Soul Eater and the Reboot we deserve

there has been this very true-to-form renaissance happening in anime with a lot of established titles making a comeback from 2018 that time i got reincarnated as a slime cells at work laid back camp zombieland saga and megalo box all returning this year which is more par for the course than anything but then you start to go farther back 2017's kobayashi's dragon maid is gonna have a sequel we finally got re zero season two from 2016. the second season of vlog horizon was in 2014 and there have been some really exciting announcements about series we had thought had gone long dormant any talk about the devil as a part-timer from 2013 was almost exclusively followed up with well where's season two now what's happening bleach despite being a part of the big three that everyone likes to talk about was an arc away from finishing before getting canned in 2012. that is until its final season got announced earlier this year and just a few days ago news broke of madoka magicka getting a sequel movie to its sequel movie from eight years ago and that's all really exciting stuff but these are sequels follow-ups continuations the other side to this renaissance has been reboots fruits basket is back from the turn of the century hegarashi when they cry from 2007 digimon which i think is a reimagining from the original in 1999 and much like we refer to doom 2016 as doom 2016 we have shaman king 2021 now i won't pretend like i have any knowledge about these remakes or what led to them but what i do have is hope let's talk about soul eater [Music] i absolutely love soul eater and there is so much i want to talk about but i've tried writing that video like five separate occasions and it's just never ended up to the quality i want so i'm just gonna shelve most of it for now and focus on pitching why soul eater is one of the best candidates for a reboot for the uninitiated soul eater is about death weapon meister academy in which students are either a weapon or a meister weapons being people who can transform into weapons and meisters being the ones who wield them from there the students team up usually in pairs and are tasked with protecting the world from evil souls with a secondary goal of feeding the weapon 99 evil souls and one witch soul in order to transform them into a death site a weapon worthy of lord death himself who runs the academy let's turn our attention to my anime list just to get a general idea of soul leader's reception when you open an anime's page on mal there's three metrics to pay attention to score which is a weighted average score that the anime got rank which is where it falls in the larger sphere of anime and popularity which ranks it not by its score but by the amount of people who have added it to their list so as an example buy score full metal alchemist brotherhood sits at first with a weighted score of 9.18 which is a reboot of the original fma if i may add just saying it's clearly worked before but if you look at the popularity charts it sits two spots below death note despite it only landing 62nd in terms of score so where does soul eater land well in terms of score it sits at an 8.87 landing at a rank of 713 which sounds unimpressive but for context naruto is only a 7.92 tokyo ghoul season 1 has a 7.8 sword art online is half a point below at 7.23 and it's only 0.04 below crunchyroll's 2017 anime of the year yuri on ice and .05 above its 2019 winner devilman crybaby going over to popularity it gets even a bit more interesting as it lands in the top 50. at 47th that's only three spots below haikyuu four under cowboy bebop and above hits like promise neverland yurin lagon and even attack on titan season 3 part 2 one of the few contenders with full metal alchemist brotherhood for top anime and i'm not saying that mal scores are the end all be all benchmark for what makes an anime good or popular but in terms of its perceived quality it's enough to stand amongst titles that are still talked about today and it's on par with award winners and its popularity makes it an even stronger candidate now understand that popularity is a bit of a skewed metric only because soul eater having come out in 2008 has had more time than others to gain members so for reference let's look at what's been getting rebooted recently and it's not even close so later is nearly double its closest competition higarashi at 661 thousand members hell without higarashi the other three don't even beat soul eater's popularity combined and if you're curious they all score really comparably only being beat by higurashi in its second season all that is to say that soul eater's anime which isn't even its best version is at the very least good enough in terms of quality and is a much bigger name than any of the other reboots that have happened in recent history that there's definitely a sizable amount of people who would love a soul eater repeat show now you might be saying oh tsumami's soul leader repeat show that sounds stupid well the joke's on you because it's actually already a thing because i know that 1.3 million people added soleil to their list doesn't mean they finished it started it or even liked it and i don't really want to [ __ ] with the numbers so rather than that let me back it up anecdotally and take this with a grain of salt too because i'm also not a tv guy i'm just taking what i know and extrapolating there is not one not two but three different versions of soul eater that aired in japan first is just plain vanilla soul eater it premiered on april 7th 2008 on tv tokyo japan at 6 pm just an hour before their prime time then a late night run fittingly titled soul eater late night show not much information really exists about