Final Impressions / First Impressions / SOUL EATER

Summary:

Maka and Soul enter into a resonance of souls, but their power isn’t enough to hurt Ashura. It’s not until they power up to their version of Kishin Gari that they’re even able to cut into him, however Ashura is easily able to shatter this and heal his body. He then fires a blast at Maka, but Soul ends up protecting her. After getting beat up a bit more, Maka uses her own body to protect Soul, and despite getting knocked down, she gets back up. What’s different about Maka this time is that she has blades coming out of her own body, and Ashura realizes that it’s because she’s got weapon blood in her even though she became a meister. Ashura knocks her out of it by causing her great pain, and he tries to convince her that she’s got nothing left that can defeat him. Maka freaks Ashura out by saying that she’s relieved, and Black*Star and the others explain that Maka has courage to fight fear.

Remembering شجاعت (shaja’at – courage), the phrase that was written on the postcard from her mother, Maka refuses to back down and puts all the courage into her fist. Ashura doesn’t understand, and he finds himself unable to stop Maka from charging at him and punching him in the face. As Ashura’s face cracks, she explains that this wasn’t special and that everyone has courage. Right before he explodes, Ashura realizes that it’s the exact same as madness. In the aftermath, the sky clears up and everything seems fine again, but Kid warns that as long as there are people in this world, the negative feelings won’t disappear. He thinks that a new Kishin will show up in the future, but Maka feels that it’s fine because they’ll be there and because everyone has courage in their heart.

Ending

This turned out to be fairly good for an anime original ending. The action wasn’t just a rehash of previous battles and abilities, and the blades coming out of Maka were certainly an eye-opener even if they ended up being fairly useless. I had always wondered about how her father had been a weapon and she had ended up being a meister, and this shed some light on that (though I question the timing). And while the whole courage thing wasn’t the most exciting way to defeat Ashura – I’d even call it a little cheesy and cliche – I did like how they set up the theme of courage to counter madness. It was also good to see Shinigami-sama and Crona get some lines in, however the ending probably could have used a little more closure and epilogue. I was hoping they’d show Mifune teaching at Shibusen or something about Maka’s mother. Still, I enjoyed hearing the first ending song again, so I didn’t mind too much.

Final Thoughts:
It’s hard to believe it’s been an entire year since I started watching this show – time sure flies. In any case, I think BONES ended up doing a pretty good job with this considering that they had to make up their own ending. They managed to follow the manga pretty faithfully up to a certain point and then went their own way. And while the story didn’t end up always being the strongest point, the action sequences and music certainly were, so the animation team and composer Iwasaki Taku deserve some recognition. All in all, I’d say that SOUL EATER is far from perfect, but it probably ends up being a solid recommendation for anyone interested in seeing a well-produced action series.

78 Comments

  6. yes… ending is cheeeessssy…
    episode 50 built up so much for episode 51.. so i thought the end was a bit disappointing…altho i liked quality of this anime so all in all was good.
    Was hoping to get a little more out of Shinigami-sama =P

    Szetolf
    Reply

  9. I did not like this ending. As a “shounen” series with fighting focus, these guys have gotten nowhere. Death the Kid is still a kid (Shinigami stays!), Black Star did not really surpassed any gods (except that he has chosen his future way), and Maka…. well, okay, big fat loot comes out of killing Kishin, but that is all.

    I cant help but think that these episodes were merely a setup for a next season, with some real pathway shown for all these characters. Not sure when it will come, but the possibility is totally open. Not even one killed character. (Hell, they could not kill the zombie teacher, lol :D)

    I liked the series overall, but there was a huge list of possibilites from which nothing has been achieved.

    Oldern
    Reply

  10. Because of the ending I started to take interest in the manga. In the recent chapter of the scanlations Maka has a good transformation, her clothes change to black.

    panaghoy88
    Reply

  11. unbelievable how good animation can fool people like you. Good anime my fucking ass. it stole everything from the manga, twisted it, fucked it up and put it into animation. it was shit in every way. sometimes i even wonder how you define good anime but ah well, it’s just a personal opinion about a series, no big deal. still, the anime wass fucking stupid. Glad it ended.

