Hello and welcome to another side blog the blogs between the blogs. Today I’m doing a quick review of the anime Soul Eater Not. Remember how I said earlier this year I had two types of animes I felt were the hardest to review? One of them was generic anime and the other was spin-off animes which is what will be talking about today. Spin-off animes are very hard to review in my opinion because I have to keep telling myself this anime isn’t going to be like the original. But even when I do that a part of me keeps expecting this anime to be like the original especially if it’s a series that I really like. As Soul Eater was entering the final chapters of its series, Atsushi decided to create a short spin-off of the series called Soul Eater Not. It started in 2011 and ended in 2014 with only 5 volumes. The events of this series takes place prior to the events of Soul Eater meaning this is a prequel and instead of focusing on our main characters from the original we instead focus on new characters as well as focus on side characters from the original series that would go on to play a pivotal part in the original series. In the spring of 2014 Bones (Soul Eater and Space Dandy) saw how everyone were crying out for another season of Soul Eater so rather than do a reboot like they did with FMA they instead took the spin-off series and made it into an anime. Let’s see what this series has to offer.
Now first off the not in Soul Eater Not doesn’t stand for what you think it stands for. It’s actually an abbreviation for Normally Overcome Target. Basically, these are students at the DWMA who are just not ready for combat yet or have no intention of going into combat and just want to learn how to control their powers so they don’t become a threat to themselves or to others. Most students in this class are students who want to go into the field as servants of Shinigami but like I said before they’re just not ready for the field yet. For weapons, it can be they don’t know how to control their powers yet and can’t fully transform and for meisters they haven’t found a weapon yet to call their partner. It’s just like Stein said you can’t just go around and pick someone to be your partner randomly, you need to have a bond with them and resonate with each other. It’s sort of like ballroom dancing, you put your trust in the hands of your partner and they put their trust into your hands. While in some cases it’s true that one dancer is more dominant than the other i.e. Black Star and Tsubaki the two trust one another. Students in this course attend regular classes and take lessons where they learn how to control their powers, form partnerships, and then advanced on to the Especially Advantaged Talent or EAT class which is the class Maka, Soul, and the others are in.
In this spin-off we focus on three girls in the NOT class who have just arrived at DWMA. The first one is Tsugumi voiced by Haruka Chisuga, the main character of the series who is a halberd with a dull blade. She comes from Japan where one day she discovered that she had the power to transform into a weapon and almost hurt her sister. Wanting to control these powers she travels to DWMA where on the first day she runs into Maka where she is so amazed by her that she makes Maka her idol, styling her hair after Maka, and often going to her for advice whenever the opportunity presents itself. While she is a weapon she is quite timid and often tries to avoid fights should they occur but if the need to fight comes she will fight to protect her friends. The second character is Meme voiced by Aoi Yūki (Madoka from Puella Magi Madoka Magica) a meister who is well-endowed for her age and suffers from short-term memory lost, often forgetting her name and the names of others. Despite this Meme has proven to be a skilled fighter and befriends Tsugumi on the first day of school along with the third main character Anya voiced by Saori Hayami (Haqua from TWGOK) another meister who comes from a wealthy family which makes her look down on others. Tired of her restricted life she chose to come to DWMA to better understand commoners and became fascinated with Tsugumi believing her to be the most average commoner of all time. We find out later that she’s actually a princess of some kingdom who was only allowed to come to the school if DWMA and the country (which is us) promised to protect her and if ever her life were in danger she would have to return immediately. These three characters become friends as well as roommates with both Meme and Anya wanting Tsugumi to be their partner but Tsugumi not wanting to upset the other one can’t decide on who to choose so they make an agreement where Meme and Anya will take turns using Tsugumi and by Halloween she will decide on who to partner up with. We also have Akane a member of the Star Clan and his weapon Clay a longsword who are graduates of the EAT class placed in the NOT class in order to keep an eye on Anya. In truth both Akane and Clay are members of DWMA’s CIA division.
