[Intro]
This week I’m bringing you the start of our new, out-of-the-box Soul Eater blogging. Episode 03 was the end of the Soul Eater prologue and I think it’s an appropriate starting point for our “SRS Business” blogging. After the obligatory summary and thoughts I’ve begun work on our “SE Character Reference Sheet”. It takes a fair amount of work/time to fill in the information there so I’ve only done our main characters for this week. This sheet will continually be updated and revised (so long as the anime continues) and is based on EVENTS SHOWN IN THE ANIME SO FAR. Yes, some information not listed here has been revealed in the manga, but until it appears in the anime, I consider it “unknown”. Any help filling in details is welcomed, be it aliases, quirks, (anime current) information, etc. More characters will be added next week, and I’m planning on at least 2 or more characters added per episode. Enjoy!

[OneLiner Summary]
Death the Kid appears as the final character in the Soul Eater prologue as we watch his battle against the Egyptian Pharaoh Anubis and his own personal…”difficulties”.

You just wait Tony Hawk, someday I’ll have 18 of my own games on multiple consoles too…

[Thoughts]
It’s been almost a week since I first watched this episode, and I’ve discovered one important fact: I’m going to keep saying the same crap over and over again when it comes to this show. I love the soundtrack, I love the fight scenes, the voices, everything. I would say that episode 03 was by far the funniest episode I’ve watched so far…it had me rolling laughing at Death’s “I’m filth, I’m swine, I should die!” antics, Patty’s psychotic child-like laughter, Liz’s paranoia and her reaction to being licked by a “kinda cute” mummy. That’s what I love about Soul Eater, the soul! Every character has quirks and faults and while full of shoneny GARness, manages to remain extremely human and accessible.

Highlight: I’ll admit it…Patty and Liz wrapped up in mummy dressings…Hawt. (with a capital ‘H’) Other than that, any scene where Kid was flying around to that ridiculously awesome JPOP theme song.
Next Week: Maka and Black Star battle a zombified Sid in a graveyard during “extended classes”.

[Content]
Note: I’m writing about our protagonists as if they’re being monitored from the antagonists’ perspective and vice versa. Hence the “threat” evaluation. Also, I held back on a lot of the “funny” that will be added in the future due to not wanting to spoil the anime.

Soul Eater Character Reference Sheet

Name: Maka Albarn
Alias: n/a
Information: Maka Albarn, Shibusen technician and partner of Soul Eater. Daughter of Death Scthye and an as of yet unknown female scythe technician. Harbors a strong distrust for all males, with the exception of her weapon partner, Soul Eater. Appears very down-to-earth and level-headed.
Battle Performance: So far all we’ve been able to ascertain is her armed combat abilities. Maka wields her partner Soul in the form of a scythe with above-average skill, however due to a lack of data, she is currently not considered a threat.
Quirks: Small chest, jealousy towards females with larger chests, and an obvious bitterness towards her “cheating” father.

Name: Soul Eater
Alias: n/a
Information: Soul Eater, Shibusen student and partner of Maka Albarn. Origins are currently unknown. Obsessed with all things “cool” and manly. Can’t seem to handle his women.
Battle Performance: Reports so far state that while usually in weapon form, Soul can transform parts of his body into weapons and, in a way, wield himself. This does not appear to be overly effective though, and his threat is determined by the status of his partner, Maka.
Quirks: Bleeds from the nose at the appearance of beautiful women and wishes he was a GAR as Kamina (see: TTGL).

Name: Black Star
Alias: “Pop*Star!”
Information: Black Star, Shibusen technician and partner of Tsubaki Nakatsukasa. Origins currently unknown. Appears to be a trained assassin, although he is fatally flawed by his fixation on making himself the biggest, most noticeable character. Although a bit of a pushover normally, Black Star is a force to be reckoned with once he becomes serious.
Battle Performance: While fairly capable with his weapons, Black Star’s tendency to expose himself at the wrong times for theatrical purposes make him a minor threat. Once he starts to take a battle seriously, his prowess for both hand-to-hand and armed combat jump to exceptionally high levels.
Quirks: Currently competing against Blair on Shibusen Idol (and losing), angry because Death the Kid will always be more popular than him, wishes Tsubaki would bathe with earplugs.