    Manga
    Reply

  13. @Oldern, that’s because this anime is based off of a manga that’s still in serialization, they had to end it ubruptly due to lack of material work off off. If you want to find out those things, go read the manga.

    @Manga chill, lol. what were they supposed to do? travel forward in time to find out how the manga will eventually end? they followed it as much as they could until they ran out of material that they could at least half-way soundly bring to a close.

    noririn
    Reply

  15. The anime was good, but the ending was utterly lame. It’s so lame that i can’t find the words to comment on it. I mean common first we saw shinigami-sama come 2 save the day in a low budget version of Guuran Lagann. And then we see him het his ass kicked. After that we see upgraded versions of Maka, Kid & Blackstars and they get their ass kicked (what was pretty realistic). But after that we see Kinshin get defeated by a fist full of Courage. I just have one wordt for that ending: Whatever.

    I mean couldn’t they have chosen for an ending with a lot more bang. Like shinigami beating Kinshin or them beating him their combined powers?

    I will definetly NOT recommend this anime 2 anyone. Beacuse while the anime was good at the beginning and definetly brought something new to the genre. It turned more into a parody of the better shonen anime.

    oOSerginhOo
    Reply

  17. First half of the episode was everything I hoped it would be. Then the second half comes along, we have Maka as a Weapon, which ok, I can sort of follow, but then the ultimate villan is scared of Maka just because she has the courage to fight him and then gets defeated by one punch? lol. They lost me at that point.
    Hopefully they’ll at least do a movie or something so we can get some proper closure to the series, as we don’t even get to see a glimpse of what everything is like after this whole event, leaving many characters left in limbo.

    blinx01
    Reply

  19. Maka’s scream was epic! I remember having doubts about her VA in the beginning of the series, but it’s amazing how much she has progressed in the series. The voice acting has been nothing less than perfect since the halfway point.

    alster1985
    Reply

  20. I’m from Brazil and everyobody here hated this end.
    I love it, and hope the manga upgrade Maka like this too, she was amazing :3

    Wonder if anyone will say she’s weak now!

    excaliburz
    Reply

  21. Was a great serties up until #51. Then they pulled a Claymore and totally screwed up the ending. Seriously…. she finds courage and 1 shots him and its over? Whatever Bones was smoking when they thought that would make a good ending, I want you to send some to me. I also would have loved to see Crona and Excalibur show up to help as well. All Blackstar’s talk about surpassing god was just hot air too. He should just STFU about surpassing god cause he was pretty inefective vs. the Demon GOD.

    Splash
    Reply

  22. @ Splash
    LOL. Was probably more of a case of; “Shit guys, we’ve got FMA2 starting next week. Quickly make an ending up for Soul Eater and get it over and done with! Don’t worry! We can revist it in 5 years and do a remake based on the manga!”

    In all seriousness though, they could hardly have Black Star defeat the Demon God. Maka’s the main character, plus Black Star had his own conclusion when he defeated the destiny all Star Clan members met, and instead ended up on the path of the warrior. I thought that was a prety good conclusion for Black Star.
    The character I feel for the most is Death The Kid. He had no conclusion what-so-ever. For being the son of the Grim Reaper, you’d assume he’d play a bigger role than he did throughout the series. The best we got is showing a glimpse of his potential, but that’s not exactly much when the series ended an episode later…
    It was also pretty pointless Excalibur showing up, the strongest Weapon, and not evening lifting a finger when the world was in danger. Like everyone else, I wanted to see Crona weild him and back Maka up…
    Ah well, still a great series, but yet another anime with a half-assed ending…

    blinx01
    Reply

  29. yep time sure flies. the ending to me was standard shounen fare, BUT it was real light on the action and epiloge. yeah yeah i know the manga is still going, but they shoulda ended this with more excitement.. i mean i saw it yesterday and already forgot all about it. guess they cant all end like gurren lagann

