Dear readers,
Today I'm going to do a review of the anime Soul Eater. The reason for the review is that the manga for the series is ending soon (I believe it has one more chapter left) and I want to put my thoughts down about the anime before the manga ends.
Now, you may be wondering "if the manga (source material) hasn't ended did the anime end?" The answer to that is yes. While the manga is over one hundred and ten chapters, the anime received an early end that allowed it to be only fifty one episodes long. This was done because the anime was going to overtake the original work and they didn't want to do a ton of filler in the wait (which I do applaud). Now this is both good and bad: Good because it makes the show a quick watch and bad because the ending involved a giant ass pull (for the sake of spoilers that is all I'll say about it).
The premise of the series is that the main cast can either transform into weapons or use said weapons to fight against demons and witches who threaten to destroy order in the world. The vast majority of these warriors go to a school (or teach at said school) which is run by the grim reaper (who is portrayed rather comically. I think its refreshing to see such a laid back death personification). Ultimately, their cause is to defeat the first "kishin" (an extremely powerful demon) Asura who is the cause of "madness".
With that out of the way, let us discuss the over arching themes. The most prevalent one is of fear vs. courage. This is probably one of the better themes one can use in general because it allows us to question what the meaning of fear is, why we experience it, why we bother being brave and more importantly if fear is good to have. Another prevalent theme is that of teamwork, or more specifically, that you need to rely on other people in order to develop.
The voice acting presented (I was watching the English dub) was pretty well done. With the exception of Black Star, the cast gave a marvelous performance. In the case of Black Star, his higher pitched voice didn't fit well next to Soul who sounded like he'd already gone through puberty.
One the point of characters, they're all well done. The main character, Maka, is a legacy child who has to deal with the stress of being a legacy while going through a divorce caused by the philandering of her father-who still dots over her. Her weapon, Soul, is a former musical prodigy who left home because of the skill gap between himself and his brother. The series begins with him losing his chance for a promotion.
The other characters that stood out as exceptional were Stein, Chrona and Free. In Stein's case I thought that the over used character type of "mad scientist" would get boring quickly but some of the best moments in the series involved him fighting his sociopathic tendencies and his madness. Chrona, being a character with essentially no prior human interaction, is both terrifying and lovable. Free, being an idiotic yet powerful immortal being, is rather charming. Particularly the part where he got arrested so he could dig out of prison with a spoon.
The most interesting part of the series is its setting for the reason that it not only lends credibility to some of the nightmare fuel that populates the series but it also looks some what like a series from Tim Burton. The moon and sun have faces, people sprout blades from their bodies and terrible eldritch abominations exist and fight against a skeleton person. I think you see what I'm getting at.
Now the worst point of the series is the rushed ending. I won't give anything away but when you see what I'm talking about you'll see what I'm talking about.
For now I'll leave with this AMV I found some of the nightmare fuel moments set to Marilyn Manson's "This is Halloween" so you can get a small taste of the series. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T51kyM7DS7k
I hoped you enjoyed,
Mike Hand
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