Summary:

When a costumed thief steals a bunch of souls, the person who chases after him is a dual pistol-wielding boy named Death the Kid. These pistols turn into his partners Liz and Patty, and the three strike a pose together to face the thief. Patty, however, doesn’t do it exactly right and gets yelled at by Kidd because he demands perfection. In fact, Kidd is so obsessed about perfection and symmetry that he doesn’t notice that the thief escapes. He’s instead too busy getting worked up over how Patty and Liz have different hairstyles, heights, and breast sizes while in human form. Liz gets pissed off because he gropes her and because her chest is smaller than her younger sister, and she depresses Kidd by pointing out that his appearance isn’t symmetrical either due to the three white stripes in his hair. After the girls make him feel a little better, Kidd contacts his father – Shinigami-sama – who notes that Kidd is already a Shinigami and doesn’t need to collect souls or raise weapons. Kidd, however, insists on precisely making his own weapons even though he’ll need double the number of souls to be able to cover both girls.

On the topic of collecting souls, Shinigami-sama sends his son to an ancient pyramid site where there is a witch reviving mummies. When he gets there, Kidd admires the pyramid’s symmetry and heads inside with Patty and Liz. While walking through the hallways though, he suddenly gets the feeling that a picture frame back at home might be leaning a little to the right, and it bothers him so much that he decides to head home to check. He leaves at an inopportune time because Patty and Liz come across hostile mummies, and the two sisters are thus forced to take turns using each other as weapons. While the two are fighting, the witch deeper inside the pyramid gets eaten by the pharaoh that she just resurrected. Patty and Liz eventually finish their fight by absorbing all the mummy souls and proceed all the way to the room where the witch was, but all that’s left of her is a severed hand. The two are then attacked by the pharaoh. Death the Kid meanwhile returns to the pyramid after having verified that the picture frame was level after all. Inside, he finds Patty and Liz being squeezed tightly by the pharaoh’s bandages, and after freeing them, he tries to face off against the pharaoh, but he can’t attack because the pharaoh’s sarcophagus is perfectly symmetric.

What ultimately saves Kidd is the pharaoh emerging from the sarcophagus to reveal a distinctly unsymmetric figure. He now has no problems using the full force of his abilities and completely destroys his opponent. In the aftermath, Kidd is distraught that the symmetric pyramid ends up collapsing, and to make matters worse, Shinigami-sama takes away all the souls he collected as punishment for that.

Preview

As much as I’ve complained in the past about Miyano Mamoru being overused and ubiquitous (though not as much as Fukuyama Jun), he really does a good job in the role of Death The Kid – better than I expected even. His voice just fits naturally into role, particularly for the mood swings that Kidd has.

In any case, this easily ends up as my favorite episode of the three prologue ones, but that doesn’t come as too big a surprise because I already liked Death the Kid the most from what I’ve read of the manga. He brings new meaning to the term obsessive-compulsive disorder with his obsession with perfect symmetry. Patty and Liz are fun to watch too – they don’t even need him around to be able to kick some ass. With the prologue now finished though, the focus shifts back to Maka and Black*Star for the beginning of the actual story, and if the preview is any indicator, there’s one big graveyard battle to look forward to.

44 Comments

  1. @BROOKLYN otaku: Well… no, you see, flipping one gun makes his stance isometrically symmetric about the center axis. Arguably there are an infinite # of points of symmetry there. Whereas holding both normally or upside down would only have 1 symmetric orientation.

    On that note, someone needs to give the poor kid a backhand across the face during his moments of OCD.

    Ekental
  2. yeah… i dont see the attraction.
    Another mental elementary school minded shinigami has an entirely suspenseless battle of no meaning or import, reset included in the end. I got that he was OCD in the first 10 seconds in the show, JFC please move on.

    I just cant get excited about this show: nothing is at stake.

    bananabanana
  3. I really like this animation style from soul eater.
    By the way if you wanna change link banners with me Omni so I can put on my homepage
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  4. @bananabanana
    “yeah… i dont see the attraction.
    Another mental elementary school minded shinigami has an entirely suspenseless battle of no meaning or import, reset included in the end.”

    Um, what? I’ve got no idea what you mean by your first point, but seems according to your second on eyou’ve missed the fact that was a comedic moment. They weren’t trying to be “suspenseful”.

    Not everything has to be “serious business”. If don’t like your welcome not to watch it.

    Dragoon
  5. @bananabanana
    “yeah… i dont see the attraction.
    Another mental elementary school minded shinigami has an entirely suspenseless battle of no meaning or import, reset included in the end.”

    Um, what? I’ve got no idea what you mean by your first point, but seems according to your second one, you’ve missed the fact that was a comedic moment. They weren’t trying to be “suspenseful”.

    Not everything has to be “serious business”, If don’t like your welcome not to watch it.

    Dragoon
  6. Oh geez, so he’s going to be regularly holding his guns upside-down? Good thing he has magic to deal with things like accuracy and recoil. Part of me is curious how well one could learn to aim holding a gun in such a way, but it’d probably a custom design for the pinky to comfortably reach the trigger, and that’s too much trouble….

    GDP
  7. I’d love to understand why this show is popular (beside the good graphics)

    maybe the first few eps are just introductory, and arent meant to be too serious… but they were really boring, i almost wanted to turn the sound off and stop listening to the words.

