Review for Soul Eater: Part 2 (Review)
Friday, 23rd July 2010, 18:20

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Introduction
Soul Eater was quite the surprise when it made its UK debut last month. On paper it seems like just another typical shonen action show, full of earnest characters, levelling up, and doing their best to defeat evil in what usually plays out like a knockout tournament. Except Soul Eater was anything but, managing not only to subvert the genre, but do so with a visual style, a kinetic energy, and a surreal imagination that made it stand out as something quite unique. Manga Entertainment have decided to release the first two parts of the series just a month apart, and even at that accelerated rate, I've been feeling its absence. Parts 3 and 4 will be released more sedately, and already I'm dreading the lengthy gaps between instalments.

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, for whom symmetry is the ultimate goal, and his twin weapons, Patty and Liz.

Manga Entertainment presents the next 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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