Summary:

Riding through the halls underneath Shibusen in an attempt to catch up to Eruka and Free, Kid is stopped briefly when he reaches a field of bombs floating in the air. He’s disgusted by the lack of uniformity in the arrangement of bombs, and he only manages to get past after Patty authoritatively tells him to. Back down the long passageway, Maka uses her new-found power and fighting style to go toe-to-toe with Chrona, but the madness is literally overwhelming Soul. Inside of herself, the calm Maka uses this chance to match her soul wavelength with Chrona’s, and this brings her to a desert world where she finds a young Chrona. At around this same time, out in Death City, Blair is having no problems handling the members of the Mizune family. The witches, however, combine and transform into a single larger woman, so Blair transforms into her human appearance as well. Stein meanwhile is questioning what Medusa plans to do with Chrona once she revives the Kishin. Medusa replies that Chrona is useless and a failure since Chrona was raised without any independence, and her plan to throw Chrona away infuriates Maka’s father.

At this moment, Maka is watching over a young Chrona who is in the desert world wondering what to do. Chrona draws a circle in the sand around herself to mark her own area, but she does nothing more than just sit down inside this circle until her shadow appears. The shadow starts asking Chrona about herself and tries to delve into how Chrona feels, but Chrona passes on answering any of the questions. The shadow eventually suggests that Chrona doesn’t know how to interact with others and can only repeat self-denials, and it decides that they’re at their limit, so it disappears. This leaves Chrona alone to think about how Maka had introduced herself before their battle, and that particular time, Chrona was able to answer with her own name. To Chrona’s surprise, young Maka suddenly appears. Chrona tries to prevent Maka from entering the circle in the sand and reveals that she feels secure when she’s in it since she can’t interact others, but Maka walks inside anyway and proceeds to erase the circle. This leads to Chrona to start screaming back in the real world, and her body goes crazy due to a rejection reaction.

With Soul’s help, Maka is able to regain control of her body in the real world, and she then approaches Chrona without her weapon. Despite all the spikes shooting out of Chrona, Maka calms Chrona and hugs her. She now understands Chrona’s wavelength, and she feels that it’s not that Chrona doesn’t know how to interact with others – it’s that there was no one was close to her. Because of this, she asks Chrona to be her friend, and Chrona breaks down in tears.

ED Sequence

ED: 「Style.」 by 西野カナ (Nishino Kana)
Watch the ED!: Mirror, Streaming
The ED was updated to reflect the fact that Maka and Chrona have become friends. I prefer the original version because it felt much more polished and because the blue & green colors are more appealing than red, but this is cute nonetheless.

Preview

Well the whole friends thing felt a bit sappy at first, but they ended up doing quite a good job making it an emotional scene. I loved the background music that went with it, and the symbolism of the water finally appearing in the desert was a nice touch. It was a really nice way to end the Chrona vs. Maka fight, and barring any more surprises, I guess this means that Chrona will be joining the Shibusen group since Medusa clearly doesn’t want her. I’m still not a huge fan of the Maka vs. Chrona match-up in general, but it’s hard to dislike it too much when it ends on such a high note. What I do get excited about though are the upcoming battles, especially given what the preview shows.

On a random side note, I find it amusing that SOUL EATER has no problems with the touching of breasts, yet Zero no Tsukaima does. I guess the ZnT producers really want the audience to go out and buy the uncensored version.

66 Comments

  1. Soul Eater has experienced more than it’s fair share of censorship (in fact, the combined Mifune’s outfit is cropped lower compared to the manga; the mummy scene in episode 3 was censored, etc). Also, as of now in the manga, Chrona’s gender is still unidentified.

    Can’t wait for the next couple episodes.

    PhantomX
  2. @Mukizu

    No we don’t. The English language doesn’t have a word for genderless people, so the scanlators gave Chrona one (and it’s varied among groups and even among chapters). The gender is thusfar unknown, that’s how the manga artist wants it.

    PhantomX
  3. well, I think that’s Chrona’s a girl because of her name ending with a “a” xD and Chrona’s wearing a dress. But I think the author made Chrona’s gender unspecified on purpose for the readers to guess Chrona’s gender so later when the gender was revealed, we’d all go “whaaat?”

    AznCoffee
  4. @Nin-Mage

    This is a mistranslation. Chrona is thus far without gender, but the SCANLATORS wanted to put it that way. Scanlations are by no means 100% faithful to the original, and this is a mistake that has caused a lot of misconception. Chrona has no gender yet, and it’s no good to use scanlations as proof of otherwise.

    Yolie
  5. Well, it is true that Chrona’s gender is yet to be revealed but when I saw his/her name and his/her appearance I immediately thought he/she is a girl, mainly because of the fact that he/she is wearing a dress and Chrona sounds like a female name – my native language is greek and so in greek chrona is the female name of chronos – time. Oh yeah and in the manga I remember a scene where Ragnarok flashed Chrona’s panties. But I could always be wrong since it’s pretty obvious the mangaka is doing this on purpose – in episode 15 Patty asked: “Is that kid a girl or a boy?”

    Hakken
  6. They actually kept the Blair vs. Mizune scene? Wow, I thought for sure after they cut the pantie interrogation scene out after the Cid fight, that scene would of gotten the ax too. Glad they kept it in though, it was a great moment in the manga.

    Islaya
  7. People with no knowledge of Japanese or those who haven’t read the RAW version of the manga shouldn’t discuss the facts in the manga as many of them are distorted by the translators. I only have intermediate knowledge of Japanese, yet I find so many translation mistakes in many scanlations as many of them are done by amateurs.