Name: Tsubaki Nakatsukasa
Alias: the Dark Demon Blade
Information: Tsubaki Nakatsukasa, Shibusen student and partner of Black Star. Origins unknown. How she puts up with Black Star we may never know, especially considering she is an extremely talented and professional student. Tsubaki is capable of shifting into multiple weapon forms.
Battle Performance: No independent battle action has been shown yet, although she is capable of serving as a decoy for her partner when necessary. Due to her partner, her threat level is determined by his seriousness. Ability to shift into multiple weapon types does rank her higher than Soul Eater though.
Quirks: A defender to bathing women everywhere, currently competing in Shibusen’s Next Top Model, Riex’s current SE crush.

Name: Death the Kid
Alias: n/a
Information: Death the Kid, Shibusen shinigami and partner of Patty and Liz Thompson. Son of Shinigami and an unknown partner. Obsessed with perfection, Death the Kid (casually known as “Kid”) is already a shinigami, but wishes to collect souls for his weapons like everyone else. He’s got an odd passion for symmetry and so he wields two weapons partners, doubling the amount of souls he must collect. Travels around on a flying skateboard.
Battle Performance: When faced with a symmetrical opponent, Kid is even less threatening than freshman Shibusen technicians as he is rendered totally incapable of fighting. Once that symetry is destroyed, Kid becomes a psychotic madman harnessing immense destructive power. If he’s around and your hair doesn’t part down the middle, GTFO.
Quirks: Has attempted to make an appearance in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Again, handles his women much better (and rougher, I might add) than Soul, has more mood swings than a teenage female on the rag.

Name: Patricia & Elizabeth Thompson
Alias: Double Team Demon Guns
Information: Patty and Liz Thompson, shinigami weapons of Death the Kid. Origins currently unknown. Sisters with very distinct personalities, the Thompsons serve not only as Kid’s weapons, but as his moral support as well. Patty is the younger sister with a larger bust size (which drives Liz crazy) and a very child-like personality. Elizabeth is the older sister with a smaller bust size who has a more age appropriate attitude.
Battle Performance: In the hands of [a functional] Death the Kid, Patty & Liz live up to their alias “Double Team Demon Guns”. Even without Kid, the duo is capable of using one sister as a weapon while the other sister wields her. This is a significant increase in battle prowess compare to Soul/Tsubaki, although no solo skills and abilities have been found yet.
Quirks: Both sisters are competing in Shibusen’s Next Top Model.

So that’s what the character sheet looks like. By the time this show is done it’s going to be huge! My goal is to create a informative, humorous, and yes, slightly opinionated point of reference for current/future visitors/viewers of the show. I’m not trying to make a Wiki, but something personalized for my tastes and those of the readers at THAT. Chip in, and let’s turn this into something great.

No no no, you don’t walk away from that. *sigh*

So what do you think, is this kind of content worth waiting until the weekend for? Or would you rather just have the churned out summary/thoughts ASAP?

Any stats you’d like to add to the character sheets? (IE: favorite color…and no, I’m not adding that)

I’ve got “competitions” planned for the future. Mostly spoofs off of popular American TV shows, hence Shibusen’s Next Top Model and Shibusen Idol. Any other ideas?

*sigh* Why do the retards end up with all the cute girls?

[Intro]
I’ve explained my disdain for episode summaries. I’ve rambled about the Friday Ramble and my One-Shot War ideas. Sweated my face off working on the site theme and the majority of the previews for the current season. I’ve pestered and harassed you guys as much as I can. The funniest part? I haven’t had a show to blog regularly until now. So I think it’s important to set some standards before we start this journey.

[Bullet-Speed/OneLiner Summary]
Episode 02 introduces the character Black Star and depicts his failure to obtain the 99 kishin souls and 1 witch soul he needs to turn his weapon partner Tsubaki into a death scythe.

