Soul Eater Volume 1

Review Date: 2010 June 12 15:35

Reviewed by: Molly Drury

Released by: FUNimation

Age Rating: 15

Region: 2 - UK

Volume 1 of 4

Length: 325 minutes

Subtitles: English

Audio: English 2.0 Stereo

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Summary

Soul Eater takes place in Death City, where Death himself has founded a school to train weapon meisters, the Death Weapon Meister Academy or DWMA. It is at this school that an overachiever (Maka), idiot (Black Star) and Death’s obsessive compulsive son (Kid) along with their partners, who can transform into weapons, train to defeat evil humans so that their weapon partners can consume their souls. Once the weapon partner has consumed 99 souls they must defeat a witch and consume their soul so that they can become a Death Scythe and be used by Death. However it’s not as easy as it seems, and things rapidly get out of control and more than a little crazy because if they eat a 100th soul that is not a witch’s then the number is reset. These students must kill evil humans, eat their souls and defend the city from evil creatures while also attending class and trying to get along with each other, a difficult balance for even the most skilled meisters.

Review

Death City is wonderfully detailed and charming; with it's menacingly grinning sun and moon moving across the sky, and the ornate, towering academy. The backgrounds have a great amount of detail, more so than many anime; fleshing out the world and making it feel more tangible. The school setting is so great because it never intrudes on the show, there are scenes within the school and a few within classes, but they are few and far between and add to the story rather than taking time away from the action. Most of the anime is spent on beautifully choreographed fight scenes, magic, special attacks (and so a good deal of shouting) and huge, powerful weapons. The animation is clean, crisp and colourful, same as most of BONES anime and the opening is amazingly eye-catching, making you sit up and take notice, and setting the tone for an action packed, funny and quite gothic anime.