Soul Eater Not!

There are two kinds of students who enroll at Death Weapon Meister Academy... The Weapons, and the Meisters. For the weapons, these are adolescents who have the ability to shapeshift their bodies into actual, living, telepathic weapons... They don’t get to choose which weapon they become, but the possibilities are endless. They can become classic bladed weapons like scythes and swords, modern weapons like guns and flamethrowers, or even multiple different ninja classics. For the Meisters, these are the students who train to wield the weapons, and each Meister is tasked with finding a partner they can not only get along with, but resonate with all the way down to their souls. That being said, Tsugumi Harudori has been faced with a unique problem... She has not one, but two different Meisters vying for her allegiance! An insecure introvert with the ability to become a halberd, Tsugumi has to choose between the space cadet Meme and the rich tsundere Anya Hepburn, if she can survive long enough to make up her mind.

I’ve written a ton of these reviews, and it’s become pretty common for me to stumble across some massive surprise while I’m researching the background information on whatever anime I’m writing up(and by research, I mean a quick glance at about three different websites, including wikipedia). For Soul Eater Not, my biggest surprise was, on it’s own, fairly unexpected... I was shocked to find out that this spin-off from Soul Eater was animated by the same production company as Soul Eater, because good Lord do they look nothing alike. Yeah, the character designs are more or less similar, but everything else is completely different. Not also doesn’t look like anything ELSE that the legendary Studio Bones has ever made(that I've seen), and I think the reason for both of these divergences is the fact that it had a relatively unique director. Masakazu Hashimoto had his hands all over this production, which tells me that Bones didn’t really care too much about it, because as far as I’ve seen, Hashimoto does not have a great track record.

It’s bad enough that he has ties to Shin-Chan, which is one of the first titles you should bring up the next time some idiot argues that there’s “An anime style.” He directed a few of the franchise’s movies, and he’s also listed as a production director for the Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood movie, which... Woof. This is his only main directorial project for Studio Bones, and that says a lot. I will say that the animation isn’t terrible, I’ve seen way worse looking animation than this under far less damning circumstances... But it’s clearly trying to replicate the animation and aesthetic of the original Soul Eater, and failing miserably to do so. I’m also willing to bet that Bones didn't want to fork over very much money to this production, likely because of the poor critical and commercial reception to the latter half of Soul Eater, and while the cost-cutting measures aren’t ALWAYS blatantly obvious, they do stick out once in a while, with faces freezing in awkward positions, characters being raised and lowered in tandem so it looks like they’re walking together, and once in a while, you’ll get some truly awful looking mouth flaps that don’t look like they’re genuinely attached to the character’s face.

Visually speaking, the overall feel is that they were trying to produce a blushy slice of life melodrama within the world of Soul Eater, and I’m not saying that idea couldn’t have possibly worked, but I don’t think the director had any idea how to marry those two concepts. The new characters look like generic designs that were altered slightly to fit the Soul Eater aesthetic, with the exception of the villain, but more on her later. Character movement is stiff more often than not, any character who isn’t moving in the shot is usually off-model, and while there are a few okay action scenes, most of them are pretty poorly choreographed, especially in the later scenes where Anya and Meme are supposed to be wielding Tsugumi’s halberd form together. The producers were at least competent enough to understand budget allocation, using the bulk of their resources on scenes requiring more active animation and taking shortcuts everywhere else to compensate, and that alone saves the production from coming off as a complete disaster, but it’s still not a great looking anime, especially for a Soul Eater spin-off.

I don’t have anything especially interesting to say about the dub, but I don’t mean that in a bad way. What I mean is that whether you love them or hate them, Funimation is just really good at dubbing anime, as long as the writers aren’t taking too many liberties with the scripts. Not doesn’t have this problem, so it’s just what you’d expect, another really good dub. Several actors from the first Soul Eater anime are reprising their roles here, and with the exception of Micah Solusod(who does kind of phone it in a little, but considering how little his character Soul has to do here, you can’t really blame him) everyone sounds just as good as you remember. Particular praise goes to Laura Bailey as Maka, Chuck Huber as Doctor Stein and Cherami Leigh and Jamie Marchi as the Thompson Twins, none of whom sound like a single day has gone by since their last outing. There are a few black characters played by white actors... They're all from the original show, and the dubbing scene in the mid-2000s can fairly be referred to as “a different time...” And for the three new main characters? Lindsay Seidel, Alexis Tipton and Brynn Appril were relative newcomers at the time, but they did the best they could with the characters they had, and they’ve all gone on to make an impact in the years since.