    I wont drop it yet, but someone please give me a hint of why this is so anticipated…

    bananabanana
  8. Biggest complaint so far is that it is more censored from the original manga (especially the scene at pic 19 in this episode, which is very revealing in the manga) but that is to be expected with the timeslot, and not really something I can complain about. The episode itself looks awesome, however.

    dan
  9. I have to agree w/ divine about being similar to Suou Tamaki (didn’t think about that). There are subtleties to Miyano Mamoru’s voice that don’t instantly give me flashback of other characters. Every time I hear Fukuyama Jun’s voice, I instantly think of Lelouch and it is becoming a distraction in other shows (especially in Spice and Wolf as Lawrence).

    To bananabanana, I don’t know what to say in that this is going to be a really well-animated, stylized shounen anime. Expect a lot of fast action, characters wanting to become stronger and going through trials to become stronger, and a liberal dose of comedy and fanservice. I am tempted to replace Naruto w/ this show (quickly losing interest w/ that series, would rather read the manga chapters).

    On a side note, they are really following the manga chapters to the letter. I’ve read the manga and can pretty much understand everything they’re saying in the raws.

    Jounin
  10. @bananabanana:
    Aside from the amazing visuals, I would say that Soul Eater’s main appeal is its unorthodox style and outgoing silliness, akin to Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. But yes, the first three episodes are meant to be introductory episodes for the main characters, so things should probably pick up from here on in. I don’t think this series is ever going to take itself too seriously though. (Doing so is just not its style.)

    @dan:
    There’s always the “Late Show” version of Soul Eater which airs on Thursdays after midnight (on the same week). When I checked out the first episode of the Late Show version, I only noticed a minor additional scene (with Shinigami-sama), plus a slightly different preview though. So if you’re interested, you might want to check out that version to see if that Liz/Patty scene is more revealing. Keep in mind that the Tuesday broadcast is aired during prime time (6:00pm), so it’s kind of expected that it would be censored a bit.

    divine
  11. Well, I’ll give it i shot.
    I really liked tengen toppa. (it seemed alot more.. adult than this show).

    Naruto is also in non-filler mode, and right now its actually pretty good.
    Excluding the fillers, its never been a tenth as goofy as soul-eater.
    The main characters in Naruto have motivations such as : intense loneliness, vengeful hatred, and a broken heart.

    The main characters in Soul Eater have these motivations: Want to be a cool guy, Want to be the biggest show off, want everything to be perfectly symmetrical.

    Naruto’s characters act within their motivations for their overall direction, but in the short term are fairly level-headed, and capable of rational thought.

    Soul eaters characters seem willing to allow themselves to be killed, or allow their missions to fail.

    Failures in Naruto mean characters deaths, permanent story line changes

    Failures in Soul eater (so far) seem to mean nothing. They dont follow up on them. Successes are similar: they result in in bosshuu regardless.

    bananabanana
  12. @bananabanana

    I like how you can decide everything about the characters in only 3 eps of 51 eps series, let’s not mention that we knew very little about Naruto’s gang at the beginning of the story some we still don’t know.

    Futhermore:

    “Naruto’s characters act within their motivations for their overall direction, but in the short term are fairly level-headed, and capable of rational thought.”

    The only people like in Naruto are Sasuke, Neji and Shikamaru.

    “Soul eaters characters seem willing to allow themselves to be killed, or allow their missions to fail.”

    Again all those moments were done comedic fashion. It’s seems you still don’tt get that.

    “Failures in Naruto mean characters deaths, permanent story line changes”

    Characters have failed a bunch of times and nobody has died, furthermore despite screwing up god knows how many timeto get Sasuke, Naruto hasn’t nor has else in the storyline.

    “Failures in Soul eater (so far) seem to mean nothing. They dont follow up on them. Successes are similar: they result in in bosshuu regardless.”

    What they get out of a mission in Soul Eater not any different than in Naruto. If they successed they in missions they get closer to their own goals and if they lose it might result in death, same as in Naruto.

    Dragoon
  13. Soul Eater doesn’t try be as serious Naruto, nor care to be(although it become darker as the show progess). It’s much close TTGL as Divine pointed out and comedy is one SE’s main strength, if you don’t like that (which seems be that case) you are welcome not to watch.

    Dragoon
  14. …. @whoever asked:

    Its infinitely symmetrical about a rotation. Imagine spinning those guns at the center so the revolution of the barrels forms a cylinder. All points on that cylinder relative to the barrels are now symmetrical.

    I’m going to now go curl up into a corner and die a little on the inside for pondering the symmetry of a shooting stance in an anime.

    … Pardon me

    Ekental
  15. Omni sir! Death the Kidd does not bring “new meaning to the term obsessive-compulsive disorder with his obsession with perfect symmetry.” If you read Agatha Christie novels, you’ll find the second most famous fictional detective in the world, Hercule Poirot has the same obsession with symmetry, although no where near Kidd in terms of how far this obsession clouded his rationale. I’m speculating that Soul Eater author is a fan of Agatha Christie. At any rate, both are hillarious (Kidd moreso since anime has more freedom for whacky characters).

    Anon
  16. haha death the kid was even more awesome than i originally expected! great character he is so much fun to watch as an obsessive compulsive freak! so basically the only character i don’t like is black star…
    well anyway, now i am very excited to see where the plot goes, cause this anime is so interesting…it could go basically anywhere at this point.

    Whatchamini
  17. oh and one more thing, i thought it was very interesting how each of the pairs have some sort of reason that makes them unable to reach the ultimate goal of becoming the “death sythe” …
    for soul eater and maka (that was her name right?) its that they made the mistake with blair
    for black star and his partner its because star keeps goofing off
    and for kid its the fact that he destroyed a pyramid…
    i don’t see any mention of kid in the next ep tho and that is sad, cause i am really looking forward to the three pairs’ interacting..we see so far that soul and star get along, but kid seems to be a whole different cup of tea…

    Whatchamini

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