Summary:

As their fight begins, the question that Mifune has for Black*Star is if he’s going to go down the path of the sword or the path of the demon. The answer doesn’t come until Black*Star is forced to go into youtou mode, and the bad vibes that Black*Star gives off make Mifune think that he chose the path of the demon. Black*Star, however, doesn’t care about anything but winning. Seeing the star in Black*Star’s eyes, Mifune is reminded of White*Star: a long time ago, Mifune had fought White*Star, and White*Star had only cared about winning as well. White*Star had subsequently lost the battle with the darkness inside of himself and had become something of a monster. Mifune tries to use this as a lesson for Black*Star, but Black*Star believes that White*Star lost because his soul was weak. With Black*Star refusing to let someone else tell him what to do, Mifune finally decides to finish the kid off, and he leaves Black*Star lying in a pool of blood.

Meanwhile, the Shibusen forces are advancing on Baba Yaga’s Castle, and Ox, Kilik, and Kim don Arachnophobia garb to infiltrate the place. Seeing the coming threat, Arachne orders Mosquito to use the powerful cannon on top of the castle, and it’s able to wipe out an entire section of the surrounding forest. Back at Shibusen, Kid has arrived with the key, and he goes to BJ’s lab with it. Shinigami-sama is there as well, but Kid doesn’t want to hand over the key until he gets an explanation about what’s going on. To Kid’s surprise, his father agrees to tell him and explains that the key is Eibon’s final work, the demon tool Eibon. Shinigami-sama shows that the key can be used to summon Eibon himself, and once Eibon appears, Shinigami-sama asks to borrow the power of BREW. Since Kid wants to know how the two know each other, Shinigami-sama explains that Eibon was also one of the eight warriors a long time ago.

As for how Eibon came to be the authority on the development of demon tools, Shinigami-sama reveals that the research was originally for preserving order in the world. At a certain point though, Eibon’s research focused on immortality. To Kid’s shock, this last part is revealed by Excalibur, who had arrived at Shibusen earlier. Excalibur explains that Eibon started researching immortality in order to save his sick wife, but he couldn’t make progress, and that’s where Arachne came in. Shinigami-sama confirms all this and reveals that BREW came from the two’s combined research. With all this background information out of the way, Shinigami-sama wonders why Excalibur is here, so the sword explains that it’s so that he can see this with his own eyes. As if on cue, Eibon unlocks BREW.

Preview

Okay, that definitely wasn’t what I was expecting at all, either in terms of the Mifune vs. Black*Star fight or in terms of the Shinigami-sama/Eibon/Excalibur/Kid stuff. The fight itself between Mifune and Black*Star was really nothing special except for that one brief but dramatic moment of superb animation style where Mifune finishes Black*Star off. Other than that, it wasn’t anything we haven’t seen before. What I didn’t expect was that they’d work in White*Star, and while I liked how they paralleled father and son, it wasn’t all that important in the scheme of things, at least not yet. Theoretically, Black*Star needs to learn from it and grow as a character, and maybe getting knocked out will allow him to subconsciously do that.

As for the other half of the episode, I was disappointed to see that all the conspiracy buildup get waved away as BJ and Shinigami-sama needing to keep what they were doing a secret. I also felt like the audience was being trolled when Excalibur suddenly appeared and started explaining things – I don’t see why they needed to insert the comic relief for that role. Maybe this means though that we’ll get to see Excalibur in action again before this is all over. All that being said, the background story that was told wasn’t horrible (okay, so the part about Eibon’s wife was a bit weak), and I’m still interested in where all this is going and what they’re going to do with BREW. I also really wanna see Shinigami-sama fight again…

32 Comments

  1. this isnt bad, though it makes me wonder for the anime if theyve revealed 2 of the original warriors, could the other warriors be still alive too? or have any form of impact on the storyline like Eibon. expect BS to have a massive epithany or however it is spelt while he lies near dying and unlocks a new power

    Halbie
  2. Ahhh, bones and their “deviating from manga” route…

    First we had a MAID as the final villain for their FMAv1.

    Now we will have a damn Mummin as the final villain for their SoulEaterv1….