Throughout most of the anime we just focus on our three main characters living in a slice-of-life moe setting in Death City. We see them do classes every now in than, get part time jobs in order to have a steady income, and befriend their dormmates. On top of seeing some new minor characters we also get to see the main characters from the original series as well. Maka and Soul make an appearance every now and then, the Thompson sisters are working in the same café as Tsugumi in the others where around this time they were on probation and weren’t officially the weapons of Kid, we see Kid make an appearance to make sure Liz and Patty are behaving, and Black Star and Tsubaki show up only in the first episode (it’s said that in the manga he and Anya often got into fights with each other). You would think these characters would distract you from the story but in truth it only serves to make you sad that you’re not spending time with them. Every time one of them appears you want to know what they’re up to and wish you could follow them around instead of hanging out with Tsugumi and the others mostly because they’re really not all that interesting. Tsugumi, Meme, and Anya are rather bland characters when compared to Maka and the others. You never really get invested into their personalities or the dilemma of Tsugumi because you know in the end she’s not going to be able to decide who she wants to be with so she decides to make both of them her official partner. They also never really grow as characters. Tsugumi kind of remains the timid girl all the way to the end who works hard, Meme is a ditsy girl, and Anya is a spoiled princess who doesn’t understand the ways of the world and looks down on people. The minor characters really don’t contribute much either. Aside from seeing how Kim and Jacqueline become partners they really don’t contribute much to the series and for action there’s barely any action in this anime and the action that they show us is nothing compared to the original series. The climax of the series happens in the last 2 episodes where a witch by the name of Shaula the younger sister of Medusa and Arachne sneaks into Death City to gather data and prove that she is the better of the three. She brainwashes students in the NOT class including Meme and sets them loose on the city. She meets her death at the hands of Tsugumi, Meme, and Anya who perform a three-way resonance which reveals Tsugumi’s real form and defeat Shaula releasing everyone from her magic and returning the city back to normal.
So is there anything in this anime worth checking out, any new information that adds to the series? Well to this series credit they do explain where weapons come from. Weapons were basically created by the witches in the hopes of making themselves stronger. I forget if I mention this in my review but basically Shinigami and Eibon were both inspired by Excalibur and sought to create weapons in their war against the witches. In their research they found that the best way to create a demon weapon was to use a witch’s soul. Finding the process inhumane they stopped the research and concealed their finding from the world but Arachne found out about the research and conducted the experiment herself. She killed a witch and combined a human soul with a weapon along with the witch’s soul resulting in humans who could transform into weapons and be used in battle. We also get to explore more of Death City which is nice but still the problems of this anime stop you from really enjoying the series as a whole. What made the original Soul Eater great was that despite having a dark setting there were moments where it could be funny, deep, philosophical, and scary but inviting. We saw the characters grow and learn to adapt to this dark world but at the same time saw moments where the characters were still just kids fighting for what they believe is right and never giving up. This series unfortunately never gave us that. While the animation is brighter and the characters moe with a hint of yuri possibly going on between the characters, this isn’t the kind of world or characters we wanted to see. We wanted to see these three girls who had the potential to be great fighters learn how to use their abilities, see them come face to face with the hardships of this world and adapt to them.
Final Thoughts
So as you can guess I really didn’t like this series. While not awful it’s just a series that has no idea what it wants to accomplish or who its target audience is. Like, what was the point of this spin-off? What exactly was Atsushi trying to tell/show us? Usually when an author does a spin-off it’s usually to show important events that happened around or before the main story or focused on new characters who were also doing something important and can offer a new perspective on the story. Soul Eater Not accomplished none of these things and as for the target audience, it’s obvious that this series wasn’t made for the fans and wasn’t made for others hoping to get into the original series because this series barely resembles the original series. In fact, if they didn’t put Soul Eater in the title I don’t think anybody would have made the connection to Soul Eater. They would of just saw it as a cheap rip-off of it. On top of these problems the characters are bland, the story uninteresting, and the fight scenes are dull to watch.
Final Score
The final score for Soul Eater Not is a 2.5/10. A disappointing spin-off that honestly should not exists. Fans of the original series won’t like it and those hoping to get into the series won’t like it as well. For those of you out there wanting to check out Soul Eater I highly suggest you skip over this spin-off and just read the original story. As for anyone else who checked out this spin-off it’s best to forget this series as it is a bad representation of the Soul Eater series that lacked direction. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time on Project Nitsuj.
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