Here’s a strange phenomenon I have no explanation of: due to the recent arrests, a large amount of the Share-users have stopped uploading their files by now, though the few that remain find it for some strange and inexplicable reason a good idea to release in a high quality video-file as possible. Suddenly, 75% of all new files are in some kind HD .mp4 or .mkv-format. So… yeah. If you’ve been wondering why I’ve been so slow for the past few days: my pc doesn’t support HD video-files.

In any case, I’m glad that this series is really taking its time exploring its concepts. This time, we see that not just any weapon meister can team up with a random weapon, even if the two of them are best friends. Their souls need to be in resonance in order for this to happen. The key is much more to understanding each other.

The thing I’m waiting for right now is to see Soul or Black Star, teaming up with Kid in a team-mission. Death the Kid really seems like a person who prefers fighting alone (or alone with his weapons). I can imagine how he’ll have huge amounts of trouble, trying to work together with the asymmetric idiots that are Soul and especially Black Star.

Now this is more like it! This episode showed none of the weaknesses I spotted in the last episode, and delivered both an entertaining fight and good comedy. This is exactly what I look for in a shounen-series, because series of this type shouldn’t take their story too seriously. Soul Eater so far has managed to deliver a pretty good combination between serious and semi-serious scenes.

I’ve noticed that the creators like to use anti-climaxes a lot. They build up tension, only to go into a completely different direction when the tension’s about to reach its height. This should prove to be quite interesting once they start playing with it as the series progresses and develops. One thing I do hope that the creators realize is to not make the fights go on for ages. Kekkaishi did this well: only the big fights went on for longer than one episode, and even that felt too long. Fights are the best when they’re short and sweet.

Frankenstein has indeed proved to be an interesting character, who likes to perform experiments no matter what. He also used to perform lots of experiments on Maka’s father when he was asleep. :P So far, it also seems like he’s not totally dependant on this stereotype, and this sounds more like a part of the guy’s personality. A lot of comedies need to learn that energetic characters don’t need to be energetic all the time, ill-tempered people don’t need to be ill-tempered all the time, et cetera, et cetera. Showing a carefree person suddenly getting serious isn’t development, it’s just fleshing out the guy’s character.

I’m wondering… why does Tsubaki get naked when she’s in weapon-mode, and yet Soul gets to keep his clothes? I mean, I can understand how a bit of fanservice here and there is nice and all and how this would scare off the guys who are afraid to see other men without any clothes on, but at least keep things a bit consistent.

In any case, this episode started a bit disappointing, where Maka beat up Soul a few too many times. Jokes like these stopped being funny ever since Love Hina overused them. Thankfully, as this episode went along, it introduced a few new things, including a resonance-mode that goes wrong. And a Black Star who is actually calculating when he doesn’t need to ambush anyone.

Having said that though, this episode was the least funny of this series so far, since more than half of the jokes were just reused from the previous ones. The bad guy of this week, a teacher turned zombie that uses his own gravestone as a weapon, didn’t feel that inspired. This can mean two things:
1) This series already used up its best jokes and has run out of inspiration. Things would be pretty bad if this was the case.
2) Seeing as it’s 52 episodes we’re talking about, the creators cleverly decided to use their best jokes for later, when the characters are actually developed. Sortof like the Law of Ueki, which also was rather dull at this point. The next episode should be better, as it’ll introduce another major character: a certain Dr Frankenstein who used to partner up with Death Scythe before he met Maka’s mother (speaking of which, what happened to her? Heck, where has Shinigami’s wife run off to?)

So, this episode concludes the introduction of Soul Eater. We’ve no seen all the three couples, so it’s time for this series to start building up to its real potential, rather than the McGuffin involving the 100 souls to become a death scythe. My guess is that the next few episodes will show the different couples working together on one mission. Something tells me that the banter between these people will reach epic levels when they’re combined.

In any case, this episode is the proper introduction to Death the Kid (really interesting names some of these people have). He’s the son of shinigami himself, so of course you’d expect a perfect student here. When I first saw him, I thought that his weakness was that his weapons weren’t talented, or how he kept arguing with his weapons to the point where he stops caring about his targets, but it turned out to be something much funnier: the guy’s obsessed with symmetry. Now that’s really fitting of the “perfect” student.

If I had to mention a bad point about this series so far, then it’s the CG. Bones is talented in a lot of areas, but CG isn’t one of them, and they’re nowhere near Gonzo’s level at this point. Blassreiter, for example, has some really nice CG, but the shingami castle, the grinning moon and the laughing sun (among others; the different hallways also suffer from this) have lost their freshness by now, and with that the bland CG starts becoming a bit jarring.

As for the series I won’t be blogging this season:
- Kanokon: Obviously not. Please Xebec, I know that you’re good at adapting mangas and light-novels, you showed that with The Third, but stop picking out these crappy premises!
- I apparently like Blassreiter a lot more than others do. Really, what’s so wrong with it? The plot has potential, the characters may not be the best, but they’re not the worst anyway, and the CG is impressive to look at. Still, I do admit that it still has the potential to fall apart.
- Zettai Karen Children spends way too much attention on its most boring character: the red-haired girl, voiced by Hirano Aya.
- Wagaya no Oinarisama has terrific music, but I’m still not sure whether it knows what it wants to be: just random slice-of-life stories or something with an actual plot.
- The second episode of Nabari no Ou is just boring.
- The second episode of Kamen no Maid Guy is even worse.
- Special A has great main characters, but I’m not convinced about the side-characters yet.

