Okumura Yukio

Okumura Yukio (奥村 雪男) is the deuteragonist of Blue Exorcist, as well as Rin's younger, fraternal twin brother.
He is a Middle First Class exorcist, with the Dragoon and Doctor meisters. Although Yukio is a nephilim, being born from a human exorcist mother and the king of demons, Satan, he's completely human but for being basically flame-proof, due to having shared the womb with Rin.
== Canon ==
=== Personality ===
In a show of the pairing opposites trope, Yukio is the complete opposite of his twin. At first, Yukio seems like a serious, quiet and reserved person. He's shown to be responsible, studious and punctual, which is sometimes interpreted to be due to malicious compliance or fraternal piety in fanworks. He's very self-sufficient, self-critical and outward judgmental of others in his sphere, especially those he is close to. He is shown to be caring for his brother, doing everything he can from a very young age to get stronger in order to protect Rin, as well as treating his brother's wounds after fights or accidents.
Yukio has self-esteem issues due to being born weakly and having been an emotional, dependent child in the past. He sees himself as vulnerable and somehow useless for not inheriting Rin's or his adoptive father's superior nephilim powers and courage. This makes him want to excel at everything and be extremely competitive. As the story progresses, we see Yukio struggle with his feelings for his brother, stuck between deeply loving and hating him at the same time, and as the internal conflict worsens, it also makes him self-destructive. He becomes brash, violent and impulsive, and is suicidal. This dark side of him is exploited sometimes in fanworks, in which he tends to be a lot more assertive and morally ambiguous.
=== History ===
He was born December 27, a few minutes after his twin brother. He was smaller and pale in comparison, and he was not breathing. He was saved from being killed by the True Cross Order by Rin, who protected him from the exorcists with his blue flames which left a mashou on Yukio's left eye. His mother perished from postpartum complications.
From that moment onward, he was raised by father Fujimoto Shiro, and the rest of the staff at the Southern Cross Boys' Monastery. He was meek, weak and cowardly, and used to be bullied to tears at school, where Rin would constantly protect him from the other kids. He was always able to see demons, due to the mashou he received at birth, but at age 7, Yukio confessed to Shiro that he didn't want to see demons anymore; Shiro explained to him how this could help him protect Rin in the future, and asked him to become an exorcist apprentice, which Yukio accepted.
He became the youngest person to obtain the certification of exorcist, at age 13, and is considered a prodigy for that achievement. He's also an honorary student and received a scholarship to True Cross Academy, and is the Anti-Demon Pharmacology teacher at the Exorcist cram school.
== Fandom ==
Yukio is a somewhat controversial character in fandom, sparkling dislike or hate in many casual readers and fans alike. His personality, reasons, decisions and actions are sometimes misunderstood, and sometimes understood and still disapproved of. Many fans began disliking him after a point in the story in which he starts to close-off from other people and push, especially Rin, away due to having conflicting feelings for his brother as well as his self-image deteriorating. As he starts spiraling into a deep depression, paranoic and overworked, he also starts being more antagonistic towards Rin and treating him with contempt, which does not sit right with many fans, of the series in general, and those especially fond of Rin.
Fans of the character, on the other hand, tend to be more lenient with Yukio, many times using his difficult upbringing as justification for his questionable decisions and actions. They like to write analysis about Yukio's personality and his role in the series, sometimes in the tone of a Little Meow Meow or Babygirl, and are pretty defensive of him. Manga fans are of the opinion that Yukio haters are usually "anime only" fans and have invalid opinions on the character, and shouldn't even get to voice those opinions, for not following the story after the first 2 seasons of the animated series.fungiissad about hating Yukio before reading the manganekolikedacat: how to tell someone you didn’t read/understand the ao no exorcist mangarinokumrra: being a professional yukio defender to anime onlys is the worst job in the worlddidthisformemes's poll: Yukio is there 2x because too many anime onlys unfairly hate him, there needs to be distinction
Overall, Yukio probably has an equal number of fans and critics. 
=== Tropes ===
Most of the works featuring or centered around him are Canon compliant or canon adjacent in some way and they're normally Angst or Hurt/Comfort. When not Romance, it's popular to write about his family dynamics in a Platonic way. Doctor Yukio, demon Yukio, dark Yukio and top Yukio are some other tags most associated with his character.
Character Study fic is also frequent.
=== Notable Pairings ===
This fandom generally uses smushnames and "Name x Name" conventions for their ship names.
Yukio is commonly shipped with his twin brother, Rin, and with Shima Renzo, and less commonly but with some prevalence still with Kirigakure Shura and Moriyama Shiemi.
Okumura Rin/Okumura Yukio: normally you'll find them tagged as Yukio x Rin or Rin x Yukio, however, they're also known as Okumuracest. In Japan and Korea, they're mostly referred to as their smushname, YukiRin (雪燐, 유키린).
Fans like to put these two in situations where they're forced to be intimate with each other, such as fuck or die and sex pollen. Featuring Rin's tail as an erogenous zone is pretty popular and a common setting for their stories to unveil in is their shared dorm room at True Cross Academy.
Okumura Yukio/Shima Renzo: also known as YukiShima, this ship is mostly popular in the west, with little prevalence in Japan.
Fans of this ship are quite set in their Fluff ways, thinking of ways of fixing their favorite characters and exploiting Shima's comedic personality to write Humor.
=== Resources ===
* Okumura Yukio tag on AO3.
* Stories including Yukio O. on FF.net
* Yukio Okumura tag on Wattpad.
* Okumura Yukio tag on Tumblr.
== References ==
Category:Blue Exorcist Characters