Mifune, Destroyer of Worlds. Has a soft spot for tiny witches and long walks in derelict castles.

[Thoughts]
Black Star is an absolute idiot. But that’s what makes his character all the more awesome. The moments when he gets serious and shows his true self usually end with him dishing out some unbelievable pwnage. I’m officially a HUGE fan of Tsubaki and I can’t wait until we get to see more of her story later on. If you need to, go back and rewatch the fight between Black Star and Mifune (who’s badass in his own right) and really pay attention to how awesome the background music was, especially near the beginning of the encounter. Keep in mind Tsubaki’s ability to change into different weapons, as this comes in to play later on in the plot.

Highlight: Black Star showing his real skills as an assassin and pulling his crazy “Black Star Big Wave” out to kick Mifune’s ass. The set up and execution was flawless and just plain sick. And I love Tsubaki’s voice!
Next Week: First there was Jack the Ripper, then Al Capone, now Death the Kidd takes on Lupin the Thief. This is the last of the “prelude”/introduction episodes.

[Content]
I’ve mentioned it several times before, but I’ve got some crazy ideas for Soul Eater. If all goes well, it’ll be like nothing you’ve seen on THAT before. Some of you will love it, some of you will hate it. If you want episode summaries you’re going to have to look elsewhere. I you want an essay of my thoughts on an episode…you guessed it, look elsewhere. My thoughts on the show can be summed up in four words: I’m still watching it. You should be able to see anything beyond that in the effort that I put into the posts that I write and then use your common sense and context clues to figure it out from there.

My goal is to make these posts sort a “DVD extra” if you will. An addition to the show that offers something a little more fun and unusual that you wouldn’t normally find. I want you to come back to these posts because you know there’s going to be something interesting that is more than just someone’s opinion and summary. I’ll shut up for now though, because seeing it is much better than just hearing about it.

A note on comments: For these posts, I will be leaving comments open for 2 weeks after the post date. After that comments will be closed, a link to the latest post will be added and discussion from any episode can be continued there. I think it’s ridiculous for someone to post on an episodic article months after it’s already been written. Post on the latest episode…that’s where the discussion’s at anyway.

Black Star Big Wave! Usually followed by the phrase: PWNED! and/or “Who’s the Star now Biatch!”

Here’s the basic post format I’m going to be using (it’s outlined for example purposes in this post):

Intro – Whatever I want to mention before we dig into the main course of our post.
Bullet-Speed/OneLiner Summary – The summary as quick and to the point as possible. OneLiner will be used as much as possible because from the reader feedback in the questionnaire I posted, not many people care about summaries anyway.
Thoughts – This is where I mention general thoughts on the episode and anything specific that I found terrible or awesome, etc. Expect this to be 1-3 paragraphs long for normal posts.
Content – The “DVD Bonus Feature” of the post. This is the main content of the post and may or may not be directly related to the episode, but will be related to the show as a whole and what has happened in it so far.
Outro/Questions – Spot for me to wrap things up, pose questions to the readers, and offer the preview for next week’s Bonus Feature.

This picture is worth 2,000 words. OBO…bids start on Sunday.

[Outro/Questions]
I focused a lot this week on explaining what things are going to be coming soon, but hopefully you’ve got a grasp on how I’m trying to handle these posts. Next week we jump into the real content and begin our “Character Reference Sheet” and I hope it’s the beginning of something that’s been worth waiting for.
A few things to be thinking about/offer ideas on:

- I don’t want to keep saying “DVD Extras”…any great Soul Eater themed ideas for a title?

- Every main character in Soul Eater is going to get a consistently updated nickname. This is based on personality and actions. Start thinking of ideas for your favorites now…they’re going on the character sheet we start building next week.

- I know it’s pretty vague right now, but any comments on my ideas? Look forward to next week!

