Soul Eater — a voyage into insane people, and the insane weapons who love them

So I’ve finally bowed to the pressures of the masses and started watching Soul Eater. And, by “bowed to the pressures” I mean “remembered to check it out. I’m gratified to say that I adore this show, and we can explore why, together, as it’s always meant to be.

This is yet another show about shinigami, the particularly Japanese angels of death that are so popular. I’m sure you recognize them from Bleach, Death Note, and Yuyu Hakusho — or however you spell that one.

My history with shounen action shows starts, as it probably does for many people, with Dragonball Z. I started watching it on Cartoon Network’s Toonami block, back when I was in high school, and really liked it for a long time. What stopped me from watching it, I believe, was how it finally offended my “delicate” sensibilities — that is, they introduced the Fusion Dance, and I told them to go to hell.

This did not keep me, however, from offering bonus points to the first pair of my students who could accurately perform the Fusion Dance. I had a lead, but only one knew the whole dance.

I picked up on Hakusho from CN as well, and enjoyed it more than DBZ for a while, but one of the lulls in CN’s schedule made me realize I wasn’t interested in seeing what happened next, so I dropped it. I’m currently still enjoying Bleach. I watched the first episode on CN, devoured some seventeen volumes of the manga in a single night, and here I am.

Soul Eater is better than all these, I dare say. I’m sure most of you won’t disagree overmuch.

The obvious thing about Soul Eater, other than its female protagonist, is the style. Everyone and their figurative brothers have compared the series to what Tim Burton would do with an action show, and that’s an excellent shorthand for what’s going on. It’s a great, energetic Goth-fest of soul-slurping, fighting, and random breast jokes. Style counts for a lot with me — I’ve always loved the line, from The Importance of Being Earnest, that goes, “In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.” It’s basically true that you can tell any story if you tell it well enough, and that comes down to style.

However, that’s not what interests me most about Soul Eater. What does is the characters, which is what one would hope for — though not, by habit, from a shounen action series. It’s what holds my attention in Bleach, but the characters there are only spiffed up, more entertaining versions of shounen standards. Ichigo is the gruff protector, Rukia is the spunky fighter, Renji is the amiable rival, and so on. If you look at the motivations of all those characters, they come down to “protection,” or as Hermione Granger once put it, a “saving people thing.”

Not so in Soul Eater. In fact, evidence so far — I’m up through episode five — shows that most of the main characters don’t give a damn about protecting anything. Maybe Shinigami-sama does, I guess. I mean, we’ve seen the Kishin eat human souls several times, sometimes by the dozen, and none of our protagonists bother stopping them.

Soul wants to be a cool badass, Maka wants to be better than her dad, Black Star wants to, well, be a star, and Death the Kid wants to be perfect. So far Tsubaki’s, Patty’s, and Liz’s motivations haven’t been outlined very well, but from what I’ve seen in blogs, I’m confident they will be. Anyway, the point is that these characters aren’t the typical do-gooder in action. I’m currently reading The Mysteries of Udolpho in anticipation for a coming class, so I’m getting all the do-gooder for the sake of doing good that I could possibly need. It’s refreshing that the main cast of Soul Eater are doing what they’re doing for basically selfish reasons. It makes it much easier to relate to these characters.

That’s what this show’s greatest strength — so far — is, actually. Action shows like this follow the basic hero monomyth, up to the point where we can learn how we should behave from the actions of the heroes. However, Soul Eater provides reasons for these characters to be doing these things — real reasons we might have in our own lives. So Soul Eater can become truly inspirational to those who watch. In fact, I was actually moved to act during the fight with the mad scientist in episode five; basically I started working when it looked like this day might turn into a total wash. Effectively, the show inspired me to stop watching the show for a while and get some work done. All because the characters are like me, not like Goku or Ichigo.

I’m sure it helps that I’m totally in love with Maka. I have a thing for Goth girls, especially if they don’t go too far into the Goth-loli thing. Maka’s wearing a frock coat and French cuffs. Done and done.