
a review by yiendubu

a review by yiendubu

To me, where Soul Eater excels the most is its aesthetic. The sun and moon with the creepy faces, the architecture of Death City, DWMA, and the character designs should be enough to make you at least a tad bit curious about this series. I dare to say Soul Eater does Halloween better than Halloween itself. Talking about character designs, Okubo constantly blew my mind with them. Aside from, ironically, the MC Maka, all of them are fantastic and distinct. Distinction between characters is a really important aspect for me, so I appreciate the effort put into everyone looking different. If I had to crown someone for having the best design, it would be Black Star. He reminds me of a ninja from Naruto, but way cooler looking. Despite the aesthetic tho, the worldbuilding felt bursting with potential that wasn't explored. The only setting that felt like a legitimate world was Death City.

Soul Eater reaches its peak during the Baba Yaga arc and from then on steadily declines. I don’t blame Okubo for it, it’s hard to top such an arc. It encaptures everything I love about Soul Eater.
Soul and Maka’s relationship is also one of my favorite things in the series. Instead of forced romance, it’s mutual respect, loyalty, and just plain friendship. Friends that will go above and beyond for each other, always there to support the other one. It was refreshing to see this kind of relationship between a boy and a girl in shonen.

I mentioned at the start that the anime original ending left a bitter taste and well...I can say the same about the manga. It’s not nearly as bad, but a series like this didn’t deserve such an ending. I feel like it needed 2 or 3 more chapters to give a good conclusion to everything.

The last thing I want to say is how fun it was to watch Okubo’s art progress. I’m going to be real, the art at the start of the series is far from appealing. It came as a shock to me, someone who had seen the anime first. I saw on Twitter that the author got inspired by the anime’s art style, and if that’s true, it might have been the best decision in his career as a mangaka. Atsushi Okubo’s style is iconic and extremely recognizable, which I think should be one of the main goals of an artist. Around chapter 80 is where he really hones it and it starts looking like his ongoing manga Fire Force(I think Soul Eater’s Justin might have been the main inspiration for Fire Force)
Soul Eater gets an 8/10 from me! A fun ride with some bumps along the way.
(Thank god I didn't rate it any other number, Kid would've freaked out about the symmetry!)
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