RRF: My Thoughts on Soul Eater NOT

RoseRedFlower Just finished watching the last episode and not looking forward to reading the manga. Now for those who don’t know, I would recommend watching the original before reading this review. It’s a very stylish anime with an appeasing look compared to other anime’s. The characters are enjoyable and the story is well structured. I will be spoiling both Soul Eater and Soul Eater NOT. If this bothers you, then don’t read further.

I was very pleased to hear about a new anime that would take place in the universe of Soul Eater. It was made my the original creator of Soul Eater; Atsushi Ōkubo and left fans very excited. However, I became skeptically optimistic once I saw the trailer and more information leaked out. The animation for Soul Eater was made by Studio Bones and Soul Eater NOT. However, the style wasn’t what people expected. However, we decided to wait and see what happens next.

Once the episodes began releasing, word did come out of how disappointing it is compared to the original. So, I watched it out of curiosity.

Soul Eater NOT is apparently a comedy, slice of life and supernatural genre of anime. So it would naturally have a far different tone from the original which was labeled as action, adventure and still supernatural. However, Soul Eater NOT surprisingly fell below my expectations. I was hoping to find something good and come back telling everyone to quit complaining but I just couldn’t.

The three main characters in Soul Eater NOT are not the characters from the original but three new girls. Their names are Anya Hepburn, Tsugumi Harudori and Meme Tatane. Maka Albarn, Black*Star and Death the Kid are replaced as cameos. Including their weapon partners Soul Eater, Tsubaki, Liz and Patty.

Anya is your typical spoiled rich princess, who’s quirky thing is that she hates common things. She’s that girl who wants to make friends but is too stubborn to change until the situation calls for it. That’s pretty much it. She’s not very interesting. So she’s basically a boring tsundere and even accused Tsugumi of being a pervert. They could have done something interesting with her, especially in the Soul Eater Universe but they just make her a walking stereotype.

Meme is a clueless girl who keeps forgetting things. Kind of like Dory from Finding Nemo. Dory was funny and could still be likable. She actually learns to remember something that may not seem important but does eventually. Meme isn’t funny and they just keep pushing her to be some kind of fanservice girl because she has big breasts. One my least favorite cliches...

Tsugumi is written like bad OC. She's able to produce wings, change form, change the size of her blade and fly without a hitch? Soul and Maka struggled to do in the manga. The main difference is that they were partners for over a year to help resonante their souls, Maka had a special Grigori Soul and Soul was a death scythe. They were much more powerful and still struggled to do. Tsugumi is a non combatant student, with no official partner at the moment and couldn't even form her blade at the time could do. That right there screams OC writing with a hint of mary sue. The fact that she acts like a shell version of Maka and that she never grows throughout the anime really didn't help either.

Speaking of older characters, why were some of them not here or even mentioned at all? Black*Star and Tsubaki had no significance and could have been taken out. Kid had only two scenes and could have been taken out. Which isn’t good because he’s one of the most popular characters in the franchise. The only reason they were there was to give the older fans something to like. I’m surprised Lord Death wasn’t here. He didn’t show up at all, despite being the one who runs the DWMA. Where was he during all the battling at the DWMA? Whenever the old characters showed up, I felt happy and wanted to see more. Then it went back to the three girls and I just felt disheartened. The one thing you should never do in a movie/show is remind everyone that they could be watching something better.

Now for the villain Shaula, well at least she was given an interesting design. To be honest her potential was wasted in NOT. She was even killed in one hit. I know Soul Eater suffered a bit because of the ending but if you’re going to try and be a new version of the anime, do something new. Her whole thing is scorpions and mind controlling. That would be cool if she was interesting in the slightest. She has little character depth and it just makes her a forgettable antagonist.

The animation in Soul Eater NOT was very off putting to me. New characters all had that same moe look along with the older characters. It looked nice but Soul Eater was known for having unique looking animation. The action scenes when they’re even in are terrible. Look up on Youtube Maka VS Eternal Feather (not the Blue-Ray version) and you’ll see what I mean. The Blue-Ray version did improve slightly but compare this fight to Maka’s first fight against Jack The Ripper and there will be no contest. There was even one scene where Liz and Patty were going up against Tsugumi and Anya. Anya tries to swipe at Liz, she turns into a weapon and Patty becomes human. From behind, Patty has the gun pointed right behind Anya’s head. Then it cuts to the shot of the sky and then we see Anya fall on her knees. That was it. How lazy can you be? If you’re going to make an action scene, show us the action.

Other things I have to complain about are somewhat minor but drive me nuts. Eternal Feather not dying. I wish she did. It could have had huge impact on the three girls, seeing an upperclassman commit suicide. Then when they find out it wasn’t suicide, they would try and avenge her. We could have gotten some decent character development. But no, she survived and it happened like it didn’t even happen. What a weak ploy to get people excited over nothing. If this is a prequel, couldn’t it have answered some questions fans might have had? Like how exactly did Medusa sneak her way into the academy, who is Crona’s father or anything about Maka’s mother. Maybe we can see what she looks like since Maka talks so much about her. Why is this anime written like a Yuri Anime? There’s nothing wrong with Yuri, I’ve sat through Strawberry Panic but this isn’t that. Like I stated, Soul Eater NOT is slice of life, supernatural and comedy. There’s so much Yuri fanservice that I can’t help but wonder what was going on in the writer’s head as they were making this? It’s just filler and overall distracting.

I guess my final thought is too avoid this anime like the plague. It’s not a very good comedy. Most of the parts I laughed at were from the older characters. Stein’s one scene was hilarious to watch but with the new characters, I wasn’t laughing. For a slice of life it’s not very interesting. The creators of South Park stated that a story should be tied to buts and therefore. Let’s compare with Soul Eater. Maka has collected 99 monster souls but needs one more witch soul to create a death scythe and therefore hunts down a witch named Blair. Then compared to Soul Eater NOT it’s this. Tsugumi finds out she’s a weapon and then goes to the DWMA. Tsugumi meets Maka at school and then arrives to her class to control her abilities. It’s stuff like this that makes the anime boring. The only ‘conflict’ is who’s going to be Tsugumi’s partner. The ending wasn’t a twist. I figured out on episode one how it would end and I wasn’t surprised at all.

Thanks for reading!

Comments

I apologize if I messed up my grammar. Having lazy eye can be a real pain. - RoseRedFlower

Yeah, this spin-off prequel sucks balls. I even did an entire rant on it on Top 10 Worst Anime. To me, this is like the Teen Titans Go! (or to a bigger extent, The PowerPuff Girls 2016 reboot) of anime. - visitor

This anime sounds cheap... - HoneyClover