The Death Weapon Meister Academy serves to train young meisters to reap the corrupt souls of humans who have strayed down the path of evil before they can transform into Kishin, demon gods who seek to plunge the world into darkness. Students of the academy strive to make their human-weapon partners into the most powerful Death Scythes, allowing them to become powerful fighters in the battle against the Kishin. Meister Maka follows in the footsteps of her mother, a meister who successfully created a Death Scythe. Maka fights with her own scythe weapon partner Soul, who just wants to prove that he’s the coolest fighter at the academy. Standing against them is Medusa, a witch who seeks to turn her servant Crona into a vessel for a demon god, and sends every manner of monster to prevent the students from halting her plan.
Soul Eater relies on the normal staples of any shonen show, wacky teenagers and their equally eccentric mentor figures engaged in a battle to prevent the forces of evil from destroying the world. Characters will deal with their own weaknesses and haunted pasts, all while taking down various baddies and monsters with the help of their friends. If the standard shonen clichés don’t turn you away from the series and you can get through an entire episode dedicated to the screeching idiot of the group, then you’ll find the series still manages to be an entertaining adventure.
In an unfortunate move the series sets up what is essentially a collection quest in the first episode with Maka and Soul’s goal to collect 99 corrupted souls. This set up could easily turn away most viewers as it hints at the series being a plot free, enemy-of-the-week-series, which isn’t what the series is at all. The soul collecting quest is dropped quicker than Ash’s goal to “Catch ‘em all” and drops out of focus within the next few episodes. But by setting up a premise like that, even though it’s quickly dropped, they end up driving away potential viewers.
The series’ quick pacing really helps to keep you engaged. The story is pushed along at a decent pace, and the heroes don’t spend several episodes trying to take down one opponent as fights are handled rather quickly, sometimes a little too quickly. The fight scenes are easily one of the strongest points of the series, and in some cases are over so quickly that you might find yourself hoping that the enemy finds some contrived method to stay alive just so the fight scene can last a little longer. If fight scenes appeal to you then there’s plenty of them to keep you entertained, and you’ll easily be drawn into the series within the first five minutes. The very first fight displays the fast paced, brutal action of the series, along with the brevity as the whole thing is over in under a minute.
Like any shonen, Soul Eater features a great deal of comedy scenes. Any time between the brief fights will be filled with characters engaged in typical shonen style humour, spying on girls in the bath or brutally assaulting each other in a comedic fashion. Unfortunately it also tends to run some of the characters’ more humorous behaviours into the ground. If you’re not sick of Black Star talking about how big he is by the end of the second episode you’re a more patient person than I am. Episode 9 is worth watching just to see the series’ rendition of the legendary holy sword Excalibur, a weapon whose mere mention brings a nervous sweat even to the face of the twisted Franken Stein, and who I found to be one of the more funny characters.
The art style of the anime does much to improve on the designs of the manga. Maka and Soul in particular look much better than their manga counterparts, and more detail is put into the surrounding buildings and other background items. The anime also cuts down on the fanservice present in the manga. Any focus on nudity is usually done so in a humorous sense and not necessarily to titillate the viewers, whereas the manga on multiple occasions draws attention to nudity that serves no purpose other than to show off the female characters with little to no clothes on. So if you desperately need to see Maka’s panties than you’ll probably want to read the manga instead.
The dub for this show is pretty much what we’ve come to expect from Funimation these days. Good acting and voices that work for the characters, featuring the normal stable of Funimation voice actors, with little to no complaints across the board. There are two voices worth mentioning however, Micah Solusod as Soul, and Brittney Karbowski as Black Star. Micah Solusod is a relative newcomer in the industry, with Soul being his first role as a main character. Given that he’s new, it’s reasonable to be a little worrisome over whether he would be a good fit for the character or not. However, he gives a great performance as Soul, giving the character an air of cool disinterest in the world around him. Brittney Karbowski is worth mentioning for less positive reasons. While there isn’t anything wrong with her overall performance acting-wise, she doesn’t really do a great job of sounding like a boy, though she does start to sound better as the series goes on. It’s a minor issue though, and the overall quality of the dub is quite good.
The one thing in the extras on the DVD that stands out is the Soul Eater Late Show, extra footage added before and after each commercial break of the late night Japanese broadcast, along with different previews for most episodes. While it is a nice little extra to include, you really aren’t missing anything if you don’t watch them; one joke out of the whole batch managed to get a snicker out of me. Other than that the extras are just the standard textless opening and closing themes, as well as a commentary track for episode 7.
Overall, if you haven’t grown completely tired of the standards of shonen and are willing to just sit back and enjoy a few good fight scenes and quirky characters then Soul Eater is definitely worth checking out. It has plenty of great fight scenes and offers some nice visuals making worth at least giving a chance even. It’s nothing revolutionary, but it’s still a decent watch.<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=anthsrevi-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B002Y0KRES&fc1=D5D3D3&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=060606&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=anthsrevi-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0759530017&fc1=D5D3D3&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=060606&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>
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