AniMania: SOUL EATER

“A sound soul dwells within a sound mind, and a sound body…”

Or so Laura Bailey, the voice of Maka, tells us at the beginning of each episode of Soul Eater. While she doesn’t give us any details about the percentages of recommended daily allowances, we can tell you that Soul Eater, the latest hit series from Funimation, is 100% awesome.

If you’ve been to an anime convention in the last year or so, chances are you’ve already witnessed the phenomenon that is Soul Eater. Starting its tour of our shores as a manga serialized in Yen Press, the series went on to be collected into volumes, giving U.S. fans a taste of what the process is normally like in Japan as a title gains popularity. It exploded onto the con scene, with hundreds of cosplayers taking part in some of the biggest photo shoots I’ve ever seen. Truly, the ability of a series to generate this kind of buzz before ever being released here is amazing, and it was hard to go to a convention last year and not run into several Maka’s, Soul’s or Stein’s, or even an Excalibur. Yes, there were Excaliburs, God help us. Now, the anime is here, and it’s poised to take the franchise to new heights of popularity.

The world of Soul Eater is, admittedly, a bit strange, with skull castles, candles as big as sky scrapers, a grotesque laughing sun, and a moon whose teeth drip blood. If Jack Skellington has a getaway cottage somewhere outside of Halloweentown, it’s probably here. Against this darkly whimsical background, we meet our cast.

The first three episodes comprise a Prologue, introducing the main characters, and giving a feel for the offbeat world of the show. Right away, we meet Soul and Maka, who are students at the Death Meister Soul Academy. Soul is a “weapon”. Literally. He can turn into a giant scythe, and Maka is his “Meister”, who wields him. In short order, we learn it is their goal to collect the souls of 99 evil humans, plus one witch’s soul, at which point Soul will become a Death Scythe, or ultimate weapon. At the series outset, they have already managed to collect the 99 human souls. Now they just need the soul of one witch. It seems we will be spared the usual “collect the crystals” motif, but then a mishap with a magical pussy causes them to lose everything, and they have to start over.

Episodes two and three introduce more sets of Meisters and Weapons. In episode two we meet Black Star, a dark assassin, who loves to brag — but really sucks at being a ninja. Black Star’s idea of sneaking up on someone unfortunately involves describing — very loudly — the process of sneaking up on them, then jumping out and shouting how awesome he is to announce his presence. His weapon is the beautiful, long suffering Tsubaki, who can transform into a double sickle and chain, as well as a giant shuriken, and even a smoke bomb.

Episode three introduces us to Death the Kid, Death’s son, who instead of a grim reaper’s sickle uses a pair of matched pistols, named Liz and Patty. The only problem is that “Kid”, as he’s called, is hopelessly OCD, to the point that he’s often paralyzed by his need to make everything perfectly symmetrical, and in their human forms, Liz and Patty are different heights, and have different bra sizes, which causes Kid to lose a lot of time worrying about their boobs, as well as other, much smaller things, like whether the picture in the living room might be crooked, or if he remembered to properly fold the toilet paper.

None of this wackiness is ever explained. We never learn, for example, why some of the characters can turn into weapons, why the sun makes that creepy laughing sound, or the moon drips blood, or why the heck Excalibur is so damn annoying. But in some weird way, it all works.

The action scenes are breathtaking, with fight choreography that would be commendable in the best of martial arts flicks. The art is a bit more polished than that of the manga, which was originally published by Square Enix. I find myself wishing they would produce an anime of Chrono Trigger that looked this good. The style is something of a departure from more traditional anime art, and looks a bit, dare I say, cartoonish (cartoon is a dirty word to anime fans, like saying “shine” in Japanese, which is like saying the f-word in English, but that’s another matter) — but it suits the show well.

The music for the series is eclectic, ranging from rock to hip-hop to classical. The opening theme, “resonance”, is energetic j-rock, and together with the opening animation, perfectly sets the mood for the show. It’s by T.M. Revolution, later known as Abingdon Boys School, who’ve also done themes for D. Gray Man and Darker Than Black. The ending, “I Wanna Be”, is pure punk, from the appropriately named STANCE PUNKS, who sound something like a Japanese version of My Chemical Romance. STANCE PUNKS have also been featured on the openings of Naruto.

The release of a hot title like Soul Eater is obviously a big deal for Funimation, and that’s reflected in the all star cast. Maka is voiced by none other than Laura Bailey, who has become something of a grand dame of the voice acting world, with appearances as Keiko in Yu Yu Hakusho, Tohru Honda in Fruits Basket, Lust in Fullmetal Alchemist, and both Ayaka and Evangeline in Negima. To fans who’ve followed her work on other titles, its quite humorous to hear the voice of Tohru utter lines like, “I’m going to take your soul!”, but as always, the inimitable Bailey turns in an A++ performance.

Her partner and title character, Soul Eater Evans, is played by Micah Solusod, who was also Malek in Blassreiter. While Solusod may not boast a resume as long as Bailey’s (few can), you could never tell from the performance. Soul’s voice is solid, and matches the character perfectly. Loud mouthed Black Star is voiced by Brittney Karbowski, who was Aoba in Jinki and Riful in Claymore. While casting a woman as the seiyuu for a male role is fairly common in Japan, the practice is not quite as wide spread here in the US. Karbowski’s voice is obviously feminine at the show’s outset, which I found a bit distracting, but several episodes in, it was no longer a problem. His partner, Tsubaki, gets her voice from Monica Rial, who thankfully doesn’t suffer from any of the multiple personality disorders she has as Momoko in Sgt. Frog.

Death the Kid is voiced by Todd Haberkorn, and in his OCD melt downs one can hear a hint of his tantrums as Watanuki in xxxHOLiC. Sultry Yuko is here replaced by Liz (Jamie Marchi) and Patty (Cherami Leigh). Marchi recently appeared as Chloe in Spice and Wolf, and voices Aki in the aforementioned Sgt. Frog. Leigh is the voice of Tamaki in Bamboo Blade and the fiery Natsumi in Frog (again!) — two very good shows which should be making an appearance in a review coming soon to a column near you. Rounding things out are Chuck Huber (D. Gray Man, Frog) as the crazed Dr. Franken Stein, and Luci Christian (Full Metal Panic, Negima) as the evil witch, Medusa. Vic Mignogna makes an appearance as Maka’s womanizing but well meaning father, Spirit (is THIS how Edward Elric is going to grow up to be!?) and Troy Baker annoys us to death as Excalibur. Looking back on his roles as Gennosuke in both Basilisk and the live action Shinobi, and Abel in Trinity Blood, who could have known? John Swasey lends his voice to Death, who runs the academy the students attend. Swasey is Gendo Ikari in the recent Evangelion 1.01 and the director’s cut of the original NGE series. If you want some especially mind breaking trivia, he was also the Announcer and Narrator of Dragon Half!

If Soul Eater has any downside to it (apart from Excalibur shouting “Fools!”, and demanding five hour story parties), its that the overall tenor of the series is a bit juvenile. The characters all have their own pet words or catch phrases, like Soul saying “cool”, or Black Star talking about what a “Big guy” he’s going to be, and after a while, that can be annoying. Not as annoying as Black Star in general, but then, nothing is as annoying as Black Star (except the afore-mentioned Excalibur). Watching an episode of Soul Eater, I feel transported back to Saturday mornings of old. But then, that’s its strength, too. While cerebral tails like Spice and Wolf harbor a certain “seinen sensibility” to them, Soul Eater is summer blockbuster fun, with lots of action, a touch of vulgar humor, and some fanservice to boot, and coming to us in the chilly month of February, its a welcome winter warm up.