Soul Eater - Reviews

This is less of a review and more of a tired guy rambling. You have been warned.

The first three episodes of this anime completely blew my mind. The interesting and dark setting, the cool and funny characters and the absolutely gorgeous artwork and animations made me think that I had stumbled upon a masterpiece. Unfortunately it kinda went downhill from there. Don’t get me wrong. It’s absolutely decent it just didn’t live up to the potential it showed in the first episodes.

So lets enter spoilertown. Do not read if you haven’t watched the anime.

I am not going to do a recap of all the events in the anime or discuss the openings. There are a ton of other reviews out there if you are looking for that. I am simply going to write down some off the things that annoyed me while i was watching the anime.

First of all the ending. I felt like someone jumped out off the screen and slapped me in the face. How the hell did we end up with some cheesy old "her power is her amazing heart" ending when it started out so undeniable awesome.

And then we have Medusa one of the biggest wtf characters in the story. You free the mad god so that madness can swallow the earth, you steal the evil thingie before everyone else, you give the evil thingie to the goodies and let yourself get captured by them so that you can give the goodies the baddies location so the goodies can fight back against the madness that is spreading over the world.

Now what? Yes i understand that she wanted the two sides to battle each other. But what would be the point.

Result 1- The baddies win and madness is spread across the world. Which would have happened if she didnt give the goodies the information.

Result 2 - The goodies win and everything is turned back to the way it was before SHE released the madman.

Maybe I have missed something but it doesnt make sense. And by the way, the easiest way to get the two sides to battle each other was to risk your life and let yourself get captured. Couldnt you like have written a note or like sent them an e-mail.

I mean most people that wanted to kill her thought that she was dead and she was in possession of an extremely powerful and dangerous item. Good way to screw that shit up Medusa.

And then we have Soul and his black blood. Considering the dark and halloweeny atmosphere I was sure that he would snap and feast on some tasty human souls. But he doesn’t. And the moral manipulation machine could have been a genius move to spice things up. Everyone slowly losing their sanity would be an exceptional and interesting plot twist. But they don’t.

And then we have Kid doubting his father’s motives for collecting the magic tools. Which could have turned out extremely awesome. I had theories that perhaps Deaths reason for starting the academy and being so nice was so that he could manipulate the humans to free his soul from where it was being trapped. This assuming that his soul was trapped there before the academy was created and that the humans all had been deceived from the very beginning. But no no no. The reason they didnt tell kid was because they wanted to keep their planning secret. The anime is overflowing with wasted potential.

And this is what really bothers me with this anime. Despite its cool setting and incredible potential this show is generic. The artstyle may be amazing and the characters may be nice (kid ftw) but without the story to back it up its nothing.

(By the way was I the only one that thought that Asura in fact was Deaths first kid. There are some similarities on how they look(black hair and white stripes).)

 

Far far away... There's the school of Shinigami. In that school there's weapons and meisters. In fact weapons are those children who can transform to weapons (In fact like a gun,sword...) and meisters can hold them and fight with them. Weapons can eat beat enemies souls. Weapons destination is to eat 99 regular souls and 1 witch soul. So the story began when Maka and Soul again fought enemie...

In fact is the best painting I ever seen xD It's very good I recommend for you this anime only for that. 10/10 points for that I think.

Sound...Hm.... You will see and hear....I just can't say something about that.

Characters is probably cool , but I didn't like in the middle there was too many characters... In the beginning Soul and Maka (primary characters) have got 99 regular souls but they lost it because they failed when they tryed to have a witch soul... Then from somwhere there arose 2 new characters: Black Star* and Tatsuki. Black star is a really strange and annoying one...

In fact very cool anime !!!!!

This series was, at the very least, a fun ride. I more or less marathoned all 51 episodes in about 3 days or so, meaning that you would think it couldn't be that bad- which it wasn't. The show managed to bounce between serious issues (at least serious within their reality) and humor while portraying more or less interesting characters. Many of the characters are well developed, although a few of the more interesting ones (the Thompson sisters and Tsubaki) are left kind of out to dry. Despite this, there are a number of developed characters and static characters going through an interesting, albeit predictable, story.

Story: Although not completely original, I beleive Soul Eater does a fairly good job keeping it interesting and maintaining a good enough pace for the flaws to not be seen. They do a fairly good job of dropping little story lines here and there to be picked up at a later time (although, I would like to know a bit of the after story about Maka and Soul, and to finally meet Maka's mother). Anyways, they do a good job keeping the story believable while developing several characters in a rather satisfactory fashion. I will also say that the last 5 episodes or so have some of the most, for lack of a better word, epic battles taking place, slightly ruined with a 10 minute speech near the end (you'll know it when you see it) and a regretable end to the final bout.

Animation: As expected of a shonen series, and of Bones (one of my favorite studios), the actions are smooth and well executed, the character designs, although rather non-traditional, are interesting, and the scenery is both great and unique. With a sun and moon that look terrifying, houses popping out at odd angles, and an over-the-top shinigami running a school, you couldn't ask for too much more.

Sound: I, personally, loved both OPs and one of the EDs (a bit of a TM Revolution/Abingdon School Boys fanboy) but, the other 3 (I Think) EDs didn't quite measure up as much. The voice acting stared a very interesting sounding star-Chiaki OMIGAWA taking the lead role. Apart from her, everyone else does a great job, despite the main characters being all up and coming with few or no major roles prior taking high speaking roles. A few heavy hitters take up their roles as secondary characters, and they do their jobs mixing in comic relief and leadership within the school.

Characters: With a rather large cast, there are, of course, a number of characters lacking depth. However, the lead characters, for the most part, all have interesting stories with a lot added to them. They all have motivations, doubts, insecurities, and goals, making them relatable. Additionally, several of the secondary characters, namely Dr. Stein, Spirit, and Shinigami, all do a good job adding both comic relief and a bit of bad-assery to the supporting cast. Stein especially has an interesting plot going for him and is well developed. Finally, I will mention Excalibur. Perhaps the icing on the cake of this show. He is so, as the characters say, obnoxious, that you can't help but laugh at everything about him. Takehito KOYASU does a GREAT job making him so outrageous that you either love him or hate him. And with that, all I have to say is- I'm going to California~

This anime wasn’t bad. The animation wasn’t bad. It just didn’t catch my interest. I didn’t connect to any characters and these action-centered anime series have to have great characters for me. The storyline didn’t jump out to me. It was just meh so I stopped watching it. 

The anime ending is really wrong and porrly made. But the manga has an entire new season, with a unrealistic ending, but a really good one. Read the manga!