Wat.

By some admittedly arbitrarily chosen, yet fairly effective standard, prologues usually last in the range of half an episode to one full episode before jumping into the main bit. Yet Soul Eater’s prologue extended a full three episodes without even telling us it was a prologue…nice. Many series would have been a quarter way done by now. Although, granted it is slated for 51 episodes and by the same token you could argue that Bleach took a good 70 episodes worth of “prologue” to get into the main story which now consists of powerlevel bs on an equivalent level of DBZ. But I digress, enough with the Bleach comparisons, Soul Eater is more along the lines of Shaman King anyways.

This episode introduces yet another team of Shinigami Meister + Weapon combo to add on to the Black Star-Tsubaki and Maka-Soul pairs. This time it’s Death the Kid and his twin pistols, sisters Liz and Patty. Death the Kid is a Meister of incredible talent, most likely a byproduct of being Shinigami-sama’s own flesh and blood son. He does have one downfall though, his obsessive compulsive disorder dictating that everything must be in perfect symmetry, causing great frustration when they’re not, as is the case with Liz and Patty’s human forms.

In search of a big job, Death the Kid is assigned to the Anubis pyramid assignment where a necromancer is reviving ancient mummies at an exponential (2^n, if anyone cares) rate. Arriving at the pyramid, Death the Kid is in absolute marvel at its perfect symmetry, a true wonder of architecture, whose roots often find themselves based in symmetrical design. However, as they delve into the depths of the pyramid, a horrible thought strikes Death the Kid, he believes the portrait in his hallway is misaligned slightly to the right. The idea festers in his mind until he abandons Liz and Patty to go check, leaving them to fend for themselves against a horde of mummies.

Meanwhile, back at school, Soul and Black Star catch wind of the Anubis job and scramble around to find out who it is, robbing them of the respective coolness and bigness. Imagine their shock when they find out it was Shinigami-sama’s own son who is out on the job. Meanwhile, the OCD perfectionist is just finishing up confirming the alignment on his portrait.

When he gets back to Anubis he’s in for a little surprise, the Pharaoh the Necromancer awakens turns on her for abusing the souls of his people. Liz and Patty stir the big guy up and end up bondage tied by his life sucking appendages. Death the Kid sets them free, but is unable to attack the Pharaoh, the reason soon becomes clear, his sarcophagus is perfectly symmetrical, a work of art that Death the Kid can’t bring himself to blemish. However, he springs back into life when the Pharaoh himself comes out of his coffin, hardly the poster boy for symmetry, and is thusly blown to bits. Death the Kid overdoes it a bit though, blowing a nice sized hole in the pyramid, causing it to collapse soon after their departure. As punishment, the souls they collected on the mission are seized by Shinigami-sama.

Thoughts

So in our character repertoire we have an incarnation of a scythe whose sole purpose in life is to look cool, an egotistical self proclaimed assassin who couldn’t ninja his way out of a paper bag and an obsessive compulsive perfectionist who would rather die than wreck symmetry, all accompanied by mellow counterparts. Awesome.

Although I’ve been nothing but praise with Soul Eater so far, it remains to be seen how long they’ll be able to retain my interest. If the prologue is anything to go by, there’s tons of potential, but it also shows signs of being a disaster in the making.

Largely, Soul Eater has followed a “monster of the week” format so far, which history has shown to lead to utter garbage if left to its own devices, however, the quirkyness of the characters and the anime’s refusal to take itself seriously has kept it an entertaining experience. Should these two things ever die off or the unique combination of action and comedy fall out of balance, Soul Eater will crash and burn fast. Which is why, in my opinion, they should have opted for the 24-26 episode length, but meh.

But enough with that, have some boobs. I heard this scene had more skin in the manga, I’m rather disappointed, yet at the same time, excited to see if the night version will compensate.

Liz and Patty are my favourite weapons so far in Soul Eater, while Maka remains my favourite overall, for reasons I’m not exactly sure of myself. Patty’s voice and general demeanor is humorous, acting, and sort of looking, like a 5 year old child most of the time. Liz offers the most maturity of the trio, and has the best facial expressions in the show thus far.

The trading off scene between the two was very well done, and actually fulfilled one of my “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if they…” fantasies from when I first saw them. Sentient weapons using their sentient weapon siblings as weapons? Do want.

But that brings me to a not so happy point, animation. I don’t usually put animation high on my priorities list, in lieu of things like good story and character development, but when the latter two are little more than comedy gags, there’s nowhere else to turn to, ESPECIALLY after such an amazing first episode. But alas, nothing has matched Maka’s opening fight yet, from then we had the Black Star fight and this week’s Death the Kid match up, a steady regression in quality, this episode essentially resorting to IM’A FIRIN MY PEWPEW LAZORS.

Hopefully we get to see a proper fight from him next week, which promises to be a soul stealing experience.

They put the sights on top for a reason, idiot.

~ Shirukii ~