It’s been a long time since I reviewed the original Soul Eater... And I mean a long time, like, back when my old blog was still active... And while I don’t think I’ve rewatched it since then, it is a show I find myself constantly remembering, which is a testament to how memorable a series it actually was. I think I might have been too harsh on that series at the time, because while I don’t take back any of my criticisms of it... I had serious issues with its plot, worldbuilding and generally poor writing, all of which I still think people should pay more attention to when praising it... But I do appreciate that it had a lot of things going for it. Soul Eater is a fun show. It’s easily one of the most unique and original anime ever made, and it had a sort of balls-to-the-wall creative energy that never left me feeling bored. It had its failure, but that’s because it was bold, and it was never afraid to take risks. I kind of want to rewrite that review and bump my 6/10 up to a 7/10... Which is weird, because as I mentioned IN that review, I already bumped it from a 5 to a 6 after watching Soul Eater Not gave me a whole new appreciation for it.

So what is Soul Eater Not? Is it a sequel, a prequel, or a midquel to the source material? The answer is, I don’t know, it’s kind of unclear. I’m pretty sure it comes before the original series on the timeline, but there are certain character development elements that would suggest otherwise, unless I’m just seeing things. The only thing I can say for certain regarding its relationship to Soul Eater is that it’s a step down. That feels weird, right? From a certain point of view, Soul Eater is the perfect anime to support not just one spin-off, but dozens, as the setting offers endless possibilities and the ability to explore them... Hell, as unclear as some of the franchise's lore details are, a bunch of spin-offs would be the perfect way to figure out what the hell a Meister gets out of their weapon becoming Death’s scythe, or why nobody ever just uses real weapons instead of transforming partners. That’s not to say Not doesn’t make an effort to expand the lore, but moments like that are few and far between, and you can kind of figure out just how much of an underachiever this series is right from the start.

Let’s see, the best way to describe this would be... Remember the final season of Scrubs? Right in the first episode, they introduce you to the actress the studio chose to replace JD as the main character, but they didn’t really have an identity prepared for her, so they basically just experimented with her personality by just having her react to her new environment and a bunch of one-note gimmicky new costars? And the returning cast members did fine, but they were still just glorified cameos to try and elevate these new characters despite the likelihood that the writers were too used to the previous cast to handle introducing that many new faces at once, and the whole thing felt like a forced and unnatural attempt to capture lightning in a bottle again? Yeah, that’s basically how Not begins. Tsugumi even has her own JD moment, when she sees a successful student doing something for charity, and then imagines herself in his position.

I can identify Not’s three major problems right off the bat, and just for sport, I’m not going to count its failure to live up to the original as one of them. First problem, Tsugumi is barely a character. She’s your typical average nice girl trope, who always does the right thing unless her emotions force her to act out of character, and her only real flaws are the fact that she’s occasionally clumsy, and the fact that she’s insecure about some things. I could not describe her personality if you paid me to, and while I’ve never been quite fond of throwing the term Mary Sue around, as I’d say about 90% of it’s online usage is incorrect, I do think it applies to Tsugumi pretty well. She is not a remotely interesting character, and neither are either of her friends, who are some pretty simple archetypes overall. Meme is your average space cadet character, and Anya is your typical rich tsundere who’s fascinated by commoner things. They’re Yui and Mugi-san from K-On, basically. They satisfy the bare minimum requirements for a slice of life school melodrama, but in the universe of Soul Eater, they fall well below par.