    BROOKLYN otaku
    Reply

  30. Might have worked better if soul had been the one with blades of fury attacking kishin since it would have finished his character development as someone who could protect maka with her incapacitated. Still, wouldn’t have been too different if they planned the whole series out from the beginning since they didn’t drastically alter any of the characters. (Yes that is exactly what the kishin would be defeated by)
    Plus, both the manga and the anime have this feeling of subtle parody like a good south park episode

    smoke
    Reply

  32. @Splash
    Well I wouldn’t say they pulled a Claymore perfectly. Claymore made an original ending that resolved absolutely nothing. Soul Eater made an original ending that resolved a few things but in pretty stupid ways.

    Honestly this is just a sad ending to what was a pretty good overall anime. Making an original ending is no excuse to make a pretty pathetic ending. Maka’s fists of courage save the day? Seriously? Just have Shinigami beat the crap out of Asura. It would have made sense within the story that with Spirit he could win. Sure it means the kids don’t have the final time to shine but oh well.

    Soul is lucky he was unconscious for the chunk of the fight near the end. Or else he would have seen that he is completely pointless. Maka can defeat ultimate evils with bare hands and can turn into a far more impressive weapon than him.

    Just too bad the series stumbles into its conclusion. Would still recommend it since it was a worthwhile series to watch.

    FlareKnight
    Reply

  35. Well, okay, so this ending feels really like a setup for some sort of sequel. Not saying they’ll make any sequels, though. The ending’s just… really open-ended. ><

    Anyhow, does anyone else find it incredibly odd that Maka as a weapon is a better fighter than Soul as a weapon? Since when is it alright for the meister to be a better weapon than her weapon? xD

    Other than that, I would definitely like to see some more fighting with Maka using her own blades. I’m also somewhat disappointed that the black blood didn’t come into play more, but meh, I guess you can’t have your main character going insane in the last few episodes.

    Tari
    Reply

  36. @ Meister w/o weapon:
    Don’t forget about Justin and his single fighting style. He does not need a meister, but beats the crap out of Giriko. It’s the same with Maka! The only difference is that she did not know of her strength. WELL!

    For me the ending was also quite disapointing. I suggested that something lame would come, but that really fucked the anime up. Nethertheless I guess that there is also some kind of message: As madness is part of the soul, so is courage. In a matter of fact Maka was not much better than the Kishin since she was trapped on her own emotional level (courage). It’s the idea of having radicalized one emotion and in the end courage (positive) was stronger than madness (negative). LOVE > HATRESS FULSTOP!

    Dringala
    Reply

  38. For the record, having Shinigami sama beat Kishin would have been a much lamer ending. “Don’t worry kids, I’m here to save the day!” That would defeat the whole purpose of the show.

    Torint
    Reply

  48. ok im confused, why is this anime called soul eater if it has nothing to do with.. soul eater? The ending was shit, she turned into a weapon and yah that was cool till she got pwned and then she manages to falco punch/one hit KO the demon god, did BONES pull the script out of their ass? why didn’t they falco punch him in the first place. Manga is still better. Fucking Soul!!!!!!!!

    Plz answer my question….

    confuesed
    Reply

  49. Despite the cheesy ending this was a pretty good series. Then again the same people made Gurren Lagann. On that i was kinda expecting Maka to say “who the hell do you think i am” as she charged up that makeshift stairs. Or maybe i was just hoping for that. Anyway with how things concluded, i over all satisfied with how this ended. I liked how they touched on Maka being half weapon, despite it being a subconscious reflex. Though I did find the “epic punch” to be a bit much even for this series. Plus it would of been nice to see the events after the battle, maybe showing starting to repair and rebuild death city during the ending credits. Or things returning to normal in the school. Then again that maybe asking too much. In any case is was still good.

    Azar
    Reply

  52. I thought Soul Eater was great, till the laughable robots came in. Now with this punch of courage destroying Asura…well I have nothing to say…Great way to destroy a whole anime series. I’ve haven’t been this disappointed by an ending since Dragonaut…though of course Soul Eater was mostly good, where Dragonaut started failing halfway.
    Would have been a potential 9 or 10, but now I honestly can’t give Soul Eater any more than 8 -.-;
    Great animation, sound and voice-acting, sub-par plot :S!

