Soul Eater – Episode 3

The last prologue episode introduces Death The Kid and his weapons Patty and Liz Thompson.

This is my favourite episode so far, the personalities of the characters suit Takuya Igarashi’s direction far better than the other main characters do. Soul and Maka’s manzai duo relationship, and Black Star/Tsubaki’s ninja parody don’t quite fit Igarashi’s comic beat that Death The Kid’s obsessive compulsive disorder does.

Death The Kid, you see, is obsessed with symmetry. And like the characters in Ouran High School, Igarashi finds the comic beats in characters personality defects marvelously. Patty and Liz are more upbeat than the frequently depressed/enraged Death, Patty to point of perky heroic idiocy, leaving Liz as the straight man of the trio.

Which brings us to what is the probably the most interesting thing about Soul Eater, every character is part of a comedy team of some kind, normally a duo. Rather than make the coupling of weapon and user a romantic one, the choice of the story is to make them a comedic one. As I wrote in my original post, I feel Igarashi in Ouran Host Club owed a lot to stage comedy in the way he shot gags, and had the cast deliver them. The story so far in Soul Eater isn’t that ground breaking, in lesser hands this would be another Black Cat or similar unsuccessful shonen manga adaptation. Instead we are getting a show that is wringing every ounce of quality from the source material.