Review: Soul Eater Anime

Alright, now that I am back and able to watch shows more frequently, I can now go back to reviewing shows and all things that are awesome! Thanks so much for your patience!

This time I am reviewing the anime called Soul Eater.  Created and released in 2008, it was directed by Takuya Igarashi, who is more well known for being involved in the popular anime Sailor Moon. It was later licensed by Funimation, who released the series on DVD as well as made the English adaptation of the series. The series is based upon a manga by the same name which was released in 2003 but the storyline and events of the two do not coincide. 

The basic setting and plot are quite simple.  The world where this anime takes place is on earth, however there are some people on earth who have "weapon blood" which gives the person the ability to change themselves and parts of their body into a weapon.  In many cases the weapons will team up with someone who does not have the ability who are called meisters.  These teams in this world go to school in order to learn how to control their powers and enhance their teamwork.  This school is called DWMA.  This school is run by the Grim Reaper, also called Death in the anime.  This school teaches the teams how to use their powers and the school is also used to help keep peace in the world.

Soul "Eater" Evans' Scythe power

This leads to our main characters.  The main character team in this anime consists of Maka Albarn, a meister at DWMA Academy, and her partner, Soul "Eater" Evans, who has the weapon blood of a scythe.  Along with them are Black Star partnered with Tsubaki, a ninja weapon, and Death the Kid, Death's son with his weapons, the Tompson sisters, who are guns.

These three teams are the focus of the show.  As the show goes on each team gets more powerful with better techniques and they all grow stronger in their relationships with each other.  The main villain in the series is a witch named Medusa who at first is undercover posing as the school nurse at the academy.  She works with the research of black blood which causes people or weapons to go mad when they have it in them.  She eventually gets found out and attacks the school in order to free the Kishin underneath DWMA, which is a human that has eaten so many human souls that it causes madness to spread from its body and take hold of people. 

Black Star

Looking at the series as a whole it was not that bad.  It was a pretty exciting series that kept your attention throughout every single episode.  There were, however, some faults with the show. One of the biggest things that I noticed while watching the show was that they constantly kept mentioning the histories of the characters, but then it would veer off in another direction and it would never be mentioned again.  They never really delved deep into the characters back stories enough to make them a significant part of the series.  For example, the character Black Star was said to have come from a clan that would do anything for money, but all of the rest of them died because they started to eat human souls.  That, and the mention of who his father was, was all that they had on his back story so we never really learned how that was really significant to his character development. 

Death the Kid

Good things about this anime are fairly large in number.  The biggest one that I thought was good was that it kept your attention.  After watching this anime for the first time, I wanted to keep watching it and that is good for an anime to have.  It kept my interest for a long period of time until the very end.  Also what was good was the basic plot and premise, it was something different that made for a great story, and they were able to fit the story in well with the time that they were allowed.

This series is a good watch but not the best because of it's lack of character development at times as well as a few plot-holes in the mix of it too.  I would recommend it to another person, but it is not the first choice when it think of things to recommend when it comes to anime.  The action was good, the choreography of the fighting was good and sometimes the psychological aspect of the show was interesting as well.  

There is my review of Soul Eater.  I hope you all enjoyed it and hope you all decide to watch the series for yourself.  Even with it's flaws, it is still an enjoyable series.

Final Rating: 8.5/10
Total Episodes: 51
Recommended watching format: Japanese dub with English sub
Most reliable place to watch: www.nwanime.com


To everyone, now that I have finally done a review after such a long time, I will be reviewing more often now that I have some more free time.  I hope you all check back here for more updates and I invite you all to follow the blog and comment on the reviews as well as leave your own impressions of the shows or games if you have seen or played them yourselves.