For the second problem, it’s the fact that there really isn’t anything driving the story. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not accusing this show of not having a plot... Tsumugi having to choose between two potential wielders IS a plot, it’s just a really weak one. Meme and Anya both attach themselves to Tsumugi pretty quickly, after barely even making a first impression, and while I’d be willing to believe there’s enough groundwork established for either one of them to pair up with her, there is nowhere near enough of a connection for both of them to fight over her instead of conceding and looking elsewhere. The whole idea of weapons and meisters needing to be compatible is also kind of thrown out the window, if you’re wondering why Tsumugi doesn’t just pair up with the girl she has the strongest resonance with. Either way, Tsumugi having to choose between them may be the plot, but it’s left by the wayside for more than half the series to make room for silly shenanigans until the writers finally decide to force a conflict over it late in the series, and the pay-off is unsatisfying to say the least.

And the third problem, this show’s writing just doesn’t have a great level of competency behind it. So a little backstory here, with most of my reviews, I don’t usually cover everything I want to. Maybe I forgot to mention something, or I left something out because I couldn’t think of anywhere to bring it up naturally, or hell, maybe the review is too damn long at that point. One particular regret of mine is that in my Shimonetta review, I mention some references I should’ve found funny but didn’t, but I don’t think I specified what they were. They were a JJBA reference, where the main character quote that rapid-fire punching sound effect while kicking someone in the nuts, and the dub at one point recites Carlin’s “7 Words You Can’t Say on Television.” My point was that both of these jokes fit the material so perfectly, that you would have to put actual work into fucking them up, but the bad writing caused them both to fall flat anyway.

My point is, Not does something like this too. A few times, actually, but my favorite example is the character Misery, based on Annie Wilkes from the Stephen King novel of the same name. She ties Tsumugi up during her first night at the school, and attempts to mutilate her with a hammer to make her look like a book character. On paper, this is fucking genius, considering how Soul Eater likes to play with and twist around historical and fictional antagonists. In practice, however, Tsumugi is rescued, then scolded for not getting along with Misery, who goes completely unpunished after being subdued, and the incident is never brought up again. You se what I mean when I say that a joke that has no excuse to not be funny can be fucked up by bad writing, and baffling execution? Far be it from me to criticize professional writers, but maybe if Misery was an actual witch and Tsumugi and her partners had to actually defeat her, the joke would have stuck the landing? I know I’m just some internet nobody, but come on. And the entire show is like this, running on ideas where there's a clear vision, but no sense of competant execution anywhere to be found.

For the majority of the series, if it wasn’t for the Soul Eater branding and all of the otherwise pointless cameos, Not would have gone down as nothing more than another painfully generic and cliched highschool slice of life melodrama. The characters are generic, their conflicts are generic, it even features the same old same old generic PG level fanservice that’s meant to manipulate younger male audiences while censoring itself just enough to air on TV. There are some nice parts... We get an extended look at the backstory of characters Liz and Patty, and that whole episode is pretty good. Then again they also explore side characters Jackie and Kim a little more, but their dynamic reeks of queerbaiting. The villain is cool... No, seriously, the big bad evil witch who shows up in the final act is awesome, legitimately well designed and threatening enough to have fit right in with the main show, although she does get nerfed in the end when the animators give her the aim of a freaking stormtrooper. So yeah, I can’t say there’s nothing good in this show, but I can’t justify having to wade through all the tedious nothingness to get there.

Soul Eater Not is available from Funimation, and the original manga is available stateside from Yen Press.

I have no idea who this anime was made for. I have a pretty good theory about why it was made, what with the manga probably seeing some degree of success in certain circles and Bones wanting to wring a little more cash out of a popular property, but who was this made for? I can’t imagine most Soul Eater Fans wanting to see their cool halloweeny action anime twisted into a high school melodrama, and I can’t imagine followers of girly slice of life anime were begging to see their favorite genre injected with this degree of weirdness. I’m sure there are some people out there who wanted to see that combination, but enough to justify this show’s existence? I don’t know, man. The original Soul Eater was a train wreck, but at least it was an entertaining train wreck, full of creative energy and wacky ideas. Soul Eater Not, on the other hand, is just boring. It’s not an interesting spin-off, it’s not entertaining on it’s own merits, it’s not well written in general... It’s just Not.

I give Soul Eater Not! a 3/10.