First Impressions / SOUL EATER

Summary:

Having arrived at Dr. Franken Stein’s lab, Maka and the others are greeted by the man himself after he stumbles out of the door on his office chair. When they confront him about what he’s doing, Stein explains that his motives are observation and research. In fact, he considers everything in the world to be research materials, and he immediately notices that Maka and Soul’s soul wavelengths aren’t stabilized. Black*Star doesn’t care about this and attacks, but Stein blocks and counters the moves without ever leaving his chair. As he battles Maka and Black*Star, Stein suddenly remembers that Maka is the daughter of someone called Spirit. Maka recognizes that name as the one that her father had before becoming Death Scythe, and as it turns out, Stein had experimented on her father. Stein then charges at her while still in his chair and knocks her down with just the palm of his hand.

Death the Kid is watching the battle with his father and is shocked to see this because it means that Stein hit his opponent without amplifying his soul’s wavelength through a weapon like other meisters have to do. Maka is so rattled by this move that she wildly charges at the now standing Stein, and he easily sends her flying back with just a burst of energy from his hand. Stein then grabs Maka and starts thinking about cutting her open. Fortunately for her, Black*Star then jumps back into the battle and reveals that Stein isn’t the only one who can directly attack with his soul wavelength by using his Big Wave attack. However, this has almost no effect on Stein because he had already figured out Black*Star’s soul wavelength, matched his own to that, and nullified the power of the attack. Stein counters by using his power to fry Black*Star’s head, leaving the boy a bloody unconscious mess.

The combination of Black*Star’s defeat and the enormous soul she sees in Stein shocks Maka so much that she no longer believes that they can win. Soul, however, refuses to accept the idea of giving up before fighting and tells her that she only saw Stein’s soul, not the future. He also points out that Stein is actually waiting for them, and all this convinces Maka to keep fighting. She and Soul immediately initiate a Resonace of Souls and charge up Witch Hunter attack, but Stein halts it with his bare hands. After much struggling on both sides, Stein is able to shatter the attack, and he approaches the defeated Maka. Soul is quick to protect her, but to his and Maka’s surprise, Stein suddenly announces that he’s giving them passing grades. Apparently he had been asked by Shinigami-sama to administer their supplementary lessons, and this all was part of that.

The following day, the group attends class, still tired from their supplementary lessons. To their shock, Dr. Franken Stein shows up – in his chair – as their new teacher.

Preview

So it was a head fake after all – all that just to teach Maka and company a lesson. I really liked the fight – Stein using the office chair part was every bit as great as I hoped it would be, and it’s a shame he couldn’t spend the entire battle in it – but I’m a little disappointed because I was hoping that this would be the start of a bigger story arc with either Stein or someone else as the villain and/or more about Maka’s mother. Instead, this was merely a cool battle that had more explanation about soul wavelengths, and it basically resets at the end with the only difference being Stein as the new teacher. That’s not necessarily bad thing since it’s still relatively early in the series, but what I’m really interested in seeing from now on is the development of something more involved in the overall plot.

As for Stein, I really like his character, but why the heck does he keep needing to screw his head? Is that to power his soul or something (his soul apparently has a screw in it too)? Since he’s a good guy now, I wonder if we’ll be seeing him putting his apparently amazing powers to good use for the students. For the time being though, it looks like next episode is about Death the Kid attending the school and going up against both Black*Star and Soul. Hopefully the story pacing will pick up a bit.

32 Comments

  3. @Brooklyn Otaku

    You’re reading a blog that summarises Anime episodes, are you really that dense as to not expect spoilers?

    Spoiler alerts only apply to something that hasn’t aired yet, information from manga for example.

    Ashan
    Reply

  8. when I read your previous anime summary, I knew you didn’t read the manga. Well somehow I love how you dared on a risky gamble, but I must admit reading the manga chaps gave me the same feeling: dr. stein being a villain but eventually he isn’t

    omni you’re doing a great job and reading the manga or not, is your choice but I’ll keep following your summaries 🙂

    legno
    Reply

  12. maka’s dad is so…sad. i’m curious to know what kind of person his ex-wife is! how would she stack up to stein? chair-fighting *_* i hope she makes an appearance later. anyway his watching the fight seemed so random last episode but i love how they showed kid wanting to help maka and black☆star! even though he doesn’t make it lol. kid seems to have a sense of justice but doesn’t act too cooler-than-thou about it (too busy being ocd), that’s actually rather refreshing.

    mu
    Reply

  13. I really like how they’ve handle the series thus far keeping it to one chapter per episode (chapters are released monthly so there pretty long ) and keeping the animation high quality through out. Had this been like Bleach or D. grayman they could have easily dragged this fight out across 4 episodes.

    phatmlrd
    Reply

  28. another great ep…there were a few priceless moments for me in this ep…one being stein doing his chair thing..i cracked up the 1st time i saw it and everytime he did it it just got better and better…the other moment was when death the kid had another spastic obsessive complusive moment when he couldn’t remember if he folded the ends of his toilet paper…
    omg…
    just too funny…
    i am starting to like his seiyu even more and more (i was already a fan of mamoru [sp?] anyway, but he is really doing a great job with this character and i think he is really enjoying it…my other fav character is soul..i love how loyal he is to maka…just a good natured dude

    Whatchamini
    Reply

  31. I love this episode. I really find it funny everytime Liz laughs at Death the Kid when he gets depressed. I know I would laugh at Kid when he gets depressed. The fight with Stein was awesome. I still can’t wait for the main story to start!

    panaghoy88
    Reply

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