    Anyway, Medusa calls Chrono ‘So no Ko’ or ‘Kodomo’, which are gender-neutral words as they just mean ‘child’. I haven’t read the whole manga yet, but unless Medusa explicitly calls Chrona ‘Musune’ which means daughter or ‘Musuko’ which means son, Chrona gender will be up to the reader’s decision.

    Rafael
  8. astridstarr00// It would be nice if you can tell me where it is mentioned. But Wikipedia article hasn’t specified Chrona’s gender yet, so I have been assuming that it has not been revealed yet.

    Rafael
  9. Yeah, she says Ko instead of musume. As far as the pantie scene with Ragnarok it’s been a while since I’ve read that part of the manga, does anyone know where it is?

    I’m actually in my senior year at college and come spring I’ll have a degree in Japanese. 🙂

    Ally
  10. I’ve actually liked this fight(Maka vs. Chrona) and focus on Chrona. ~
    It’s nice to see that Maka and Chrona become friends.
    Unlike many,I like referring to Chrona as a male. Chrona is obviously different..
    so unless I get some confirmation about him being female I’ll continue to address Chrona as a ‘he’.
    You just gotta love the expressions on Soul Eater.Priceless. XD

    Kalulu
  11. The kid Maka and kid Chrona always looks cute. This is my space and then Maka erases the circle, lolz. So annoying that Chrona’s gender is still unknown. Gawd, I hope they put up a filler episode, where Ragnarok happens to undress Chrona and shows if he/she has breasts or is wearing a panty or something. That should give us an idea enough to tell what Chrona really is…

    the burnt shadow
  12. If you don’t know gender you default to MALE. So if the chick you have the hots on is a dude you don’t turn out gay!

    Anyways … this 26 episodes? It’s taking its sweet time getting anywhere memorable though still one of the very very few shows I am enjoying.

  13. Boring episode, boring fight. Where was the foot on face on scythe? What’s with the censoring? I guess from here on, Maka’s just going to be one weak gal (think moustache and beard) while the rest of the gang continue to improve.

    Jayars
  14. omg your right I LOVED the music that played when maka enters Krona’s circle. If you listen carefully you can tell that it is a sort of classical variation of the ending chorus segment of black stars theme!

    Arcilios
  15. i seriously cant wait for the OST for soul eater, does anyone know when it will be out? I read from a few forums that it will be out on the 28th of august but no one is sure? can anyone fill me in ? :]?

    Arcilios
  16. im so happy!, any solid sites to get it from? ive heard of cdjapan but not 100% sure its ok, amazon.ca/.com has worked before, i actually want to buy this ost instead of downloading it lol… soul eater ost here i comeee

    Arcilios
  17. There aren’t any OST releases in my country so sadly I’ll have to be a bad person again and download it, but cannot wait to get it anyway 🙂 I dunno about certain sites, I guess I’ll catch it via torrents a bit later after release 🙂

    MxM
  18. If you can find out the ASIN (like ISBN reference numbers) you can type that into any language Amazon site and get the option of importing it. I’ve already ordered it, Maka and Soul’s character CD and pre-ordered the next two. Here’s a link to the OST: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001C18KPS

    To find the ASIN go to the Amazon.com’s Japan site and type in what you’re looking for. Scroll down and there ya go. 🙂

    Ally
  19. No problem. 🙂 I import a lot, but for some reason Amazon won’t let you just type in Soul Eater and come up with anything aside from the first DVD…However if you know Katakana and can spell Soul Eater when you put it in the Japanese Amazon site you get all kinds of things. It’d be nice if they made things overlap a bit so you wouldn’t have to go around your bum to get to your elbow.

    Ally
  20. i loved this episode. Chrona is a favorite of mine, so it was nice to see ‘it’ make a friend at last. :] i also teared up just a bit!

    i’ve considered Chrona gender neutral. despite using ‘ore’ or ‘boku’ when referring to itself, neither genders seemed to fit just right. and just because it’s wearing a ‘dress’ doesn’t automatically make it a girl. for the longest, women were not allowed to wear pants. when a girl wears jeans, do you assume she’s really a boy? of course not!

    i think the anime subbers have done an excellent job of neutrality thus far. :]

    Braeden
  21. I was actually disappointed this episode. I was SOOOOO looking forward to the fight scene, especially the stab to the head and scythe sharpening using Chrona’s face.
    I wonder if the Late Night edition would change that scene? Probably not…

    Crimson7
  22. Well in the same episode, when Chrona went berserk and had spikes coming out of his/her body, the bird’s-eye-view shot shows Chrona screaming… and the spikes are coming underneath her–would you believe it?–bust. A very flat one at that. Or so I think. And doing his/her voice is Maaya Sakamoto (the one who sang Loop for Tsubasa Chronicles). Despite this, I do still think Chrona is a boy. And in the manga scanlation, the proper term for it was “Chrona is my own child.” not “daughter”… Chrona, therefore, up to this point, shall remain genderless. And thus, shall be called a hshe. (it’s like She, with an h up front. possessive form: hisher. objective form: himher–btw, don’t destroy me. It’s informally used… 😛 If you have anything else to call himher, that would be nice.) And I suppose Chrona’s only wearing a dress because… well you’re not so sure if it’s an actual dress. It might just be a robe or a cloak. hshe’s wearing this because… what else does a child of a witch wear? Hshe’s technically a witch/wizard, so why not? Or something.

    A boy in a dress would be awesome though. XD Reminds me of Haruhi’s father (Ouran). It might be one of the reasons Ragnarok bullies himher so much.

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