For those who haven’t heard already (or didn’t read the tiny hint I gave in my previous Soul Eater post), Soul Eater is set to air on two different days each week. On Mondays, the regular daytime version is released, and on Thursdays a “Late Night” (LN) version will be released. Although everyone kept calling it an “unedited” version (which has been pissing me off soooo bad), this is not the case. The LN version features additional content. Now you’ve all read what I thought about Soul Eater episode one (it’s was awesome!), and I just finished watching the RAW of the LN version. So how do the two add up and what differences are there? As of right now, not many.

As I watched the episode I only found two major differences. One, there was a very breif clip where Shinigami said a few words and then it showed a close-up of Blair’s well-endowed rack. Two, at the end of the episode there was a much longer preview that showed scenes from what I believe should be the next 2-4 episodes. Now, there could be differences in some of the dialogue, but as I’ve stated many times, I’m not fluent enough in Japanese to pick up the differences without paying very close attention.

So is the LN version anything to get super-excited about? Not really, but I have to admit, I did get kind of excited about that extended preview…nice shots of action from Black Star, Death the Kid, Maka, and several others. The LN version itself wasn’t all I’d hoped it be, but it has managed to get me even more excited about the next episode…screw H2O, Soul Eater rocks your soul! (as for what version I’ll be following…it’ll be whatever the best sub group is following)

There are only a few shows that have yet to premiere (or that don’t have RAWs yet), those being: Kaiba, Junjou Romantica, Golgo 13, Kyouran Kazoku Nikki, and Nijuu Menzou Musume. I doubt we’ll be covering Golgo 13 extensively, but the rest of those shows should have a decently sized entry committed to them.

Some shows have aired and we haven’t written anything on them yet. For the most part this is because they were either horrible, or the first episodes just didn’t catch us in a way that made us want to put in the extra effort to write about them on top of all the work we’ve been doing for the shows we are interested in. 30+ shows is a LOT. We are working on a “Spring 2008: Leftovers” post though, in which we we’ll briefly touch on those series we have missed. Look for it sometime Saturday/Sunday.

Library Wars was the hawtness and there will be a post on it later tonight when Impzie wakes up. Go watch it and be ready to rant about it with us!

Thanks for reading and I want you all to be ready to post some massive feedback come Saturday. I’m planning on posting a small questionnaire to our readers about the new season, ideas you may have, things you want and don’t want, etc…so start brainstorming (don’t post here…wait until Saturday!!)!

I’m currently shaking from a 25 minute non-stop intake of Soul Eater crack. I’m seriously shaking with excitement as I sit here trying to pull my brain together in an attempt to write up some kind of episode review for you guys. I guess we could start off by saying that I was so eager to watch this show that I ended up stealing Impzie’s Chinese ninja subs before the regular RAW for the episode was out. I don’t care who you are, or what you like…WATCH THIS SHOW! (at least the first episode) Our resident trap and shonen-hating shoujo-fanatic Impz even tolerated this episode.

This…is the most amazing shit I’ve seen in a long time.

So far, the anime follows the manga quite closely, and if that’s any indication, then the first three episodes of this show will focus on three different pairings of characters. You see, Soul Eater (SE) is about shimigami scythe technicians, humans who are paired with a “weapon” partner in an attempt to create a “Death Scythe”. A Death Scythe is an ultimate weapon that is used by Shinigami-sama, the president of the school for scythe technicians. The manga focuses on three initial pairings: Maka and Soul Eater, Black Star and Tsubaki, and Death the Kid (DtK) with his two weapon partners, Patty and Liz. If the anime follows suit, ep 01 will be about Maka and Soul Eater, ep 02 will be about Black Star and Tsubaki, ep 03 will be about DtK/Patty and Liz, and ep 04 will bring them all together. So far, it’s looks like that will be the case.

In this episode, we’re introduced to scythe technician Maka and her weapon partner Soul Eater. They’re out in the human world trying to collect the 99 evil humans souls and 1 witch soul needed to turn Soul Eater into a Death Scythe. They’re up to 98 human souls when they come across Jack the Ripper, a psychotic murderer with a carrot nose and some crazy ass wicked blades for fingers. As the battle ensues, Soul Eater transforms into a scythe that Maka wields to fight the Ripper. At this point, I could only think a few things…

“OMG! OMG OMG OMG! BADASS! WOOOOOOOOOO! HELLZ YEAH! THAT ANIMATION IS THE SHIIIIIIIIIT!”

