Soul Resonance-Will Soul Eater Become a Death Scythe?
In the Soul Eater world evil people form the perfect nest for Kishin (demon) eggs. As the kishin egg attached to a human begins to hatch the human becomes something else, and hungers for human souls. Enter Death. In this universe Death runs an elite task force of meisters (warriors) and weapons (um, people who transform into magical weapons) who protect humans from the kishin and witches, the forces of evil.
He also runs a school, training the future generation of teens. Maka is a meister, like her mother before her. Her overbearing, juvenile, womanizing father is one of Death’s best weapons, forged by the successful partnership between he and Maka’s mother (before he cheated on her and lost his family and became a total disaster, personally). Maka’s weapon partner is Soul, an only-slightly-vain boy who turns into a scythe. The relationship between Soul and Maka is a careful one since Soul is self-centered and Maka is still suffering from the pain of her parent’s break up (and every other interaction with her mess of a father).
Among the highest of the class, Maka and Soul have wracked up 99 kishin souls and need a witch soul to evolve Soul into a true weapon (and graduate and start working for Death).
They hunt down Blair, a sexy woman, overly fond of baths, boys, nudity (obscured conveniently by bubbles and such), and exploding pumpkin bombs. But Blair isn’t the easy target they’d hoped (despite seeming vapid and silly), and Soul and Maka are about to learn a very important lesson.
There is some absolute craziness in the scenery (could the moon and sun get any creepier??) and some wild silliness (as should be expected from an anime) in the plot. But over all Soul Eater is a really enjoyable show. It shows off the art and storytelling style anime is known for, while also presenting us with a pair of heroes standing between ordinary people and evil. Maka is a pretty kick ass woman, capable of handling herself and quite driven. Soul is the “vain cool dude” with a heart of gold who knows when to protect his partner and when to let her protect herself.
When they throw in hyper sexual Blair, it ends up not being mindless jiggly-boobed fan service, but a lesson or two for the characters not to be too driven (don’t get caught up in acting without thinking) as well as acknowledging that the anime world does include a twisted, nearly pornographic aspect, but that doesn’t have to take away from the story. Sex doesn’t have to break up a great partnership (or be all a character is good for). It can be one more facet of an enjoyable story.
I definitely recommend this one for older kids. But my take on the almost-nudity and flirting is that the lead characters are just as embarrassed about Blair’s behavior as a lot of early teens are. The promiscuity and hyper-sexualization are presented as distracting, hurtful, and annoying, not positive.