has a perpetually haunted, wide-eyed stare and a grimace on his face, likely from the abuse heaped upon him ever since he was a child. Lampshaded by Dante.
  Dante: Oooh, I see you've got that spooky look on your face again!
  Father: Master! This... is just how I look.
  Dante: Really? You're not glaring at me?
• Person of Mass Destruction: The Demon Lords are all Eldritch Abominations capable of enormous destruction. Mammon threatens to flatten a city with a Kill Sat attack as a replication of the events of Sodom and Gomorrah just to goad Father into a fight. Sufficiently powerful exorcists can be similarly destructive. Father unleashes the Plagues of Egypt upon Mammon and Dante converts an abandoned church into salt while fighting Vergilus.
• The Power of Love: Invoked by Dante. He gives Father a reason to live by encouraging him to find someone to earnestly fall in love with rather than being single-mindedly devoted to exorcizing Satan. Dante says that this will help Father love himself and the world that God made, which in turn will make Father invincible.
• Psychosexual Horror: Asmodeus, Demon Lord of Lust, is introduced using her powers as The Pornomancer to brainwash dozens of women into trying to rape Father, a twelve-year-old child at the time, with no regard for his actual consent. While Father manages to compose himself by tearing out his own eye in penance, the event leaves him with a Paralyzing Fear of Sexuality.
• Religion is Magic: The miracles of the Church's exorcists are replications of miracles and feats of saints and God as detailed in the Old Testament and New Testament. For instance, Barbara invokes Saint Lucia, patron saint of the blind, when destroying photographic evidence and temporarily rendering Leviathan blind. Father's power lets him recreate events as immense as the parting of the Red Sea and the plagues that God brought down upon Egypt.
• Soiled City on a Hill: Invoked by Mammon, who invites Father to face him with a Kill Sat attack in emulation of God's burning of Sodom and Gomorrah that would've leveled the entire Japanese city Imuri was staying at if Father hadn't blocked it with the power of Archangel Gabriel.
• Starving Artist: Inverted with Aria. She's a world-famous pop singer with record-shattering popularity across the globe. Social media sites need to upgrade their servers when she goes on tour, entire fleets of blimps advertise her concerts in major cities, and she's able to afford Imuri's paintings to promote her music.
• Stripped to the Bone: Over the course of the story, Father suffers grave wounds that strip the flesh from his bones, requiring him to use his powers to heal himself. But his bones rarely seem to be destroyed even when he takes attacks that can incinerate satellties in orbit.
• Summon Bigger Fish: The most powerful exorcists can call upon the powers of the archangels serving God to aid them in their fight against the Demon Lords. Father calls upon the powers of Raphael to bind and exorcize Asmodeus and later asks for Gabriel's aid to block Mammon's recreation of the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah. The previous strongest exorcist, Mother Rosa, calls upon all of the archangels in her Last Stand against Beelzebub.
• Turn the Other Cheek: Father quotes the line from the Bible word-for-word when he refuses to retaliate against the other children bullying him at the monastery despite far surpassing them in power.
• Walk on Water: One of the miracles that the members of the Church are capable of is replicating Jesus's ability to walk on water. Father uses this while rescuing the passengers of a sunken cruise ship.
• The World Is Just Awesome: This is Father's reaction when he's given a digital camera and sees reality the way everyone else sees it through the screenfinder. Rather than twisted masses of cancerous flesh in a decrepit hellscape, Father is able to see how beautiful the world actually is. This realization floors him, to the point that he instinctively calls Imuri "cute" for the first time while trying to take a picture of her.
• You Need to Get Laid: Mammon asks if Father has bedded Imuri yet when they meet face to face in Shinjuku, angering the priest who demands Mammon take his words back. Mammon scoffs at Father, telling him that womens are objects designed to help man grow.

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