Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.5

Soul Eater: The Weapon Collection Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 2, 2011

When last we left Maka and Soul at the end of the last Blu-ray collection of Soul Eater, they were facing down that ancient lump of clay from Jewish occult folklore known as the Golem. As I indicated in my Soul Eater: The Meister Collection Blu-ray review, Soul Eater consistently shone with a bizarre concatenation of characters, some drawn from various traditions’ myths and legends (as with the Golem), along with the show’s primary focus, the fighting duo of Maka and Soul. Soul Eater posits a world wherein Lord Death has founded a school to train Meisters and their Weapons (that would be Maka and Soul in the case of our primary couple) to more or less do his dirty work. Now that may sound like a dark and foreboding premise for an anime, but the fact is Soul Eater is manically entertaining and often very funny. Even Lord Death himself provides a good deal of comic relief in this series, as does his obsessive compulsive (or is that anal retentive) child, Death the Kid, which gives some indication of the lunatic energy which this show manifests with a fair amount of consistency. And as Soul Eater battles its way toward its end game (at least so far), that same dry sense of humor is firmly on display even as the show literally rips through flesh and spirit as it depicts the ferocious knock down drag out fight between the lumbering beast of a Golem and our primary hero (and heroine). In yet another sort of homage to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter world of Voldemort and his many horcruxes, it turns out that the Heretic Witch Arachne had divided herself into something akin to small black blobs 800 years previously, leading to a rash of supposed hallucinatory sightings that had remained unexplained for centuries. Just for good measure, she hid her soul within the Golem, and once Maka and Soul Eater start their hoped for smack down, Arachne appears in all her webbed glory, drily commenting on how “delighted” she is (until she’s not, anyway) to be decimating the various students of the Death Weapon Meister Academy. That sets the plot into motion for the final set of episodes in Soul Eater, episodes which see the series branching out from the Death City, Nevada setting of the initial episodes to include all sorts of new locales, some of them a kind of alternate reality lost in time.

Soul Eater is one of the most riotously inventive animes of the past several years, and that proclivity continues through this second Blu-ray set, albeit within the well established confines of a battle oriented show. As things start evolving, we get Arachne’s forces, dubbed Arachnophobia, fighting the kind of “learner permit” meister and weapon pairings of the Death Weapon Meister Academy. What makes this story arc interesting is that Arachne has an energy force which is permeating reality and slowing driving a lot of characters more than a bit batty (spider-y?). The rush is on, therefore, to stop her nefarious ways before no one is in their right mind anymore and won’t be able to fight. In fact this set of episodes is full of quasi-possessions, as various characters are subsumed from within by evil spirits and begin acting contrary to their usual modes of operation.

Just a quick and cursory recounting of some of the character names and even titles of objects within Soul Eater may give some slight indication of the cross-cultural references which zing through this series with a kind of winking glee. Aside from the aforementioned Golem, we also have Baba Yaga, Medusa, the Fisher King, and perhaps my favorite, one which combines the name of a world famous cellist with a Hallowe’en icon, Jacqueline O’Lantern Du Pres.

Soul Eater is just a weird amalgamation of ideas, forms, styles and content that it doesn’t just defy description, it kind of flaunts that defiance, much like its often petulant heroes and heroines, kids with literal axes (and other sharp and pointy objects) to grind. Weird, wacky and usually pretty wonderful, Soul Eater is so inventive at times that it boggles the imagination, and may elude a mainstream audience simply because it’s so out there. But if you stick with the show, it provides incredible entertainment value, with an overall compelling storyline that manages to allow these off the wall characters to actually become something more or less believable, even as the world they inhabit is like something out of the mind of Tex Avery on peyote. Soul Eater may not be to everyone’s taste (ahem), but for those anime fans who are sick and tired of the same old, same old all the time, this is one of the most refreshingly original animes in recent memory, one which manages to maintain a good deal of momentum throughout all of its episodes, and one which rarely if ever falters in its truly ingenious design aesthetic.