when late night's show ran in terms of its time block but it did run concurrently to soul leader original as quote the world's first evening in late night resonance broadcast which is cute you know resonance being a thing in soul leader and all soul eater late night show was just the exact same as the original with additional scenes added before and after the commercial break as well as a different episode preview the third iteration is as i mentioned soul leader repeat show which again is literally just soul eater except featuring two new openings and endings wikipedia says it re-aired on tv tokyo on september 30th 2010 no clue as to when it stopped airing but according to tv japan they've cut down to just one piece detective conan and a few other shows side note if you're already a soul eater fan you should give the repeat show ops and eds a watch they're on youtube and even if most of them don't even hit 720p if you already love soul eater then it's just a really nice surprise to see new animation of them again i have to reiterate i'm no tv expert but i have to imagine that there was enough hype surrounding soul leader for it to score its both original run and the late night version at the same time and that it was popular enough for it to make a comeback a year and a half after it finished airing under the repeat show and not even just like reruns but with whole new openings and endings to boot i found very little information as to why the late night and repeat shows exist just that in fact they exist so if you know anything about them or maybe i'm completely misinterpreting this information let me know i'm very curious but we don't want another repeat show 13 years later and the animation facilitator holds up really well much like shaman king 2021 what soul eater truly needs is the fma brotherhood treatment and again brotherhood is the top rated anime of all time right now so studio bones i'm sure you're busy right now with my hero season 5 but like let's take a page from let's see who did brotherhood again oh that's right studio bones i'm just saying done it once before you could do it again because soul eater episodes 1 through 36 are with few exception a direct one-to-one adaptation where 37 onwards split off into the its own anime original ending compare that to where it stops following the manga which is chapter 38 in volume 10. there are 25 volumes total meaning soul leader wasn't even 50 percent done before the anime started down its own path i've come to learn there's a lot of mysteries surrounding soul leader in its production 2008 just wasn't a well documented time for this kind of thing but looking at episode versus chapter release dates it's clear they were catching up to the source material and rather than taking a break or creating filler they for some reason ended up branching off whether this was a day one decision or something that happened closer to the split i don't know there do exist two interviews with the author atsushi okubo in one with manga news of france when asked if he knew how the series would end he said the path is still a bit unclear but i have ideas regarding the end of soul leader in any case i don't want to make a series that spans a lot of volumes like naruto or one piece i don't really like it when a series ends up dragging on this interview is from march 20th 2009 10 days before the last episode of the anime so i guess there's no real way the anime could have ever done justice to the manga ending if okubo himself didn't even know how things would end that being said in the same interview he does also say he worked closely with the team at studio bones now that could mean a lot of things but for doing such a departure after being a close adaptation i think they did a really good job of still incorporating a lot of the same ideas and plot threads okubo had for the rest of soul eater anyone already a fan of soul leader would love a reboot and it'd be a great chance for any newer anime fans who feel like they missed their chance or haven't taken the time to get into the original to jump in because the manga is a treasure trove of unadapted material that people really like going back to my anime list numbers the manga only does better in every category but specifically i wanted to talk about how from july 12 2019 to march 12 2020 square enix republished the manga into 17 hardcovers known as the perfect editions featuring brand new character art from okubo himself and color pages included from when the manga was serialized they're slowly rolling these out now in english the first three are out now with four set for july 13th and let this just be a psa to please buy the perfect editions if you're a fan of soul eater there are really nice collectible and will eventually have content you've never seen from the anime and it's the best way to currently support soul eater and show that it still has fans if you're not already a fan then the manga is by and large the best version of soul eater that exists i do have two disclaimers to make first is that it took okubo a few chapters to really settle into the art style like if you look up soleil manga and see this version of maca from volume one it's rough yes but it doesn't take him that long to settle into a better art style i'd say around chapter 15 you'll hardly notice and even later down the line especially some of the art outdoes the anime the second arguably more important disclaimer is that okubo while i love his work is a bit of a perv like if you've seen fire force then you know that tamaki's whole character is just a series of accidents that strip her and especially in volume 1 there are bit too many sex strokes for my liking that range from a bit uncomfortable