Review for Soul Eater: Part 1 (Review)
Friday, 25th June 2010, 17:01

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Introduction
Oh, please, not more shonen! That was my instinctive response when Soul Eater first dropped into my in-tray. Too much of anything, even in anime isn't necessarily a good thing, and if there is one genre that is done to death these days, it's shonen, those stories, typically long-running anime shows, that are aimed at the young, teen, male market. You need three ingredients, an epic storyline (or an endless one) to justify the length, you need a world that is complex and intricate (or just full of unique terminology and jargon that will make the show exclusive to its target audience), and you need a protagonist, usually young, male, brash, and determined, levelling his way up through the storyline. And when it comes to shonen shows in the UK, it's Manga Entertainment that rules the roost, with the teen male audience as key to their profits today, as the 'video nasty' fans were back in the old days of Manga Video. Most shonen shows are bland and forgettable, like Blue Dragon and MAR (remember those?) They were so bland that Manga had to stop releasing them in the UK, because Viz had stopped dubbing and releasing them in the US. Then there are the big hitters, the shows that are good, but not consistently so, but have a fan following and a storyline that can be described as anything but bland and forgettable, and in the UK they are Manga's mainstays like Naruto and Bleach. Once in a while a shonen show will transcend its genre, and appeal to a far broader church. Claymore was one such show, Death Note is another, and Full Metal Alchemist is probably the best of them all. It's no surprise that Manga will be releasing the FMA remake series later this year.

But I do long for a little variety in my anime, a little reminder that there is more to the medium than just the teenaged male viewer can appreciate, and I'm certainly not constantly looking for the next Buso Renkin, or D-Gray-Man. So when I read Soul Eater's blurb, with its tale of shinigami (my eyes rolled as I recalled Death Note and Bleach) attending an academy for soul reapers (my eyes rolled out of my head as I recalled 51 discs of Naruto's ninja education) you can imagine my heart sinking faster than the Titanic. The fact that Soul Eater isn't one of the interminable series was small comfort; it's got a set number of episodes, although 51 are daunting enough. But then I put the first disc into my player, and I started watching it. I must admit that the opening credits made me smile, but opening credit sequences usually get a fair amount of yen spent on them. But that smile stayed put as the episode started, and in fact grew into a grin as the show progressed. 13 episodes later and I'm still grinning like an idiot. Maybe I can stand a little more shonen after all.

Now pay attention, as there will be a quiz later. Soul Eater is set in a world that was once terrorised to submission by the darkest of souls. Evil people's souls gradually turn from bright and shiny, into warped red Kishin Eggs, and it's the Kishin that go ahead and cause trouble. It was the shinigami that saved the world by reaping these Kishin, and by reaping the evildoers before their tainted souls can hatch. Chief among them was Death himself, but the ultimate personification of mortality can't handle all this by himself, which is why he's now the headmaster of the Death Weapon Meister Academy. Weapon Meisters are those people who have the skills and talent to reap souls. They do this by using human weapons, partners who literally transform into weapons to reap souls. To graduate and become a shinigami, a Meister and his weapon need to reap 99 evil souls, and one witch, after which the weapon will become a fully-fledged Death Scythe. Soul Eater introduces and follows three unconventional partnerships, Maka and Soul Eater, who aspire to ultimate coolness, Black * Star and Tsubaki, who are hampered by Black * Star's ego, and the son of the Grim Reaper himself, Death the Kid, and his twin weapons, Patty and Liz, for whom symmetry is the ultimate goal.

Manga Entertainment presents the first 13 episodes of Soul Eater across two discs, and you can read the episode synopses on the next page. If you want to avoid those spoilers, you can go straight to page 3 for the verdict, where there no doubt will be more spoilers anyway.

Picture
Soul Eater gets a 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer, which as usual for television anime is an NTSC-PAL standards conversion. Having said that, this is the best such conversion I have yet seen, with only a slight judder and interlacing artefacts evident, which you can never get away from with such conversions. What Soul Eater does offer is a brilliantly sharp and clear transfer, of such clarity that it must be taken from an HD source. I have yet to see a television anime as sharp, detailed and well defined as this one. It's a good thing too, as with studio Bones behind the animation, the transfer really does the vibrant, fluid and energetic animation justice. Also, Shinji Aramaki of Bubblegum Crisis fame is behind the show's concept designs, and Soul Eater is a quirky, memorable visual explosion of an anime, stylish and possessing a punk sensibility, which puts me in mind of FLCL, although nowhere near as intense. It's still the kind of visual aesthetic that you have to strap yourself in for.

Sound
The sound comes in DD 5.1 English and DD 2.0 Japanese options, with translated English subtitles or a signs only track. The surround is quite nice given all the action, but the minute you hear the evil looking CG sun in the sky, evil-laughing his head off, you realise that you're in for something of an audio treat. Soul Eater is definitely a little left field in its sound design. The music comes from Taku Iwasaki, of R.O.D. and Witch Hunter Robin fame, and it definitely suits the show well. He also appears to have taken some inspiration from British pop music, as I'm sure I heard hints of Mis-teeq and The Chemical Brothers in some of the music. The English dub is more than acceptable, courtesy of Funimation, but I have taken a liking to the Japanese track more than usual this time, as I find that Maka's voice actress is particularly quirky, and suits the pugnacious heroine down to a T.

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