    PYROtechnic
    Reply

  53. Yah the ending was pretty bad, but all in all that seems to be a weakness that runs in anime. But kid’s speech made it seem that they left the ending open so they could have a spin off series or something.

    WHO KNOWS?

    mancer
    Reply

  57. Stupid ending to an otherwise amazingly epic series…i mean..she beat him with..courage.. An unbeatable enemy that shinigami couldnt even defeat…beaten by maka’s..courage Oo WTF MAN! it shouldve been an epic battle like the first battle between shinigami and kishin..

    Foxdie
    Reply

  58. @Manga: What you have to understand is that no one is being “fooled,” the people who like the anime actually do think it’s good. If you don’t like it fine, but don’t try and tell others what they should or shouldn’t like. As far as the manga goes the anime followed it extremely closely for as long as it could, I don’t know what more you can ask of it.

    @Unknown Voice: The problem with a remake is that the anime *did* follow the manga for most of it’s run, a remake would just end up repeating the same things for a large amount of the series.

    Kira-chan
    Reply

  59. I’m still getting over the fact the Maka beat the kinshin by PUNCHING HIM IN THE FACE… wtf! I’m mean I know, she put all her courage in to her fist, and stuf, but come on!
    and I would have preferred a little epilogue… well at least Maka was bad-ass to the end. and I still loved the series overall!

    death the kid!! woot!

    Brenono
    Reply

  61. Oh my God this disappointed me so much. I wish this was the manga and the manga was the anime. They skipped my favorite character (Mosquito) and his complex years going back, spent 2 minutes killing Archne and 5 on Medusa. No Noah and Maka’s falcon punch does more then the a weapon could? I bet this sentence structure is so bad because i don’t want to proof-read my rage. This had a worse ending then the fucking anime Inuyasha ending. I think the anime died the second it veered off the path of the manga.

    Christopher
    Reply

  62. Lol what can i say… the ending was SO disappointing. When i first saw maka in weapon form, i was thinking it was gonna be an all-out action scene till the end, unfortunately they had to end it this way… it was a great run nonetheless, i hope i don’t get disappointed like that again
    another thing, and i just have to say this being an arab and all, i think it’s kinda lame that they couldn’t get just one word right. I’m talking about the word shaja’at. the word they’re looking for is shaja’a, the t is silent and should be spelt differently as well. really, 1 minute at Google Translate is all it takes… maybe another minute to confirm with a random arab.

    Tim
    Reply

  63. I agree with the general consensus. The ending sucked. The anime has made various references to Maka and how she would be the one to take out the Kishin with her anti-Demon wavelength. Then suddenly, that awesome ability is shown to be useless. Then, “HOLY CRAP! She is a weapon, and fights AWESOME as one!”. Then she gets mauled and snaps out of her PWN-fest. At the moment of the Kishin’s victory, where the Kishin should’ve blasted Maka and her friends to oblivion, he starts going insane over… her saying, “I’m relieved.”? That doesn’t even make sense! So what if she has courage, he could’ve just said, “O.K. I’mma firin’ mah lazor!” and been done with it! But no… Maka’s gay courage punch ends it all… ugghh. I could’ve handled a team “power up” that allowed the group to manage a win against the Kishin. It’d be stretching it, but it wouldn’t break the flow of how the protagonists tend to deal with powerful enemies. To put it simply, it felt forced… and was overall a really sucky way to take out some all-powerful enemy that has been the focus of the series. The shows ended rather abruptly after that, not caring to answer any questions… which also wasn’t particularly favorable.

    Otherwise I liked the series. I guess if I end up recommending it to anyone though, I’ll have to inform them of a bad ending. It seems most anime I really like have these awful endings lately…

    Apoc
    Reply

  64. I didn’t mind this ending, and here’s why: behold, the philosophy of Soul Eater!

    In the Soul Eater universe, everybody is subject to fear; fear of death, fear of weakness, fear of failure etc. It’s everywhere. There are 3 things you can do about it:
    1. Succumb to your fear and give up.
    2. Go insane, and try to escape your fear.
    3. Confront and overcome it with courage.

