Soul Eater Not! - Review

 A sound soul dwelling with in a sound mind but unsound body. Missed opportunities and what could have been.

About a year ago, I found a copy of Soul Eater Not! on the shelf of my local bookstore. Having been a big fan of the original anime and slowly but surely been reading the original manga, I decided to give it a try. A few weeks ago I found that Not! had been adapted to an anime. So in the last few days I chilled out between classes by watching it. While writing this I even have a copy of the Soul Eater and Soul Eater Not! Manga next to me just to get spellings right.

I felt this little introduction was necessary just to explain the mind set I was in when watching this. After all, someone who has been expecting this show and been hyped as hell for months will probably have a different opinion from those who just stumble across it or are just casualy viewing it.

Right with that out of the way, On To The Review!!

After spending sometime away from a world, weather it be your hometown, your favorite video game or, in this case, the world of an anime, you feel a curtain nostalgia on some level. Exploring the streets, seeing the people, grabbing a cup of coffee with your old friends, but after a while you start to notice all the changes. You start to remember all the flaws and even though new elements may appear appealing at first its never as perfect as you remember.

The story of Soul Eater Not! takes place about a year or two before the original series, following the school lives of three girls just starting at DWMA and the adjustments they must make to there new lives.
We are introduced (Or rather re-introduced) to the school through Tsugumi Harudori, a young Japanese student about to start her first year after having recently discovering that she is a weapon. Tsugumi is, in simplified terms, a younger less competent Maka, even stating a number of times to be inspired by Maka. She is kind hearted and loyal but suffers from a lack of confidence, this isn't necessarily a bad thing since it gives the character ample space to grow. Throughout the series we see her numerous fears about the future and how she overcomes or at least learns to live with them. Not a great protagonist but not a bad start for one.
Second is Anya, a meister in training and a runaway princess. Starting the series she is gives the appearance of a spoiled brat and viewing the others as low class commoners, while this would get annoying relatively quickly (and at times it does) it is nicely juxtaposed with her inner monologue. As the show progresses her monologue become less frequent and her attitude begins to sum what subside. While this was an interesting way to show growth, it becomes slightly less meaning full when the character practically regresses during the final few minutes.
Lastly is Meme Tatane, an incredibly absent minded girl with big boobs. That's it. Meme is the kind of character that fifty percent of the time could be replaced with any other background character. Aside from being a plot device at the end, the only thing her character brings is the on-running joke of being incredibly forgetful, which gets old really quickly and becomes inconsistent at times.

A number of our old favorites return as background characters or even side characters. Black Star, Tsubaki and Kid make occasional appearances usually with only a sentence or two. Maka and Soul appear in a few episodes but usually just so Tsugumi can get some advice from Maka, sometimes good, sometimes Tsugumi doesn't even get to ask her question, needless to say during there early appearances I was hoping that the story would suddenly switch to Maka's perspective. Liz and Patty become side characters around the 4th or 5th episode and actually gives them more character development then our protagonists, not a good sign. During the series we are able to see Sid, pre-Zombie and Stein, pre-Teacher. There's very little difference.

The Main villain of the series is nowhere near as good as Medusa or Arachne, though in this case the villain was never that important. The feels as though the only reason there was a villain was to give the three main characters a major obstacle to over come.

The Animation throughout the series is great and on pare with the original series at times. Character designs are solid and backgrounds are great and rarely reused. The occasional effects for things like transformations are just as good though rarely used so there would have been no excuse. Standard Bones quality.

Compaired to its big brother the music is incredibly forgetful, the opening song is descent enough for the show but is fairly bland and doesn't really stick in your head as well as T.M.Revolution or Paper Moon.

For a casual watch, its an ok slice of life with some fantasy but as a side story to Soul Eater it pails in comparison. If your curious give it a try but otherwise your not missing much.