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 Soul Eater Not! is an adaptation of Atsushi Ohkubo's spin-off prequel to Soul Eater animated by Bones. Plot: The Death Weapon Meister Academy (DWMA) is a special institution for humans who are born with the power to turn into weapons and the wielders of these weapons, called meisters. While the students of the EAT (Especially Advantaged Talent) class train themselves to become warriors of justice, the NOT (Normally Overcome Target) class is for those who just want to control their powers with the intent to not become a threat to others and to themselves. Tsugumi Harudori is a halberd demon weapon who takes part in the NOT class and befriends two meisters, Meme Tatane and Anya Hepburn, becoming indecisive about which one of them to choose as her partner. The series follows the daily lives of Tsugumi and her friends as they learn the ropes of the DWMA and have occasional encounters with the characters of the main series. Staff: Director: Masakazu Hashimoto Series Composition: Masakazu Hashimoto Music: Asami Tachibana, Yuuki Hayashi Original creator: Atsushi Ohkubo Animation Director: Satoshi Koike Sound Director: Kazuhiro Wakabayashi Characters:  Tsumugi Harudori (Haruka Chisuga) The main protagonist, Tsumugi is a weapon who changes into a halberd with a dull blade. After discovering that she is a weapon, she enrolls in the DWMA and is placed in the NOT class. Originally a timid romantic, after an encounter with Maka on her first day, she seeks to improve herself. She is friends with Meme and Anya, and alternates as each of their weapon, but she still faces the decision of who to make her official partner.  Meme Tatane (Aoi Yuuki) A meister in the DWMA's NOT class who rooms with Tsumugi. She suffers from short-term memory loss and forgets things often. Despite her spacey nature, she's quite athletic and is actually quite adept at the Drunken Fist....when she's asleep.  Anya Hepburn (Saori Hayami) Like Meme, Anya is a meister in the NOT class. Coming from a wealthy upbringing, she is condescending to others, however she also tires of her high-class lifestyle and enrolls in the DWMA to better understand the so-called "commoners." For this reason, she has become fascinated by Tsugumi, calling her the most common of all, and wishes to become her partner.  Akane (Takahiro Sakurai) Tsumugi's classmate, who seems to have all this figured out. He's revealed to be one of the last of the Star Clan, related to Black Star.  Clay Sizemore (Seiichiro Yamashita) Akane's partner, who can transform into a longsword. Spends a lot of time at the arcade. Is it good? Yeah, pretty good. I'm usually not a fan of slice of life stuff, but this series is providing enough of being recognizably Soul Eater, while also teasing enough plot threads to keep me interested. It also helps that I really like the setting of Soul Eater and appreciate the worldbuilding. If you really liked Soul Eater for more than the coolly animated fights, it's worth a look. Soul Eater Not! is licensed by Funimation and streams Tuesdays at 3:40 PM Eastern. Edit: People have been good about this, but the fact that the subject has come up means I just wanna take a precaution. Now, this doesn't seem like the kind of prequel that requires knowledge of the previous series to fully enjoy, and there might be people coming into this without knowing Soul Eater, so please put spoilers for the original anime and manga in tags, please. Waffleman_ fucked around with this message at 19:53 on May 2, 2014 |
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May 1, 2014 18:19
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I wonder what's up with the two guys...
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May 1, 2014 18:37
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I really liked Soul Eater and have liked what I've read of the manga for this so far, so it's definitely on my list.Lucy Heartfilia posted:I wonder what's up with the two guys... Regarding those two (manga spoilers) they show up near the end of the main series as sort of a special mission pair compared to the rest of the Soul Eater cast. I think there is also a mention in the Soul Eater Not! manga that they were originally in the EAT class as well. They are probably not really still students, but some sort of internal intelligence or something.
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May 1, 2014 18:51
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chumbler posted:Regarding those two (manga spoilers) they show up near the end of the main series as sort of a special mission pair compared to the rest of the Soul Eater cast. I think there is also a mention in the Soul Eater Not! manga that they were originally in the EAT class as well. They are probably not really still students, but some sort of internal intelligence or something. Those two originally being from the EAT class was explicitly mentioned by the teacher in ep3 of the anime when he sent them to deal with the Traitor dude. They also seem to be (secretly) employed as bodyguards of sorts to Anya, or something?
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May 1, 2014 19:40
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arhra posted:They also seem to be (secretly) employed as bodyguards of sorts to Anya, or something? Yes, they seem to be undercover in the NOT class on a mission to be Anya's bodyguards. In the interests of full disclosure, I feel the need to point out the punny names that all weapon characters have. Tsugumi is slightly more complicated than most because it's a dual language pun. Her surname is "Harudori", except "dori" means "bird" in Japanese. So if you translate that to bird and write the first half phonetically you get "Harubird" ie "Halberd". So her name is Tsugumi Halberd, sort of. Clay Sizemore is a Claymore. This is fairly straightforward.
