So I never gave my final thoughts on this show (This was around when I was finishing up Super Fighting Bros with Irriadin and things got a bit hectic). Throw that in there with three jobs and the engaged life and there is little time for taiwanese or chinese cartoons. Keep in mind that I ended up finishing this series in early July, so I am going off what I remember about it.
Nothing I’ve ever said on here has been particularly insightful or well thought out but I’m going to attempt to scrape the surface – Soul Eater Not! was a departure in tone that paid off. Whether it was just an excuse to see characters that we know and love remains to be seen but it pulled off a story worthy of the soul eater universe, albeit much smaller in scale but similar in theme. If you enjoyed Soul Eater and love the patented “Cute girls doing cute things,” then there’s a lot for you to appreciate here. Heck, I’d even argue that the latter is not necessary.
There’s what I feel about the series in a broad stroke – let’s talk about other things that don’t really matter. I guess the Gorgon family is full of complete assholes, huh? Interesting to see that the root of almost all evil in this universe spawns from one family (Save the Kishin, of course!)
The scene in the 7th episode with Eternal Feather essentially suiciding was particularly dark for this show but didn’t lack any impact – This pretty much set the show into its endgame, which I quite enjoyed. The last few episodes in particular were straight out of the original show. Let me say that I love it when a show departs or contrasts its original tone as starkly as it is done here. It takes me back to 2006 when I first saw Haruhi and found out that it wasn’t a slice of life show (Nagato’s info dump in the third episode). It pulled the genre out from under me – Haruhi’s genre is one of the best kept secrets about it, in my opinion. I never tell those that have no prior knowledge of it anything about it beyond “It’s a SOL show, you’ll like it, trust me.” Admittedly, that’s a bit of a weak hook, but nobody has ever told me I was doing them a disservice afterwards.
I love the characters. This show even got me to like a prim and proper princess character with a bit of tsun in her, an archetype I’m not usually fond of. Who’d also ever thought that Meme wasn’t forgetting things because she was amazingly stupid but because she was under the influence of a witch’s deep hypnosis? Foreshadowing that was excellently executed and I never saw coming. I’m probably an idiot for not seeing it coming, too. Hindsight is always 20/20 though, so whatever.
Most excitingly? We finally figured out how Cid died, although it was 7 years too late, lol. I always wondered if they killed him just for the sake of effect in episode 4 of the original series (That would be excrutiatingly stupid if so).
Thumbs up for this show, big time.