to just wildly inappropriate with one in particular being straight up cut from the anime adaptation for that reason i'm not here to defend those jokes or dismiss them say that they're okay just to say that they become so much less relevant as the series goes on and while volume 1 is especially bad i think it's something worth powering through trust me as a fan of soul leader it probably pisses me off the most knowing that such a great series has been stained by such crude humor anyways go read soul eater and buy the perfect editions they're really cool all right i've talked a lot about numbers surrounding soul leader and some of its history on air and as a manga and while that's all well and good above all else what makes soul eater such a top contender for an anime reboot is how good of a story it is with such an interesting and engaging plot strong compelling characters and it is near criminal that the people behind the anime stopped adapting the manga right as all of that started really coming together leaving so much of the best of soul eater unadapted and i want to honestly gush about one of the best arcs i feel that embodies all of what makes soul eater special and showcase how much untapped potential there is still left in it please please i urge you to just take me at my word and just read soul eater but if you still need convincing or have already read it or just don't care and are cool with spoilers then here goes one of the best darks in soul leader operation capture baba yaga castle fans of the anime will recognize operation capture baba yaga castle as its final arc but at a much different almost condensed version for one the world of soul leader is in a much different state than where things were in the adaptation starting with a noticeable lack of important faces at dwma black star having suffered a loss to death the kid in a duel decides to take tsubaki on a leave of absence to master the uncanny sword budataki joe who was repurposed to be a mechanic in the anime was an internal investigator in the manga and also murdered with blame falling onto stein who's been fighting an uphill battle with the madness death scythe sid and lagus are tasked with arresting stein but with a strong faith in the doctor instead let him leave death city with marie so they can track down the true culprit of bj's death having put one of medusa's snakes in marie and knowing that his actions directly led to stein and marie's suffering krona faces the same pressure from medusa to leave dwma and return to her and unlike the anime he succumbs to the guilt and pressure and leaves the school finally and most recently is kim and jackie in an anonymous tip lord death learns of three witches who have quote infiltrated death city with kim being one of them however due to a string of losses stemming from the loss of the magical tool brew to arachnophobia lord death ends up bringing on more outside help to error on the side of caution which ends up scaring the girls who flee the city feeling as though they have nowhere to go arachne and mosquito jump on the opportunity to take the two in two of the biggest draws to soul eater are its strong cast and the crazy world in which they inhabit which okobo leverages to give the plot much more weight as the ramifications of it leave a lasting impact on the world of soul eater that can be so clearly felt in the absence of all these characters another similarity we see to the anime is medusa turning herself in but with one key difference instead of asking for amnesty she wants full operational control of operation capture baba yaga castle for this mission she isn't looking for a full siege on the castle instead looking for three clear roles to fill even asking for black star by name which is yikes our final team for the operation is mock in seoul oxen harvard killick thunder and fire and death the kid liz and patty that's badass compare that to a similar mission in season 4 of my hero where swaths of pro heroes are sent to the hasakai hideout and out of all of them it just so happens that deku kirishima and other students doing a lot of the work which is cool too but there's something about being hand-picked as the strongest best option for the mission that's just kind of hype as [ __ ] the battle for brew was the start of ox kilik and the crew getting featured but in the anime they never get that chance to shine and feel like nothing more than representatives for the rest of the background characters operation baba yaga castle is the first chance they really come into their own as main characters especially because so much of the team's involvement is driven by their own personal motivation not to mention a team up with medusa one of the big villains plot-wise it's a really interesting dynamic excitement wise the mixture of witch magic with weapon meisters opens up a load of possibilities and hype wise it's it's dope seeing medusa vector boost kilik into soul resonance triple f and then vector played him back come on that's sick as one of the longer story beats in soul leader i don't want to belabor every detail especially as the infiltration happens our cast breaks off into smaller teams what i think this arc really nails across each instance is personal stakes credible threat character growth and future setup and i think no battle embodies this best than maca and seoul vs arachne the pair end up with medusa to take on her sister who they have been led to believe has captured crona on top of the already massive chip on their shoulder from the utter disarray the dwma has been facing stemming in no small part to their loss at the battle for brew before they can even enter the room however soul is hit hard by a magical attack on his