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May 1, 2014 22:00
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I'm almost ashamed of how happy I was when Akane said "A sound soul dwells within a sound mind and a sound body." And I am not ashamed of how happy I was when Maka and Soul appeared again. I don't care how weird they look in the new style, it's Maka and Soul!
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May 1, 2014 22:49
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I really wish they'd give a season 2 of regular Soul Eater a try too. Picking up where it deviated with the anime original ending. Hopefully an equally wacky opening though, cause holy poo poo.
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May 2, 2014 00:06
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Mordaedil posted:I really wish they'd give a season 2 of regular Soul Eater a try too. Picking up where it deviated with the anime original ending. I'd rather have a Soul Eater Brotherhood.
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May 2, 2014 13:21
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The real problem is a Soul Eater Brotherhood would still end up disappointing because my goodness did that manga's ending suck.
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May 2, 2014 14:55
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I've seen a lot of people complain about how the manga ending sucked, but when I finally read it recently I didn't notice anything particularly jarring about it. I guess the main things would be that Noah ended up completely irrelevant to the story and Crona didn't get an unconditionally happy ending?
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May 2, 2014 19:21
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Clarste posted:I've seen a lot of people complain about how the manga ending sucked, but when I finally read it recently I didn't notice anything particularly jarring about it. I guess the main things would be that Noah ended up completely irrelevant to the story and Crona didn't get an unconditionally happy ending? There are certainly worse endings (Negima and sort of TWGOK  ), but Soul Eater's wasn't particularly great. I don't mind that Crona didn't really get the super happy ending, but alongside Noah being irrelevant there was also Medusa just kind of fizzling out. She was probably the most interesting character because of her cool design and powers, scheming, and being #1 World's Best Mom, and especially her interactions with Stein, but her ending was just "Welp I'm just crazy after all whoops now I'm dead because my even crazier daughter killed me but it's cool because I'm crazy." Also Blair never really did anything, and I liked Blair. Basically there were just a lot of characters or other plot lines that had been built up but got swept aside or hastily crammed into a generic ending.On the plus side, Black Star grabbed lasers and was just generally Black Star, so it wasn't all bad.
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May 2, 2014 19:40
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chumbler posted:There are certainly worse endings (Negima and sort of TWGOK I don't really think that Medusa's plotline could really have ended any other way. I know that for me personally Crona killing her while still under her influence and going out with a smile and an "I love you" was on my very short list of acceptable resolutions. Much better than what the anime did anyway, which was to suddenly make her stupid so the heroes could kill her. There's also fact that she "won", sort of, in the sense of creating a catalyst for the world to change. Although I agree that the chapter came out of nowhere with no build-up. Is that really part of the ending though? That seems more like a complaint about the direction of the latter third of the manga. Personally I feel like introducing Noah as a new villain accomplished pretty much nothing and ruined the pacing of things like Medusa and Kishin.
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May 2, 2014 19:52
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Yeah, I feel like the entire Noah arc maybe shouldn't have happened. Mosquito was a cool villain, man!
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May 3, 2014 11:17
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The plot is slowly taking shape. And it's an interesting and a bit surprising direction.
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May 7, 2014 07:27
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I would be enjoying this show a lot more if it would just pick whether or not it wanted all its characters to be lesbians and stick with it.
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May 7, 2014 15:31
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That's how yuri works. This way the audience's lesbian fetish can be sated while the girls still remain sexually available to the male viewership. They also have to be chaste, because of traditional and heavily repressive views on female sexuality prevalent in the audience, and that's why even kisses can only be accidental or happen in dreams.
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May 7, 2014 22:55
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Lucy Heartfilia posted:That's how yuri works. This way the audience's lesbian fetish can be sated while the girls still remain sexually available to the male viewership. They also have to be chaste, because of traditional and heavily repressive views on female sexuality prevalent in the audience, and that's why even kisses can only be accidental or happen in dreams. Unless we're talking about Sakura Trick or Strawberry Panic.
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May 7, 2014 23:04
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In Japan schoolgirl lesbianism is often viewed as a "phase" that they'll grow out of by the time they're of marriageable age. Which isn't really that uncommon of an idea for more traditional societies. Homosexuality as an identity is a relatively recent invention, probably correlating with the idea of marriage as romantic instead of as a duty to your family. More to the point though, I don't really think they left it ambiguous here. Jackie is obviously into Kim, sexually. Kim hasn't really shown anything one way or another although she's kind of together with Ox by the end of the main series. Meme and Tsugumi haven't had anything really sexual between them, just lots of tickling, but Anya views them that way as a joke.
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May 7, 2014 23:06
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I'm used to slice of life shows having yuri subtext that goes nowhere or the obvious girl crush character, this one just seems to be way more obnoxious with pairing characters up and then going 'just joking' than most, even more so in light of the above spoiler. Eh, I dunno, maybe it's just me.
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May 8, 2014 08:45
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