First Impressions / SOUL EATER

Summary:

Although she thinks that BREW has stopped working, Arachne moves forward with her plans. Her scientists have continued developing morality manipulating machines, and Mosquito reports that they’re at the final phase. This means that they’re close to completing the madness amplification device and have set up relay stations around the world. Given that, Arachne sends out all of her spiders for what she calls the first step of their prosperity. Back at Shibusen, Soul is the most reflective of the group on their failure, but Maka’s mind dwells on the majin gari, and she decides to talk to Shinigami-sama about it. Kid meanwhile has already skipped out on class because of all the questions he has about why they were sent to fight and what Eibon’s relation to his father is. Since his father avoids having to talk to him about, Kid takes things into his own hands. Knowing about the investigation, Sid tells Shinigami-sama about Kid’s suspicions and is curious himself about what Shinigami-sama is doing, but Shinigami-sama refuses to reveal anything. Shinigami-sama then gets called by Maka who’s wondering about what Mosquito had said about a demon extermination wavelength back during the battle. Shinigami-sama responds by praising Maka for her newfound ability and compares her to her mother who also had this special wavelength. He even suggests that she could beat the Kishin with this and urges her to work hard, leaving Maka more determined than ever.

During lunch, the mood is still grim because of the group’s loss, and Maka is concerned about Stein. When Crona hears about what happened, she questions if it was her fault because of what she did for Medusa. After lunch, Maka takes Soul out for some special training, but no matter how much they try, they can’t recreate the majin gari. They eventually stop for the day without any success, but Soul feels that it’s fine since bringing out the majin gari once before means they can definitely do it again. Crona watches them for a while before heading off to report to Eruka, and Eruka attributes what happened to Stein to the snake that Crona put inside of Marie. This plus the mention of Medusa’s name shakes Crona to the core. By now, Kid has arrived at Stein’s house and interrogates the man about what his father plans to do with BREW. Although still mentally unstable, Stein questions what Kid is going to do with the information, and this leads the two into a long discussion about the reason and logic behind Kid’s motivations. After Marie interrupts them, Kid asks Stein about Shibusen being the ones falling the furthest behind, but Stein disagrees and claims that Shibusen isn’t such a naive organization. Unbeknownst to them, Shinigami-sama has already called upon an advisor to the Oceania technological development department named Buttataki Joe.

Preview

I apologize for not posting this earlier. I had watched the episode right before I left on my trip, but I didn’t have time to write it up until now. I’ll get caught up with everything else – including this week’s episode 38 of Soul Eater – once I return home in a couple of days.

For something that was anime original, this wasn’t a bad episode, but it didn’t really present much stuff directly important to the plot either. We know that Arachne isn’t going to sit by idly, that Crona is still conflicted, and that Maka and Soul probably can’t bring out the majin gari unless they’re in a dire situation. The rest of the episode was with Kid’s discussion with Stein, and I’m tempted to call all of it unnecessary fluff because Stein didn’t really reveal anything. I guess you could say it’s character development in that it lets you see how the two of them think, and in fact, the episode had a bit of character development across the board. In any case, my point is that this was a decent transition episode, but the more interesting stuff is yet to come now that Buttataki Joe has appeared. As this episode demonstrates though, the BONES team is pacing things differently from the manga, so there might yet be some surprises.

18 Comments

  3. It’s going to be just like the Fullmetal Alchemist anime. Different from the manga, but still as brilliant! I wonder if the Soul Eater anime is going to bring out any characters from the video games.

    Keroro21
    Reply

  5. 1st!! 1s-…NOOO I am not 1st, I shall now go kill myself in shame….

    Anyway, I don’t like this going-off-the-manga thing =_= clown arc was OK methought, and I really hope they have enough time to do the proper ending, since the manga…well I can’t tell if it’s close to the end or not>,<

    KonaKona4
    Reply

  6. nah they probably will have to do an anime original ending sice in the manga there are stil bear plotlines they need to finish such as stein and his madness, crona, the kishin, archane and in the manga some new bad guys have come up as well who is pretty cool in my opinon and weve still got the black blood in maka and soul theres still a hell of a lot more to sort out before a proper ending so there will be a different one unless they do a series two which i hope so

    bigga
    Reply

  7. Well they have to pace before the long operation chapters since they’ve almost caught up close to the manga, which really at this point would not leave to a good end in the anime due to the major cliff hanger.

    Machi
    Reply

  8. Yes, I am waiting to see how BONES will end the anime version as compared to the manga, since it is interesting that they have deviated from the manga twice now, in episodes 36 and then 37. So far, BONES has not really disappointed, so I anticipate both the anime and the manga versions of this series.

    Panther
    Reply

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