You guys wouldn’t know this since I haven’t done a weekly round-up post in a while, but Kizaniver‘s probably my third or fourth favorite show this season—besides being the first Studio Trigger show I’ve actively liked. As such, I took my chance with this week’s Aniwords to explore one of the things that’s most fascinated me about the series so far: the use of scar imagery as a symbol for human connection.
This topic’s been banging around in my head for a while since I started wondering what it was that attracted me to characters like Yuuko from AKB0048 and Miki from THE iDOLM@STER. As has been pointed out to me multiple times with both, neither are particularly nice people or the kind of person you would want as a coworker (or even as a friend, maybe!). Yet, some how I still found them enchanting. Likewise with Maka Albarn from Soul Eater, who I touch on in the article—why was it that my favorite episode of the show was the one where she’s at her very worst? Well, I think I at least somewhat cracked the code—and this piece is the result.
Let it be known that asking me questions of ask.fm is like is a sneaky way to get me thinking about topics you’d like me to cover in a blog post…this was originally an ask.fm answer, then grew too large for the ask.fm and so became a tumblr post, then kept growing and became more of a philosophical manifesto/personal story than I had originally intended, and thus here we are. To begin, I know I’m treading on sensitive ground here and so, of course, I’d love to hear feedback in the comments. [1] For me, this is very much still a topic I’m learning about and pondering through. But here’s where I am right now.
A few days ago, I finished with my first rewatch of the BONES series Soul Eater, and I must say that, as with many good pieces of art, a review of something already experienced is almost always a good thing. As we age and grow, our perceptions of the world and the art we experience change. Now, I won’t say that I emerged from my rewatch of Soul Eater with a totally new understanding of the show. However, I was able to draw forth some new pieces and new nuances to the show that I had missed before. I also took time in the middle of the rewatch to read the manga, which was an interesting experience in comparisons. But I want to review the 51-episode anime series, which is one of my top 10 anime, and tell you why you should take the time to watch Soul Eater.
Soul Eater is focused on three sets of main characters, headed up by our main protagonist, Maka Albarn and her partner, the titular character Soul Eater Evans. They are joined by Death the Kid, with his partners Liz and Patty Thompson, as well as the outrageous Blackstar and the ever flexible Tsubaki. Maka, Kid and Blackstar as classified as meisters, which makes them weapon-wielders, while Soul, Liz, Patty and Tsubaki are humans with the genetic ability to transform into weapons (a scythe, twin pistols and a ninja sword, respectively). The anime sets itself up in the first three episodes to be a quest type plot, where the three sets of characters must collect 99 evil souls and the soul of a witch to transform their weapons into Death Scythes, the personal weapons of Lord Death, or Shinigami, as he is known in the Japanese. However, their quest quickly expands to become a much more global conflict. Continue reading
Welcome to Catholicism in Anime, the series which will be examining Catholic elements of various anime. If you wish, consider these as Catholic anime reviews, although they aren’t proper reviews, simply examination and analysis of the “seeds of the Logos,” that I see within these shows.
The first show I want to look at is Soul Eater, the 2008-2009 series from the studio BONES, which has produced several of my other favorite anime. Based on the manga (which I believe is still ongoing) by Atsushi Okubo, Soul Eater, on the surface, doesn’t look like the type of show to have any Catholic elements. The animation isn’t your typical, clean-cut style. And even the title, Soul Eater, doesn’t see to be particularly Catholic or religions. Despite all this, there are several themes running throughout the show which line up beautifully with Catholic teaching and several interesting parallels than run analogously between Soul Eater and Catholicism. Continue reading
Mage in a Barrel 