*cough* Anyway..the animation for fight scenes (and just in general) is superb. I mean, I got excited when I found out that BONES was animating this, not because of ‘oh my gawd Ouran!’, but because I’ve watched all of Fullmetal Alchemist and the fight scenes were fantastic. BONES has outdone themselves. I can’t describe it in words, you just have to see it for yourself. All I can say is that it’s worth it for you to watch this in the highest quality you can get your hands on.

After pwning Jack the Ripper, Soul Eater proceeds to…well, eat his soul. That makes 99 human souls for the Maka/Soul Eater combo, and all that’s left is for them to get the soul of one witch and BAM! Death Scythe complete! So they dial 1-800-Shimigami-sama (or 42-42-564) to find out where you can get a hold of a witch to eat. Enter Blair, neko-witch, seductress and pumpkin flinger all in one. Hawtness. Determined to get their last soul, Maka and Soul Eater begin their assault on Blair’s house…if you can call it that. Soul Eater does what any normal man would do at the sight of a naked woman in a bath tub: spews blood from his nose, collapses in shock, and stares in awe. Oh wait, that’s probably not what a REAL man would do.

As technicians battle witches and pumpkins are exploding all over the place, we encounter yet another of SE’s strengths, art style. Now, there are more detailed or shinier character designs and backdrops out there, but the reason I list art style as a strength is simply because SE manages to look unique without being so out there that no one would want to go near it. From Blair’s neko-cuteness to Shinigami-sama’s blocky fingers…there are a million little things that stand out if you’re paying attention. Soul Eater is fun to watch simply for the sake of watching it.

Eventually, Maka and Soul use a nice trick to take down Blair, and Soul chows down on her sparkling blue soul. However, instead of a full transformation into a Death Scythe, Soul only sees the beginings of the process before something goes terribly wrong. As it turns out, Blair wasn’t really a witch! Even worse, due to him ingesting the wrong type of soul, Maka and Soul have lost all the souls they gathered up until now, placing them back at square one! Bummer.

Maka and Soul head back to the school with Blair in tow (on a flying pumpkin) as the scene transitions into a preview of the show’s next pairing, Black Star and Tsubaki. It is here that I’d like point out another of SE’s strong points: the audio. I want to bring it up here because as Black Star is introduced, there’s an insert song playing that works perfectly to build the suspense and excitement for what’s coming in the next episode. Whatever that song was, I want it…now.

Staying on the topic of audio, the voice acting was great. So far, not only do I not mind any of the voices, there are several that I’m psyched about (Maka, Soul Eater, Black Star, to name a few). I’ll have to admit though, on the part of the Op and ED, I wasn’t all that excited about the OP song. However, the beat behind the song fit well with the OP animation, and I ended up liking it after seeing the two together. There are better songs out there this season, but this one was pretty good in and of itself. The ED seemed like standard fair until it suddenly exploded out of nowhere it a driving punk-style tune. Once again, not one of my faves, but not bad either. The background music was fantastic and evoked the proper emotions for each scene (I was even tapping my foot to it at one point without noticing).

After all is said and done, THIS is the show I’ve been waiting for…maybe for this season, or maybe it’s the show I’ve been waiting for for longer than I’ve known. Either way, I’m excited, I’m psyched, I’m pumped…I can’t wait. This show is going to be amazing. Quote me on it.

Notes:

The write up here was massively long due to it being the first episode and me having to do something with my excitement. I don’t plan on write-ups this long for the future, especially not with another version of the show airing every week with bonus content. So my question for you is this: what do you want to see each week for Soul Eater? In-depth summaries? More focus on thoughts? Or quick summaries/thoughts with greater focus on crazy content that goes above and beyond the norm?

Extrange’s Short Remark: This is also fscking better than Naruto. Wait for episode 2 and Black Star’s insanity ( free loli too).