psyche almost succumbing to the madness before maka frees him imposing a challenge the likes of which they've never faced before but as they enter the room to face her they find arachne's body without a trace of her soul like the clowns who are madness given physical form arachne has shed her body to become madness incarnate the gravity of the situation intensifies when medusa who managed to infiltrate dwma and revive the kitchen go toe-to-toe with professor stein and like it or not has been instrumental in the current success of the operation is downed in an instant arachne cast her web of madness infecting everyone in the surrounding area but maca and seoul are different this isn't the same manka who tried running from krona or the same soul who nearly lost himself to the black blood hell this isn't even the same team who let mosquito get away instead the piano that sola spent so much of his life running away from scared of not living up to the expectation is becoming his strongest weapon maca who felt the crushing weight of needing to use her anti-demon wavelength scared of not living up to the expectation has turned it into her strongest weapon the black blood the same one that revived the kitchen terrorizes their friend krona and has been a thing of their nightmares has turned into a beautiful flowing dress as the two deliver the final blow with the new devil hunt slash resonating a melody of victory that saves all of their friends it's a moment filled with emotions triumph where good finally has started to push back evil and it's short-lived as medusa no longer immobilized by arachne's madness uses the moment to slip into her sister's old body regaining a vessel in which she can go all out in despite the major villain that they overcame the wind feels tainted as medusa escapes and the two are no closer to finding the whereabouts of krona i really don't have many words for how much i love this arc when it's all said and done the fight between maca soul and arachne like strictly speaking magic attacks soul throws a couple webs said do's medusa madness wavelength demon hunt slash technically that is the entire fight it's not that long but for what it represents for both our protagonists and the world of soul leader as a whole and the growth that marks for maca and seoul cannot be understated there is a raw magnitude to the defeat of her acne which only amplifies the feeling of dread following the escape of medusa please go read soul eater because this is just one of the many great arcs and fights that make up all of soul eaters untapped content i'm gonna make a comparison here and you can be upset if you like in my dreams i see a world where soul eater gets the reboot it deserves and with it we get soul eater operation capture baba yaga castle the movie and it would be so much better than demon slayer mugen train because i watched mugen train like second day it came out in the states and it was okay the fights were cool and the animation was clean but setting production value aside the biggest reason i think operation capture baba yaga castle would be better than mugen train is that one going into mugen train i don't know anything about ren goku or the demons who we end up fighting so any big moment pertaining to those two parties had no build up emotions to pay off whereas with tangero specifically the moments that play into his backstory hit much deeper for it real quick spoilers for demon slayer movie skip ahead if you haven't seen it i felt stronger emotions when inosuke gave an emotional speech about rengoku dying then i did about rengoku dying for transparency's sake he is my favorite character but when he gave his speech through all of his tears it meant more to me because i know enosuke and his head strong think with your sword's mentality so it meant more to see him lower his weapons and actually grieve someone's death and let out his emotions whereas all i know about rengoku is he's a bit funny he's really strong has a shitty dad and wants what's best for his brother but i didn't learn that from ren goku i was told that about rengoku so his death rings a bit hollow for me compare that to soul leader where aside from a few exceptions every character is already well established in the story which creates for moments that are going to wait for it resonate better with the audience and leads me to my second point leaving an impact on their respective world moog train is an isolated incident in which our main characters walk away with nothing more than where to go to next so while it pushes the plot it feels like nothing more than just another domino like if you don't watch the demon slayer movie but want to watch season 2 i could give you two bullet points and you would know everything you need to know on the other hand baba yaga castle is a landmark event which will permeate throughout the rest of soul eater's story i cannot stress this enough please read soul eater it is such a good manga and i think goes a bit unrecognized as people assume it's the same as its anime adaptation which while pretty good in its own right the manga cranks that to an 11. go buy the perfect editions as they come out to show that people still want more soul eater and to studio bones or whoever wants to take up the mainsail in this returning anime and reboot renaissance now is the prime time to give us the soul eater reboot we deserve family

Channel: Tsumami

Views: 383,254

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Id: Vcvyi6zIq6E

Length: 26min 14sec (1574 seconds)

Published: Wed May 26 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Subjectdelta429]

This video should definitely have more views, lot of things I didnt know about soul eaters run