The shonen manga genre is one that is very near and dear to my heart. It’s what I was first introduced to when I was younger and it’s a genre that I’ve always enjoyed, despite its flaws. And one of the major flaws of many shonen manga is the pacing of the story and the often underwhelming ending. Bleach peaked during the Soul Society arc and although the TYBW arc in the anime is pretty decent, it’s not giving me the same hyped up feelings as early Bleach did. Naruto felt solid throughout but the great ninja war was an absolute drag. Fairy Tail and Eden’s Zero have their fair share of issues, My Hero Academia and Jujutsu Kaisen both had dreadful endings – fight me – where Black Clover and Hunter x Hunter are never ending at this point. The only shonen manga that I think have a really solid ending (of course I am only including the ones I’ve actually read/seen) are Fullmetal Alchemist, Demon Slayer and the topic of today’s post: Soul Eater.
Now keep in mind that today I’ll be talking about the Soul Eater manga in its entirety, which includes spoilers for a lot of the main plot. I’m not going to spoil unnecessary things, but be warned. We will not be talking about the anime much, as the anime original ending makes me sad every time I think about it. I read this story once when I was much younger and I’ve recently reread it in physical form. When I heard about the Perfect Edition of Soul Eater, a hardcover edition that combines some of the manga volumes in omnibuses – omnibi? Bigger volumes, I knew I had to get them. See them in all their glory below (the spine is kind of underwhelming but I love the extra color art and the black covers. I’ll make sure to include plenty of pictures of Ohkubo’s fantastic art.
But let’s get into Soul Eater itself. Soul Eater is set in a world where there are many different species of people. The main focus is on humans, reapers, werewolves, witches and most importantly weapons. That’s right, the driving force behind this story is that a duo made out of a human Meister and a humanoid weapon team up to create a death scythe. A weapon can turn into a death scythe if they eat the souls of 99 humans and 1 witch. Meisters are only allowed to reap the souls of people who are on Death’s list, and if you go after other humans, you run the risk of turning into a Kishin. A kishin is an evil being whose soul has been corrupted. Of course this system creates an understandable hatred between witches and Death Weapons & Meisters Academy, which we fully explore in this story.
So who are our main gang of characters? We follow a bunch of characters throughout and they all get a good amount of character development, but we mainly follow three Meisters and their weapons. Our first duo is Maka Albarn and her scythe weapon Soul. Maka is a very serious character and probably who we should consider to be our main character if we were to settle on only one. Soul is a lot less serious and seemingly more laidback, but he has his own demons. His real last name is Evans, but he changed it to Eater when he attended DWMA with Maka. They live together like most Meister and weapon pairs do.
Our second pair of characters consists of the loud Black Star and the quiet Tsubaki. One thing that is important about weapon and meister pairs is that their soul wavelengths match. This means they need to be similar people or balance each other out. Due to Tsubaki being so incredibly accepting of others, she’s the only one who can ever really work together with a soul as bright and selfish as Black Star. He’s an assassin from a clan that was wiped out besides himself and he’s here to prove himself, loudly whenever possible.
Lastly there is Death the Kid. Being the son of Lord Death, he doesn’t actually need to attend DWMA and raise his own weapons, but he chooses to do so anyway, because it seems interesting. Kid has a very severe case of OCD and if things aren’t symmetrical he loses it. Being a kind of stuck-up rich kid, the Thompson sisters’ hard edge is the perfect match for him. Growing up on the streets of New York, these two sisters have turned from thieves on the streets to powerful guns in the hands of Death the Kid.
Rounding out this cast are several other meisters including the witch Kim, the strongest man to ever come out of the school; Stein and several other teachers like Sid – who is a zombie – Marie and Spirit – who is Maka’s father and Lord Death’s weapon. But on the other side of things we have the antagonists, and it’s established pretty early on in the story who they are. The main antagonist for the first part of the story is the witch Medusa, who is one of the Gorgon sisters. Her older sister Arachne ends up being an important villain as well during the Arachnophobia arc. Medusa and her child Crona – who has been imbued with the black blood of a Kishin – go on a mission to free said Kishin from his prison below DMWA. The Kishin then flees and becomes the last villain in the story.
We follow these characters through their daily lives and their struggle with the madness that has been unleashed into the world. The main draw in this story is how madness is something that can affect anyone and it takes a healthy soul and body to withstand the madness. Franken Stein is particularly vulnerable to this madness as his mental health is already shaky. While the villains plot their plots, the meisters train and get stronger, eventually turning Soul into a death scythe, Tsubaki into the cursed sword and Death the Kid becomes the next reaper by connecting all three of the white lines on his hair.
With all of that clear, let’s talk about the final arc, because as much as I love the majority of this story, it is the final arc (or the final few arcs to be more specific) that really make this show shine. After Maka’s ability to perceive souls reaches a new height – which was only done by BJ, the internal investigator, right before he was killed – she figures out where the Kishin is. The Kishin Asura has been hiding out on the moon. Moon’s haunted. Everyone converges on the moon after this, with a good old fashioned rocket and some teleportation magic. It’s a great excuse to finally make up with the witches which goes strenuous, but ends up being successful. Noah – probably the least interesting villain in this story – and the book of Eibon heads to the moon, Crona – having killed their own mother – heads to the moon, and DWMA heads to the moon as well, where everything turns into a final clash.
What should have turned into a sloppy conclusion to a story that feels disjointed at times instead turned into a fantastic arc that makes every loose end fit together. Although Noah, Gopher and the book of Eibon feel like they’re a bit in the way of the rest of the story, they’re not integral enough to feel like a letdown. Kid’s arc gets completed, Black Star writes his name into the history books, Maka and Soul manage to defeat the Kishin and seal him inside of Crona inside of the moon. Marie manages to domesticate Stein and the Kid takes over as the lord of Death. It turns out that when Kid fully matures, the previous Lord of Death passes away. The only question I really have about this story is who the hell is Maka’s mother? Throughout the story, Spirit is going through a divorce which means that Maka’s mother is still alive, but we never see her. As much as Spirit can be a terrible father at times and be completely irresponsible around women, he is at least present for Maka’s life, while her mother is never seen. We also never see Maka ask about her mother or think much about her. It’s definitely food for thought. But seeing a shonen story that stays solid from start to finish is already rare enough, so let’s not dwell on it. Reading the physical volumes of this story has been an absolute joy and if this post hasn’t convinced you to at least read them online, I don’t know what will. Thanks for reading!
Opal Kaharis 