Soul Eaters is a hillarious manga and anime series that chronicles the adventures and tasks of three aspiring scythe carriers who are trainees at the Death Weapon Meister Academy (humans who can yield scythe weapons to destroy evil villains stalking Death City) and their partners, who can transform into  weapons for their meisters so they can acquire the 99 souls of evil beings and the soul of one witch to be accepted by Death himself to use their scythes to carry out his will. 

The three main characters are a shy teenage girl named Maka Albern and her partner Soul Eater who has the ability to turn into a scythe as a weapon. The twist with this duo is that Maka is secretly attracted to Soul Eater and always becomes jealous or angry when Soul Eater doesn’t pay her any attention. Black Star is a young boy who likes to consider himself to be a silent and deadly assassin, yet always fails to be silent and fails in acquiring evil souls. His partner is Tsubaki who can transform into many different kinds of knifes and swords and continuously has to work with and handle Black Star’s outrageous tendencies to prove that he is the greatest assassin at the academy. And finally there is Death the Kid, who happens to be Death’s son. His partners are a pair of sisters, Liz and Patty Thompson, who can transform into pistols for Death the Kid. The only problem is that Death the Kid has an obsessive compulsive disorder where everything he sees and touches has to be correctly aligned or else he becomes too distracted to complete any of his missions for the academy and tends to leave the sister’s behind to complete the mission on their own. 

I was introduced to this series by a few friends of mine and while I was watching the first episode and watched as Soul Eater litterally swallowed an evil red soul in the shape of a tear drop and then burped in Maka’s face after the two of them handily dealt the evil being its deathly blow, I knew this series was for me. There is intense fight scenes in each episode that are crossed with hillarious jokes and jabs at each character’s  quirks as their adventures unfold. I’ve only watched the first three episodes of the series but I already know I want to keeep learning more about these characters and the crazy academy they are a part of. The library has series 1-10 for the manga version of Soul Eater and has the whole collection in anime as well.

Written by Kevin Kindorf

Simmons College LIS intern 2/12/13