As with the previous collection on Blu-ray, this three disc set is an exercise in stylistic ingenuity and wide tonal disparities that might initially be a bit confusing to some viewers, but which add to the kind of crazy quilt feeling the series as a whole manifests at virtually every turn. Fairly traditional looking hand drawn cels smash up against more graphic influenced sequences, and this set of episodes also features some appealing CGI when several of the characters penetrate an energy field which is a major plot point in the second half of the episodes included in this collection. (In fact, don’t be concerned that your Blu-ray player has gone haywire or that you have a defective disc, when several characters kind of warp and have static running through them—that’s the effect of the energy field). There’s simply no denying that Soul Eater is a visual tour de force and one that elevates the whole genre of anime considerably, at least from a design standpoint.

Soul Eater: The Weapon Collection Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

My comments on the first Soul Eater collection are equally true of this new set: Soul Eater's AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1 is from a native HD source, and the results are often staggering. This is simply one of the coolest looking animes out there right now and the Blu-ray presentation is top notch. Soul Eater manages to blend a more traditional anime style with a number of more innovative elements which make this series easily one of the most visually innovative in recent memory.

What is a pleasant surprise about this second set of Soul Eater episodes is that the CGI elements are just a notch better in quality, especially with regard to the energy field and kind of tornadic activity that accompanies it. Several very cool elements congeal in thiese episodes which just give Soul Eater that much more visual energy and ingenuity.

Colors are incredibly robust throughout this series, and line detail is phenomenal. The traditionally animated work looks great, and what separates this anime from the pack is the huge variety of styles employed, everything from really pretty standard looking character design to some really out there, kind of graphically oriented approaches, as in the many depictions of the sun and moon. This is certainly one of the most varied looking animes in recent memory, and the Blu-ray offers all of that variety in excellent clarity and sharpness.

Soul Eater: The Weapon Collection Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As with the video section above, my comments about the audio options on the first Soul Eater collection are equally in force for this new release: Both lossless tracks on Soul Eater are excellent and the choice will probably boil down to whether you want to experience the original Japanese language track in a relatively narrow Dolby TrueHD 2.0 rendering, or opt for the at least slightly more expansive English dub in Dolby TrueHD 5.1. Voice work in both languages is great, and even those who don't like English dubs will probably find little to complain about here.

This second outing has perhaps a bit more immersion in its surround mix than did the first set. This becomes more apparent in the later episodes, when we're dealing with the energy field, and several very nice sound effects dot the soundfield. These episodes also provide opportunity for some fulsome LFE, and fidelity and dynamic range are excellent as well.

Soul Eater: The Weapon Collection Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Episode 30 Commentary. This, like, commentary features, like, three of the, like, voice actors who, like, just kind of, you know, like, sit around and laugh and, like, say stuff. Like "like". A lot. Pretty useless.
• Episode 44 Commentary features Colleen Clinkenbeard (Marie), Monica Rial (Tsubaki) and Maxey Whitehead (Crona) and is at least a little more restrained than the pretty unlistenable Episode 30 commentary. The three women (or girls, as they refer to themselves) talk about the episode, the series and voicing these characters, at least when they're not giggling maniacally. Nothing incredibly informative here, but at least not quite as annoying as the other commentary.
• Soul Eater Late Show (HD; 38:50) is a compilation of shorts which accompany and comment on each of the episodes, sometimes playing like outtakes and at other times giving brief summaries of the episodes.
• Textless Opening Song - Resonance (HD; 1:32)
• Textless Opening Song - Papermoon (HD; 1:32)
• Textless Closing Song - Strength (HD; 1:32)
• Textless Closing Song - Bakusou Yumeuta (HD; 1:32)
• Trailers for other FUNimation Releases

Soul Eater: The Weapon Collection Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

You've never seen anything quite like Soul Eater, and for visual ingenuity alone, this series really has to be experienced firsthand to be believed. But the good news is, there's a fun story and some very interesting characters here as well, not to mention an off the wall sense of humor that is very, very funny, especially to those of you with a perhaps slightly jaded take on things. If anything, this second half of the series looks even better than the first, with much more convincing CGI elements melded into its already fascinatingly diverse hand drawn contributions. The story manages to be involving and complex without being overly tiresome or too convoluted to follow, and the entire series is bright, breezy and just flat out weird and wonderful. Highly recommended.