Soul Eater

[ivy_chan]

So, I just finished reading the entirety of the Soul Eater manga on onemanga. It took me a full night of madness, but now that I have read everything, I must say that I LOVE THIS SHOOOW. The entire main cast is love. Maka is love cubed, and someday I am sure I will fangirl all over her mom. Who may or may not be Shibusen's answer to Carmen Sandiago

Comments

[redbrunja]

I know, isn't it just awesome?

I have to say, thought, I am NOT a fan of Maka's mother. Leaving her kid to stay alone with her opposite sex partner at, what -thirteen, fifteen- with no way to contact her mother is NOT cool in my book.

[ivy_chan]

What age IS Maka, anyway? O_o

I have to say, I don't think I'll approve of her as a mother, necessarily...but I do think I'll appreciate her as a character and think she's a badass meister. I like Spirit as a character but acknowledge that he's not the best of dads.

All these kids seem to have distant or dead parents, anyway, it might be part and parcel with the shinigami gig. Or part of the magical school genre- focus on the kids and ignore the parents? So far I think we've seen Shinigami and Spirit, but no sign of Soul's parents, Patty and Liz's parents, Tsubaki's parents, Maka's mom, Kid's mom, and all the older characters seem to have spontaneously generated from the school. Since it seems to be a boarding school and study-intensive, they probably don't have much time to be with the 'rents in any case.

Speaking of contact with the mom, you're right. Do anyone use phones here, or is it just mirror-calling?

[redbrunja]

We actually don't know. I'm guessing someone around the fourteen age, but I could be wrong.

And yeah, this series is full of dead and missing 'rents. Tsubaki is the only one who we see with her parents and who seems to have a good relationship with them.

I don't doubt that Maka's mother is badass meister, but mistreatment of children (especially children that are yours is one of those areas that I just... a character does that, and I don't like them, at all.

Speaking of contact with the mom, you're right. Do anyone use phones here, or is it just mirror-calling?

Given that it's shown to be a parallel to our world with similar tech, I would be really surprised if they DIDN'T have phones.

[ivy_chan]

(Oh, that's right, I forgot Tsubaki's parents were shown!)

I understood that the divorce between Spirit and Maka's mom was a month old, and that she'd seen her before and during the divorce. I just assumed mom's been gone for a month, which is something my parents used to do when I was a kid. I'm an Air Force brat, so one parent would get occasionally shipped off to some location or another for possibly a month. Since Maka's fourteen/fifteen...teenaged, anyway, and under the care of the school, I wasn't too peeved at the mom for being gone for that long and assumed she was off on an assignment for something. The lack of contact is the problem, really. She should have a cell phone! Then again, I guess Maka could be calling her off-scene every now and then without the narration focusing on it.

[ivy_chan]

Oh, god, Blair. She's the cat witch who seemed to exist for fanservice purposes for a while there. I basically tried to ignore that character for a while- and what happened in the pyramid to Patty and Liz also crossed the fanservice line for me. To be fair, they also have a shower scene of naked guys, and the guys hang out and be pretty and take their shirts off, so at least they do fanservice for both sides. The boobservice does get fairly blatant, though. (What is it with the obsession with boobs?)

The plot treatment of the female characters is pretty exceptional for shonen, in my mind. I don't think they're marginalized or shown as weaker than the guys at all, and the plot focuses a lot on Maka as the 'hero'. I'm happy with the plot so far, too. And the way the writer and artist show insanity is great. "We've turned into puppets! NOOOO."