    UnknownVoice
  3. THIS WAS BULLSHITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT omfg they did such a bad job on this jesus christ. It was good until about episode 38 and then it just completely diverged from the story, what a piece of shit. The Black Star vs mifune fight was GODLIKE in the manga,I have ever seen such an epic battle in a manga, it was fucking splendid. This wanted to make me puke, in the manga black star did not lose the fight, he was not following his fathers path and also he had resolvedto take the regret and burden of all past warriors that had held the sword in his hands and follow the true way of the sword, the true path of a warrior. And this amazing character development came when BlackStar took a trip to Tsubaki’s home after he was defeated by Death the Kid. We see an amazing moment between Black Star and Tsubaki where he tells her his aspirations and feelings and the meaning of his name: Black Star, meaning the one who would bear the darkness of the world. He then goes inside of Tsubaki once again to face the true form of the demon sword and achieves the “Masamune purpose” then unlocking his true soul resonance with Tsubaki and the various Shadowstar katas and developed as a character , he was also able to unlock many forms of the demon sword that were uber impressive including the sexy as hell Shadowstar Zero Kata. The anime really fucked up on this one and I am severely disappointed and unimpressed. jesus…Hell Butadaki Joe or w.e the hell his name is GETS KILLED in the manga for gods sake, medusa doesn’t die she helps maka and soul find arachne who has become “insanity” and then Black star finishes mifune in an epic battle. Also we get to see Ox and kims love , as well as Kilik being frigging godlike with medusas vector boost, oh yeah anime only retards wouldn’t know what Im talking about.
    Soul eater anime is a piece of shit. wow…

    FUCKKKKKK the anime!!!!!

    Raithos
  4. hahahah hey Raithos, tell us how u really feel dude hehe, yep its different but F@ck it! it’s kinda like getting 2 for the price of 1. heck! maybe we’ll get an ending where some one wields excalibur and destroys the kishin. it’s almost over

    BROOKLYN otaku
  5. :O so this anime is still on !! I can’t belive it. I have to check it out again. But i never understood, why is there a night version and a day version? Lol. But I’ll check it out, or i’ll pick this up again.

  6. @Raithos: Black Star had to lose at this point because he hasn’t had the development he did in the manga yet, but the anime isn’t over. At least dial down the ranting until we see where they’re going with all this, some of it is just coming off as “they changed it now it sucks.”

    Kira-chan
  7. black star loosing was a present for me. and yes, i know he killed mifune in chapter 58.

    v1cious:”definitely not liking the direction they’re taking Black Star”

    Well, I’m not liking the direction they’re taking STEIN, SOUL, MEDUSA, and other bunch of characters that i really like.
    Black Star sucks a lot (you all just like him because he’s strong :D). Btw his fight with Mifune in the manga was epic.

    excaliburz
  8. and on a diff note I know that makas mom is one of the 10 legendary warriors, but I wonder who else was there?, seriously they had too many fillers and now they are trying to cram everything into the last few episodes which leads to weak climax fights and crappy endings :S

    Raithos
  9. @ Raithos
    They can’t go into that much detail unfortunatley, as this was always planned to be a 51 ep series. They had to draw a line at some point and take the story in their own direction.
    I think they’ve done a decent job so far and it’ll be interesting to see how they wrap this up.
    It’s just a shame they don’t seem to have the balls to kill characters off. The Medusa battle would have had so much more meaning if Crona had actually died for the sake of her friend rather than magically surviving.
    Hopefully they don’t go the happy ending route where they defeat the Demon God and everyone lives happily ever after. I want some epic death scenes! ^_^

  10. @Raithos

    Take it easy, anime ain’t over yet and blackstar can’t win cause he hasn’t went through the character development part yet

    BTW where the hell did you pick up with Maka’s mom as being one of the ten legendary warriors?

    for one thing it was EIGHT legendary warriors. then before that, these warriors existed in the time before shibusen. So were you suggesting maka’s mom being a couple hundred years old (which IS possible but probably untrue)

    Crazyguy
  11. if excalibur is fighting doesnt that mean GG to Arachne’s team? especially if Shinigami-sama uses him? O_O well it looks good, still waiting for subs, but it looks like theres a definite path the anime is taking, i would still like to see BS’s black katar(?) mode and Deaths joined lines on his head,along with demon hunter surely thatd be enough to go on par with ashura?

    Halbie
  12. Wow, I’ll be honest; I thought this episode sucked. It was very long-winded and pointless and anti-climatic. I wish the fight was more dynamic and this episode had left out the unnecessary clutter like Excalibar.

    For some reason, I have a feeling that the next episode will be a lot better because of the note that it ended on. I never like watching Black Star’s moments anymore, though, so I didn’t care much for this episode as much as the last episode, which I felt had everything I wanted from Soul Eater pretty much in terms of fighting and dynamics.

    Kim
  13. If ppl are going to complain about how crap the anime route is they should GTFO as its pointless and a waste of time, and ffs can’t ppl use spoiler tags, some people might like to read the manga after the anime adaptation is over.

    @ZenZen
    it may take 5.5 years to remake FMA, but after 5.5 years FMA manga is still not over

    Darkfate

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