Soul Eater
Posted by FoFo on February 14, 2011
Anyone who is at all familiar with my blog knows that I am an avid (read rabid) fanboy of Studio BONES. I don’t think I’ve seen any project they’ve worked on that I haven’t liked or loved. Their original work is top notch and their adaptations are fantastic without drifting into the dangerous waters of ongoing shows like Naruto or Bleach.
So it shouldn’t be surprising that I love Soul Eater. What’s not to love? It’s a compelling adventure in the vein of Fullmetal Alchemist with some excellent characters and, as a bonus, some really hilarious bits of wacky comedy. It is Studio BONES so you know the animation is great. The music keeps pace with the action, but also fills in the rest of the scenes really well. And the concept is just wonderful, courtesy of Manga-ka Okubo Atsushi.
Soul Eater is a little expansive to summarize. The big points are that the god of death, Shinigami or The Grim Reaper, is manifest in the world and actively preventing the creation of Kishin, or demon-gods, through his school for Weapon Meisters. These Meisters are talented individuals, partnered with living weapons, tasked with hunting down humans who have started to become Kishins.
The cast is wonderfully relatable. They are all distinctly human figures. Even Death The Kid, son of Shinigami is deeply flawed personality, struggling to live up to the expectations placed on him by his birth. The show features a strong secondary line of protagonists, whose lives are fleshed out further in the manga, but still make a strong showing in the anime. But the reason the cast is so very compelling is the growth that Maka, Black Star, and Kid go through as they become a team and go from students aspiring to save the world, to bona fide heroes.
I want to take a moment to talk about the ending now. It’s a little controversial. Around episode 26, the series diverges dramatically from the source material. In much the same way that BONES created the second half of the first Fullmetal Alchemist series from scratch, they generated a likely ending to the manga with the first season finale as the midpoint of a story arc. The result was a somewhat rushed confrontation with the final villain in the last three episodes of the second season. Ultimately, all the power that the trio musters is more or less useless against this final foe. It takes an extraordinarily sappy reversal of fates to finish the job, and many viewers felt that this decision killed the climax of the series. It is a bit of a letdown.
But as a good friend of mine was quick to point out, it was the only way they could have ended it. With the second arc of the show being a more or less straightforward lesson in the inherent madness of humanity, it wouldn’t make sense for brute force to be the solution. I find myself coming down on both sides of the argument. From a literary point of view, the series ending was bad writing. But it did fid the themes and shape of the greater story. It can, and should, be forgiven for its lackluster moments.
Graphically, Soul Eater is a superior entry. While not up to the standards of some studios (Production I.G., Madhouse), BONES work shines above the rank and file. While Soul Eater has a simplistic design philosophy, the animation still looks crisp. The studio saturated the entire series in bold, vivid colors which reinforce the simple design choices but still look excellent. The first episode is a triumph of animated fight choreography and animation. Many other episodes approach this high benchmark, but that fist scene really stands above the rest.
The voice acting is excellent in general. Although the Japanese voice actor for Shinigami, Koyama Rikiya, is particularly worth of praise for his wacky but deep portrayal of a god. Even the English dubbing isn’t terrible, although Black Star’s VA makes my skin crawl. Just because he has a high pitched voice in the original audio, doesn’t mean you can cast a girl in that role.
The longer I watch anime, the easier it becomes to tell that there are some distinct quality barriers in place. BONES is a studio that reliably breaks these and produces superior work, and they do so in such a way as to not alienate the mainstream viewers, while still appealing to the critics. Soul Eater may not be the most far reaching of their shows, but it is categorically an excellent series and well worth your time.