For Soul Eater, after the first episode, I was really doubting whether or not to blog this series. On one hand, it’s a 51-episoded shounen-series, but on the other hand I heard a lot of good things about this series, like how the characters abandon the subplot of collecting these 100 souls to become a death scythe rather early on, and it seems that there are 11 volumes of the manga so far. Seeing as that within a year, it’s quite probable for a twelfth volume to come out, and that should be just enough to fill up 51 episodes.

Still, that does mean that there’ll be a chance for this series to have a disappointing ending. But on the other hand again, the fact remains that this series has a terrific sense of style, great characters and an actually good soundtrack (that’s one thing I really missed in the previous Autumn-season: there were hardly any series with a really good soundtrack, apart from Gunslinger Girl, perhaps). There’s also the fact that this has been the very first shounen-series that I considered to have any potential at all to beat the Law of Ueki as my favourite shounen-fighting series. Overall, these are enough reasons for me to blog it. And if it does delve into fillers, I can always drop it like I did with Shugo Chara. It’s also good to blog a series that does not air on tuesday or thursday.

This episode wasn’t as good as the first one, but it was still a great one. This one introduces the second couple of weapon “meister” and weapon. Their main weakness turns out to be that the male (who is the weapon meister this time) doesn’t know the meaning of “subtlety”. Whenever he tries to sneak up to someone, he makes no attempts whatsoever to hide his presence. Their strength is that the weapon likes to change into more than just a scythe, and she makes use of lots of different weapons, instead of how the guy in the previous episode liked to be a scythe for most of the time. The end of this episode also introduced the third couple that this series will be focusing on. In their case, it’s the weapon meister who’s the brilliant one (the son of Shinigami, if I understood correctly), but his weapons leave much to be desired.

Also, on a side-note: am I the only one who actually liked the voice-acting of the main couple in the first episode? Really, especially the girl had a refreshing voice that didn’t sound over-rehearsed. So what if she doesn’t sound like a j-pop idol? Its great to hear different voices for anime and not the same squeaky voice over and over again. That’s why I also like the deep voice of the male weapon.

It’s also good to see that the director has experience with series that span 52 episodes: he did direct Ashita no Nadja (note to self: continue that one. It’s good!), and judging on Wyrdwad’s comments on that series, it never lost any steam at all. It’s also good to see that he worked on mostly shoujo-series before, so the chance of this one heading towards bleach is also minimal. The only fear for this guy would be the insertion of pointless fillers and a crappy ending, like he did with Ouran High School Host Club, but at least Soul Eater has characters with enough potential, that don’t just rely on their quirks, and characters like Honey are missing.

The guy behind the series composition (Akatsuki Yamatoya, who also wrote the script for the first episode) also sounds very promising. He may have worked on a couple of crappy series like Blue Dragon, Busou Renkin and To Love-Ru, but this guy really gets on fire when he gets to work with a series with potential: he worked on the script of Gintama and wrote the script of episodes 10 and 12 (both hilarious). So for now, I’m confident, although I probably won’t feel like checking out the late-night airing of this series to find out the subtle changes that were made. I heard that the changes that were made weren’t impressive anyways.

Soul Eater

What a fun series! Really, Bones did it again, creating a series with an absolutely terrific sense of style. Everything about this series clicks so far. It may not have the most realistic storyline, but it’s fun to watch without a doubt. It’s also got a great sense of humour, and I especially love that picture of the moon with a big smile. The banter between all the different characters is also hilarious, so I’ve got high hopes for this series. The question now remains: will this series have enough material for fifty-one episodes (at least, that’s what AniDB and ANN say, but these aren’t the most trusted sources)? I must say that it’s great to see another series that aims for such a length, but you do need to have enough inspiration to pull it off.

Special A

The elite are always portrayed in an exaggerated way in anime, and this series is no different. There are about eight very talented people at school, who are looked up to by everyone, they’ve got their own enormous greenhouse, drink tea all the time and they’re superior in every single way to those measly regular students. Still, at least this series gives a good reason for our main female lead to be in that club, unlike a certain Shugo Chara and dozens of other shoujo. Hikari was already quite talented because of an ambitious father, and then she met her male rival, who always stood above her. She basically spent her entire childhood chasing this guy, walking in his shadow. Also, this series knows very well when it needs to exaggerate and when it needs to be serious, so the ridiculous premise won’t get in the way of what’s really important for this series: the relationship between the female and male lead. And I must say that the creators have tackled it very nicely so far. Here’s Gonzo’s next potential classic.

Vampire Knight

This really is THE season for shoujo and science fiction. This season has really turned out better than I expected, and to think that my most anticipated day for this season (Tuesday) hasn’t even come yet! In any case, the thing that really striked me with Vampire Knight, especially after watching Special A, is that its jokes are rather obtrusive. Special A knew exactly when to deliver a joke, though a lot of jokes in Vampire Knight are misplaced, break flow of the drama and aren’t that funny anyway. That was the bad part of this series. The good parts are that the story has a lot of potential, the characters are interesting and the soundtrack is excellent. I’ve heard a lot of mixed reviews about the original manga: some people consider it their bible, while others say it downright sucks. Well, I’m interested to find out which is true.