    In this way, madness and courage are two sides to the same coin. Both want to be free from fear. The path of madness, or the path of the Kishin, is to go insane, and devour innocent souls in an attempt to live forever, get stronger etc. This is the easy path, because you aren’t overcoming your fear, you are just running away from it. When Ashura realizes he is afraid of Maka, that is his fear finally catching up with him.

    Courage is the harder route; instead of running away and hurting others, you turn around and fight your fear head on. It’s more scary, but in the end you will win.

    So I don’t think Maka was literally gathering courage into her fist. She was simply refusing to give into her fear of Ashura. It was a regular punch, but in that last attack she was courage incarnate. Ashura is insanity incarnate, and madness cannot exist with courage, so madness was destroyed.

    Kind of cheesy I know, but I didn’t mind.

    Torint
    Reply

  67. the 2nd half was the most piece of sh1t anime ive ever watched, i seriously feel sorry for the managaka. For him to work so hard to create such a great managa then to have it f*#Ked up by some retard who cant even write a better story then a three old. seriously

    mike
    Reply

  68. I just watched this episode, although the ending is far from perfect, I felt that the anime ended in a decent way. I mean the Anime and Manga are NOT supposed to be exact copies of each other.

    I wonder how the SE manga will end?

    Cyburn
    Reply

  71. What I love best was when Arachne showed no fear when she showed up at Kishin’s place, just like Maka, and after Shinigami-Sama got struck down, he suddenly remembers Arachne’s fearlessness and goes back to her castle and kills her… Awesome!

    StockStalker
    Reply

  72. Thanks 4 your reviews. I’ve just discovered this page today, and will try to have a look at Bleach & FMA:B. Anyway, about SE, I think it was something very good at the beginning, but when it got separated from the manga story, it ended being a total failure. As the old FMA series.

    A real pity. Let’s hope a remake of SE when the manga is finishing. : )

    Coralte
    Reply

  73. How was a lecture about courage able to defeat the Big Bad? How could they defeat Medusa and not take her soul? How could the weather just suddenly clear up after the Kishin was defeated? How does everyone die WITH NO BLOOD, and suddenly all be okay? How could thousands of souls be lifted out from the Kishin and NOT be consumed by Soul?

    Bad ending.

    starss
    Reply

  74. Listen, as lame and cheesy as ” happy ending” are,
    Soul Eater is the only anime I’ve ever watched who actually
    could pull it off. Perfectly. Fuck yourself if you can’t understand why.

    The voice acting was amazing, the animation, amazing ,” Maka scream ;D” win.
    The capturing plot and characters, indeed, soul eater
    has to be my favorite series in my near seven years of watching/studying anime.
    I’ve watched this series over TWICE.
    Yet still till this day I just don’t get why shimigami’s gask cracked in episode
    50 (was it?) well anyway, there needs to be more. right away.

    Sissylee
    Reply

  76. I just watched this series on the recommendation of a friend, and I liked it overall. The ending was kinda cheesy and lame, especially since the title character wasn’t even involved past the first 3 minutes of the last episode. Then Maka revealed herself as a weapon, making Soul doubly pointless. And tops it off with the lame-ass one-shot Falcon Punch. Ah well, there have been a lot of awesome moments and I loved seeing Shinigami-sama fight. I may read the manga now because I wanna see Mosquito’s fully powered-up form, and find out if the mangaka could come up with a better ending than “I punch you in the FAAAAACE!”

    Guardian
    Reply

  77. If I like anime, I like everything in it. Even, if ending is like this. -.^
    I agree, it was like for children, but what can I do? 😛
    Btw: Maka was not a weapon, she, uhm… (I’m from Poland and my English isn’t very great… -.-) “prosuced” weapons. You should watch this episode, to understand. ;D

    Oliwek
    Reply

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