Soul Eater – 06, Awesome Kid! Awesome cannons!
18 May 2008
Most people hate the Michael Bay FiOS Commercial. I’m actually quite fond of it. It’s Michael Bay making fun of himself (Awesome!), which gets ridiculously annoying after a while (Awesome!) and then stuff blows up (Awesome!). Soul Eater, is, for better or for worse, Michael Bay awesome. Hopefully, it won’t get ridiculously annoying after a while. It’s a shamelessly shonen show and it doesn’t try to advertise itself as anything but. I’ve also learned that Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is the only show that pulls off the hot-blooded, manly, overly dramatic gambit, because Black Star, as much as I love him, needs to be smacked. Humility, boy, humility!
Actually, episodes four, five and six, together, were just awesome. In four, they start out with extra lessons and end with Maka and Soul’s resonance and Witch Hunting. In five, they start with super creepy, super powerful scientist man with a nail through his head and glasses completely decimating Black Star and Maka and Soul and Tsubaki, and end with the whole thing just being extra lessons. In six, they start with Kid being late to school and end with Kid blowing the crap out of everything.
One word: Awesome!
As strange as it sounds, the best part of watching something like Soul Eater is that it’s fine to act like you’re seven. I mean, when I was seven, I used to clap furiously like one of those vapid seals in the water park whenever Goku pulled off a Kamehameha wave. And I still clap furiously like one of those vapid seals whenever Maka pulls off Witch Hunting, or whenever Kid blows everything to hell with his cannons.
And the other best part of watching something like Soul Eater is how hilarious the show is. You can’t have a good shonen anime without the hilarity. Dragon Ball, Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, even Gurren Lagann (which I hesitate to call simply shonen) all have their fair share of humor. Episode five was the biggest laugh in the world. For a while there, I was seriously concerned for their safety. Black Star just got his brain fried, Witch Hunting failed, and Kid forgot to fold the corners of his toilet paper. It’s only episode five, where’s my miracle!? And, then God parts the Red Sea Stein tells Soul that they passed their extra lessons. Extra lessons, ahahaha, I still get a kick out of that.
Stein is a character of particular interest. When he first showed up and I still had him down as evil villain of sorts, my fangirl self pegged him as my next anime crush. What’s not to love about a crazy, psychotic, sadistic scientist with a fetish for dissecting things? He also brought up the whole issue with seeing souls. I thought it was rather cute that the soul is a little, glowing ball that share distinct physical features with the owner. Kid’s soul has his three distinct strips, Stein’s soul has a nail sticking out of its head and Shinigami-sama’s soul is so bloody big that the camera needs to zoom out to catch the whole thing.
By the end of episode six, you’ve got a couple characters anchored as super powerful mentor figures, Stein, Shinigami-sama, and Maka’s dad. This really reminds me of Fullmetal Alchemist sometimes, where Stein ends up being Roy Mustang and Maka and Soul are Ed and Al. Maka and Soul are the ones with latent potential, Black Star and Tsubaki have their thing going on, Kid is just powerful by default. And, sometime soon, something big, something potentially world threatening is going to happen and they’re going to save the world, twice maybe, it’s a year long, fifty some odd episodes show.
And, like any other good shonen series, it’s got the character bonding moments. Ever since episode one, Maka and Soul were just playing off their relationship as weapon and technician and as friends and as, possible, love interests. They’re almost overdoing it with the Maka x Soul thing, but they’re trying to be subtle and it makes really sweet moments like at the end of episode six all the better.
Sometimes, I have the feeling that Black Star’s slap across the face is going to be something bad happening to Tsubaki. I can almost see it in my head, the look on Black Star’s face, Iwaski’s music in the background (which, if I haven’t mentioned already, fits the series to a tee) and the sudden epiphany. Then, he pulls off one of his assassin moves.
It’s tempting, at this point, to say that Soul Eater is probably my favorite show of the season. Of course, I haven’t been exactly following Kurenai and Kaiba, the two other big contenders. But I’m sure they’re not going to rival my love for Soul Eater, which, for a brief moment, reminded me how awesome it was to be a kid, to clap like a vapid seal, to watch Saturday morning cartoons, and how awesome it was when someone’s power level goes over 9,000. It’s corny, it’s cheesy, and after feeding myself pseudo-intellectual shows with their metaphysical babble, deep soul searching moments and mindfuck endings, I tricked myself into thinking that maybe I outgrew the shonen genre. Wrong. Dead wrong. This stuff right here is the stuff I live for.
I just realized, I haven’t really said anything about Kid, or about his cannons. Awesome!
Take it from me, there’s no out-growing the shonen genre. If anything, it just gets worse. I mean, I absolutely love anime like Soul Eater. I know it’s kinda superficial and kinda stupid, but its fun, stylish and honest too. It reminds me of the early episodes of Gurren Lagann, and just imagine how awesome (never a more apt word for anime like Soul Eater and Gurren Lagann) it would be if Soul Eater suddenly skipped 10 years into the future. Anyway, great review, totally convinces me that I’ve made the right decision to watch it.