First Impressions / SOUL EATER

Summary:

After getting lost in the swamp around Medusa’s hideout, Crona and Marie finally find the place and make their way inside. When Medusa tries to crush them with a falling block, Crona fortunately saves Marie. Medusa then tries to make an appeal to Crona, but Marie doesn’t want to hear this about this farce. With Marie revealing that she’s no longer part of Shibusen and wants Stein back, Medusa questions what Crona is here for, and this reminds Crona of a similar conversation with Marie back when they were still traveling. Marie had implied that Crona would need to kill her mother, and Crona understood this. Crona had explained that she had always run away, and she felt that she needed to take responsibility for what she’d done. Marie, however, had warned that it wouldn’t be easy to regain lost trust. Thinking about it some more, Crona now asserts that she came here to stop Medusa for the sake of her friends.

On the topic of Stein, Medusa claims that he is there on his own free will, but Marie refuses to believe that. Medusa also claims that Stein is crazy about her, and she questions if Marie has a right to tear them apart. Tired of all this chatter, Medusa, Marie, and Crona get ready to fight and bring out their respective weapons. For Marie, it means turning her arm into a giant hammer. She’s able to stop Medusa’s Vector Arrows and recovers from being thrown back by a Vector Plate to destroy the platform that Medusa and Stein are on. Crona has less luck though going up against Medusa, but despite getting thrown around, she says that she doesn’t want to betray her friends or be Medusa’s tool any longer. Medusa still tries to convince Crona that she’s the only one Crona has and that Crona can’t betray her because Crona is her daughter, however Crona knows that she has to defeat her mother.

Given this, Medusa is ready to kill Crona, but she gets momentarily distracted by Marie. Medusa’s trump card here is siccing Stein on her, and Stein asks Marie to leave before he destroys her. He’s confused internally about what’s state he’s in, but he decides to abide by the new order inside of himself, and he attacks Marie. Medusa meanwhile uses her Vector Blade on Crona, and with Crona unable to counterattack because her soul wavelength with Ragnarok got messed up by Medusa, all looks lost. Fortunately, Maka and Soul show up and block Medusa’s killing blow.

Preview

Overall, this was a decent episode, though I wish there were a bit more action. In that regard, after last week’s preview, I was a little disappointed to see that Maka didn’t appear until the very end of this episode, but I have to say that all the stuff that there was to flesh out between Medusa, Marie, Crona, and Stein wasn’t entirely boring either. I was probably most excited to see Marie finally in action with her hammer hand (which makes sense since her last name is Mjölnir), but it only lasted a short while as Medusa soon had the upper hand again. It does make me wonder though if Marie’s manga counterpart’s weapon form will look the same, whenever that ultimately appears. I also liked the fact that Crona was showing a lot more backbone, though in the end, Maka still had to save the day. I suspect that this probably means they’ll be playing up the friends theme a bit more and show that Crona doesn’t have to face her troubles alone, or something like that. Regardless, the preview shows that Crona will get hurt pretty bad and that Maka will be furious, so next episode should be a lot of fun. There’s also episode 46 to look forward to since it’ll have Black*Star vs. Mifune again.

28 Comments

  8. Interesting, so Black*Star and Mifune is confirmed to be coming again. It should be good. Marie’s form should not vary from the anime in the manga, since I am sure they would have at least asked the mangaka what her weapon was. Now I wonder if Crona will actually die.

    Panther
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  13. Looks horrible to be honest. I know this anime is popular because of it animation but take that out for a second and you’ll see how dull and stupid the whole plot really is. It’s so typical anime original it doesn’t even deserve a comment. I’m not going to ruin the joy of watching this for the rest of you who like it but come on, with a powerful Manga at its back they could have done much better. started good but went downhill really fast. Mleh…

    Multi
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  14. @Multi: I’ve been following both the anime and manga from the beginning, and I thought this ep was on par with some of the best of both. In any case it’s definitely the best anime original ep so far, and hopefully the next one will be even better from the looks of it.

    Kira-chan
    Reply

  16. Go Maka! Finally get to se Marie-sensei’s weapon form, or well a little bit. I knew she was a hammer, or at least an axe? Coz Azusa refered to her as the “Pulverisor” when they first came and she totaled the toilet (rofl). Ah, the last screenie reminds me of when they met Gillico when Crona went in front of Maka to fend off one of his attacks that would hurt/kill her :]

    Furuba
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  20. I don’t see Maka as being GAR. She’s just that typical “Fight for friends” type of heroine that you see in most anime/manga. I’d say Black Star and Kid give off more of the GAR type of vibe *especially with their little brawl*. And I don’t think Crona is just gonna get hurt badly. She (I’m saying Crona is a she but don’t quote me or anything, just my opinion) gets stabbed right through the stomach and seeing as how her blood shit doesn’t work anymore she’s prolly gonna become unconscious (maybe even die). The number one reason for me thinking like that is because of the title next week. To have a BLACK Taima no hachou would mean she’s REALLY pissed off. And I don’t think Crona just being badly hurt is gonna be enough to turn Taima into the black version.

    ROFLWAFFLELAWL
    Reply

  23. i think that what AznCoffee said is that maka’s the GAR-est FEMALE character. you know, we can’t see much more anime female characters like that, fighting, showing brave and blabla.
    actually she is not as powerfull as black star or kid, but for a GIRL, she already surpassed limits. that’s what i think!

    and sorry for my english.

    stage
    Reply

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