Soul Eater (Preview)
In which I start down a bad path
Ever wonder what pure execution looks like?
People talked a lot last season about the obvious highlight, True Tears, being a victory for execution over brilliant ideas. And it’s true: believable characters, subtle interactions, and emphasis on mood and atmosphere made it more than a typical anime romance, even if the story was basically unremarkable. But what happens when the Shonen/action genre is executed with that kind of skill? Well, obviously subtle and believable are not the words you’d still want to be using.
Substance will make a drama work, but action needs Style. And hypothetically, I’d require a ton because I hate action shows. I swear to god my wife watches more InuYasha than I do, and she’s a fairly normal person when it comes to TV (not to mention has never fallen into the Shonen demographic — I hope — and is neither fat nor crushing on Richard Cox. But I digress, as the thought of InuYasha always makes me do). I have tried so many times to enjoy Bleach (why?), only to realize that half-hour could be better spent waxing my nipples.
So why am I so stoked? You’ve probably heard by now, but BONES’s Soul Eater (based on the manga) is so fat with style (and with no small amount of RAD) that it’s threatening to pop out of its drawers.
Story
Shibusen University or something to that effect was founded by Shinigami-sama to create death weapons to stop the world from falling out of balance and being devoured by diabolical demon thingies called Kishin. Each weapon must feed on souls to gain its power, and travels with a human partner. Soul Eater is such a weapon in training, and Maka is his human partner. In order to become a full fledged Death Scythe, Soul Eater must eat 100 messed-up souls, but the final one must be a witch’s.
Shinigami-sama watches on as they make their attempt at number 100, alongside Maka’s dad, a Death Scythe himself who’s in the process of becoming estranged from his wife and daughter (he’s got a cheatin’ heart).
Thoughts
This thing is fucking wild! As is typical of the genre, there’s a very simple premise and a series of systems and rules for making things needlessly and superficially complicated. Also, people talk at each other a lot during fights. But there’s that execution. Of course I love BONES, they might be my favorites in fact, but here they’re attempting to outdo themselves. They’ve forsaken any concessions to reality in favor of a highly stylized and over-the-top version of their unmistakable look. Traditional animation is mixed with CG, but just to make 3D cartoons — it’s a billion years removed from Macross Frontier’s high-tech slickness or Blassreiter’s awful awful awful video game outtakes.
Comedy-wise, it’s a lot less successful. It remains to be seen how strongly they’ll rely on visuals, since jokes aren’t very good and only sight gags seemed to really pull off well.
The previously mentioned subs were actually not far off from my minimum requirements, I’m guessing speed was on their minds more than proofing. But beggars and choosers, all that.
All in all, it’s dumb as hell but it’s dumb fun — I’m happy to have seen it, and I officially want more.
RahXephon’s story is so big and epic, in fact, that it barely fits into 26 episodes and would hardly come close to fitting in a paragraph recap. But here are the basics. The Earth has been invaded by transdimensional beings called the Mu, either recently or thousands of years ago. Ayato, a 17-year-old kid with a head for not much other than painting, is blasted out of Tokyo — which happens to be a fictional world with time-displacement issues, sort of a Matrix in a bubble — by a woman named Haruka who works for a strange paramilitary type organization called TERRA. Apparently, they’re charged with saving the world from the Mu, and he’s the key to operating their secret weapon: a giant semi-organic “robot” called RahXephon.
Character design and animation is not going to surprise you if you’re a fan of BONES. Clearly this is the style many of us loved with Cowboy Bebop and that they further refined with the later Eureka Seven. Characters have an appealing look, the living robot designs are cool as hell, and the dolems are more disturbing than the faceless Angels of Evangelion. And to top it off, the visual inspirations from Mayan art and Rene Magritte paintings are a unique touch.
And that’s the other bit. Aside from its disdain for the viewer, Eva’s contempt for humanity is its greatest marker. It’s stacked with hate and utterly devoid of characters to love. RahXephon, on the other hand (much like BONES’ successor Eureka Seven) is chock-full of noble, likable, well-made characters. Eva condemns ambition and regret, while RahXephon celebrates love — romantic, familial, and for the world.
I’m not 100% on this yet, but I’ve only just now seen RahXephon, and it’s in my head right now as one of my favorite animes ever. Perhaps it surpasses Eva, but perhaps not — even though I don’t consider it too directly inspired, it probably still wouldn’t exist without the forerunner.
