Soul Eater Not! – 11-12 [END]

“This show doesn’t need yet another beta protagonist. I’m going for the harem route!”

Soul Eater Not! finishes up with 2 action packed episodes featuring Shaula finally making her move to take over Death City on Halloween and Tsugumi and her 2 meister roommates rising up to the challenge. Though not without faults, this was a relatively strong finish to an inconsistent show

Stupid Sexy Shaula

So Shaula’s big plan was basically initiating a zombie apocalypse in Death City, where she gets to control the zombies. Not a bad plan, all things considered, and a good way to use Death City’s skilled and powerful meisters and weapons against them. I’m still not clear on just why she wanted to take down DWMA so much and what her endgame was, but at least it gave us an excuse to see Maka and other EAT students fighting.

In fact, there was a bunch that happened in these last 2 episodes that I thought the show could have set up a lot better in prior episodes. For example, the Thompson sisters finally did something meaningful by driving Tsugumi to catch and bring back Anya, but was that really enough of a payoff after the show spent an entire episode+ on them? Similarly, what’s the deal with Kim and Jacqui? The show spent an entire episode bringing them together, only to split them apart a few episodes later, and now they’re on good terms again. Not to mention Kim being a witch like Shaula, which never came up as she stayed firmly in the background.

Just **** already, you two. Or not, break up if you want to. Just make it interesting, for god’s sake!

That setup time could have been used for other things, such as Tsugumi learning to fly in her weapon form after resonating with Anya. Maybe some classroom scenes showing that flying form as something she was working on. It’s more satisfying if the special ability the main character gains at the end is the culmination of something that she was working on the entire time, rather than something pulled out for convenience.

But such complaints aside, the final episodes worked. Anya more than any character actually had a personality throughout the series, and her hard-nosed take-no-shit attitude was a delight to watch, both with her handlers and with Dr. Stein, whom I love seeing as the master troll. There was plenty of action, most of it good. Admittedly they were all very short and relatively unimaginative, but they had fine animation and choreography. The finale delivered some good ones involving our main 3, as Anya battled Meme on a rooftop and Tsugumi joined in to get a quick smooch in to deliver the antidote.

These fights were too short, but Tsugumi taking on Meme and her chainsaw was badass (click Anya for stitch).

Unfortunately, the action took a huge step down when things mattered most. The main 3 fighting against Shaula was sluggish and boring; that’s the best they could do for showing 2 martial artists passing a human weapon around? But the worst part was when the melee battle turned into a projectile one, and our main 3 did some utterly pointless dance before getting onto Tsugumi in flying halberd form, then successfully dodged the rain of energy Shaula was throwing at them while making no apparent attempt. Seriously, is Shaula blind? At least show Tsugumi bobbing and weaving to avoid her attacks! And of course it came down to a classic Kamehameha who-can-shout-louder battle at the end. After all the pretty martial arts the show featured, it came down to just pushing really really hard. Snore.

Um, why?

Also, Tsugumi copping out and declaring both Anya and Meme her meisters is bullshit. Yes, I saw it coming, and you probably did too, but it’s still bad and trivializes the stress Tsugumi experienced thinking of choosing one or the other. What does the DWMA administration have to say about this? 2 weapons for 1 meister like Death the Kid with the Thompson sisters makes sense, but I’m curious about their policy on 1 weapon for 2 meisters. That said, the way they got there was pretty great, in Tsugumi resonating with Meme. I’m sick of these power-of-friendship-overcomes-brainwashing battles as much as anyone – I’m pretty sure the regular Soul Eater had at least 1 such battle – but god damn, I loved that it was just Tsugumi singing to Meme. It reminded me of another bit from the main series when the eponymous Soul Eater was playing piano in order to enable some super resonance with Maka and the other characters I think.

Series End

Soul Eater Not! was an odd beast. I went in thinking it would be an alternate universe version of Soul Eater in which Maka was still the protagonist, but at a fluffier, lighter Death Weapon Meister Academy, but what I got was a prequel/side story featuring all new protagonists. And while it certainly was lighter than the regular series, it never went full cute-girls-doing-cute-things, constantly finding ways to remind us of its surreal and violent setting of Death City, Nevada. It rarely shied away from pulling out an action set piece, the kind we might have seen in the original series.

But the show never focused enough on the fighting to be an action series the same way the main series was. That’s unfortunate, because what action there was was very impressive at times, while the story ended up very messy, a jumble of characters and motivations and conflicts that didn’t quite come together properly. Early on, it looked like Jacqui and Kim might become major supporting characters, but their story was dropped, and they only made token appearances at the climax. Same goes for the Thompson sisters.

Kim’s ax kick is always nice to see, at least.

The time spent on those side characters would have been better spent fleshing out the main trio of Tsugumi, Meme, and Anya, and the dilemma Tsugumi had in choosing one of them as her meister. There could have been some real drama here: Tsugumi struggling with her feelings for both girls and the meisters trying to rationalize their desire to beat the other with their love for each other. We could have seen them in the class room, each of the meisters taking turns wielding Tsugumi and trying to prove why she deserves to be her partner more than the other one. Despair and bitter jealousy at seeing the other one pulling off something new with Tsugumi, hope and triumph at one-upping that with her own special connection with Tsugumi. It could have been amazing to watch and would have made Tsugumi’s “decision” in the final episode actually seem meaningful.

Instead, we barely saw them in the classroom at all, and any rivalry between the meisters pretty much boiled down to Anya getting tsuntsun over Meme getting too close to Tsugumi. That’s a terrible waste of these characters on whom, by the way, I still don’t feel I have a great grasp. Tsugumi was generic shiny girl while Meme was generic forgetful girl and Anya was generic sheltered princess girl.

We really needed much more of this before the ending.

Soul Eater Not! was passable. Despite a script that both was poorly paced and didn’t develop the characters sufficiently, the action was good enough to be its saving grace. That said, this is a show I couldn’t in good conscience recommend to anyone. It rarely had that quirky charm of the original series and was content just to be another generic friendship-is-magic show. I didn’t regret watching it, but there are plenty of shows out there that do the same things but better and with more personality.