Noblesse Oblige.

Turn back the pendulum ... to when I just finished the Soul Eater series




Wow what a great series!
I began watching the anime because one of my friends told me it had wonderful animation and art style. And I have to say - it did not disappoint.

Soul Eater has a tremendous of humor that is simply amazing, and the fact that I watched it without knowing this just made it so much more enjoyable. Its humor at the beginning was so funny that it actually made me laugh out loud (which I don't tend to do). Soul Eater was worth watching just for the awesome humor but several other things made me persist as well.

One of the best parts of this anime was its character designs. I have to admit that I began this series with its manga, and actually stopped reading because its art style was a little too *special* for me. However, I approached the Soul Eater anime completely unbaised because I wanted to check out its praised animation (which manga could not do). I was immediately drawn in by the OP and Maka's first fight. Furthermore, like Haruhi and Clannad, the Soul Eater anime art was actually better and more refined than its original manga counterpart, which is not the case for other animes... *cough Naruto cough*.

Now on to the character design - I absolutely love Death the Kid.


His appearance, personality, combat, and abilities were definitely for the win. In addition, I thought Soul's voice actor was great and Black Star's arrogance was surprisingly likeable. There were just so many characters and personalities that I enjoyed in Soul Eater, including Patty, Mifune, and Blair.

Finally, one thing you can always expect from Japanese anime is its share of ecchi aka perverted material. It tends to be used for either fanservice or humor, and in Soul Eater's case it is more of the latter.

After roughly episode 35, the Soul Eater anime deviates from the manga with a bunch of non-canon material. The anime certainly became less cool from there on forward, but it was still pretty interesting.

Now I'm going to list the differences I noticed between the anime and manga so there will be spoilers ahead.


**** Spoilers ****


(there are sooooo many, but here's just some):

Brew
Anime: The heralded Brew that Arachnaphobia sought throughout the series turned out to be pretty much a wishgranter, and it granted Shinigami sama's wish of turning Shibusen into an enormous robot. I hate robots...
Manga: The Brew grants the user a temporary, yet extraordinary boost in energy and power level. It made Death the Kid soooo frickin cool =D

Eibon
Anime: Eibon turned out to be a key that unlocks the Brew.
Manga: Eibon's true form is revealed as Noah. It's not certain if he is actually the original, but in the time being he has taken ahold of the name because he possesses the Book of Eibon. His goal to collect everything in the world that interests him into his book.

Antagonists:
Anime: 1. Arachne, Giriko, Mosquito, Kishin Asura
2. Medusa, Stein for a while
Manga: 1. Arachne, Mosquito
2. Medusa, Crona(?)
3. Noah, Justin Law, Giriko
4. Kishin Asura

Powerups:
Maka anime: Maka obtained the Demon Hunter pretty early on in the anime to defeat Mosquito and later Medusa, but it was useless against the Kishin. In the end it was revealed that Maka was also a weapon, and she turned her whole body into scythes to defeat the Kishin.
Maka manga: Maka chain-resonanced with BlackStar and Kid to defeat Mosquito, and then obtained the Demon Hunter to destroy Arachne. Since now she defeated a witch, she can finally turn Soul into a Deathscythe.

BlackStar anime: BlackStar somehow defeats Mifune in one attack because his heart is now resolute on following his own path of neither a warrior or demon.
BlackStar manga: BlackStar obtains a new form after conquering the zebra/demon/deer thing within Tsubaki's soul. All of Tsubaki's weapon transformation has a new form - ShadowStar. Sugoi =]

Death the Kid anime: In order to hold off the Kishin, Kid connected all three of his Sanzu lines, with transformed Liz and Patty into two mounted cannons. Despite this power boost, it still couldn't defeat the Kishin.
Death the Kid manga: Kid used the Brew to boost his powers during his fight against Mosquito. One of his Sanzu lines managed to connect, upping Liz and Patty's caliber from .38 to .42.

The magnitude of the deviation of the anime from the manga practically makes it another series with just the same characters. I strongly recommend reading the Soul Eater manga after finishing the anime. Overall, I like the manga more because it has more plot and more mysteries to be revealed.


**** Spoilers ****