My first exposure to Soul Eater was as one of the last series I've seen so much as part-of fansubbed, my friends having dragged me into watching the first five episodes back at Animazement 2008. Despite their ringing recommendation, I was less than enthused by the name — expecting something over-serious like Death Note — and the prospect of watching an action series. I also heard a lot of hype around the animation quality itself, which I always take as a red flag. Animation quality and matters like screen resolution say nothing about the quality of the actual content.

Despite my reservations, I ended up enjoying Soul Eater back then, and much to my relief, it's acted as an effective mental palate cleanser following the mental indigestion Nabari no Ou caused.

Soul Eater's central concept is quite simple on the surface. Lord Death, a goofy-looking take on Death himself, runs Death Weapon Meister Academy (DWMA), a technical school fighting for justice. The students come in two categories: Meisters, who wield weapons, and the weapons themselves. Yes, themselves. In the world of Soul Eater, people capable of consciously transforming themselves into weapons more powerful than any soulless, inanimate weapon exist and play an integral role in upholding peace and stability.

Meisters and weapons are paired up based on their ability to synchronize their souls' wavelengths, as so to ultimately unleash special "resonance" based attacks. You can't have an action anime series without people yelling their special attacks' names, after all. This isn't Soviet Russia.

The series follows two duos and a threesome of lead characters, starting with scythe meister Maka and the titular Soul Eater, who transforms into (Guess!) a scythe. Next up, we have assassin meister Black*Star and his dark arms weapon, Tsubaki. (She's basically a human Swiss army knife, with a good handful of different forms she can transform into.) And lastly we have Lord Death's son, Death the Kid, and his dual pistol weapons, the Thompson sisters — Liz and Patty.

That's a good armload of characters to juggle, and as such, Soul Eater spends its first three episodes on a prologue, introducing the viewer to the world, its rules, and each of these characters. All of them have strengths and flaws that make them interesting to watch. Maka is serious and dedicated, but gets caught up in worry too easily and has problems at home — her father being Lord Death's current Death Scythe. Soul, like most teenagers, is fixated on being a cool guy. Black*Star is incredibly conceited and set on hogging the spotlight at every opportunity, in direct contradiction to his job as an assassin. Tsubaki is kind, resilient, and adaptable to the point of being a doormat. Death the Kid has a severe case of OCD, to the point of spontaneously bleeding in the presence of asymmetry. The Thompson sisters' mismatched appearance and personalities drive him up the wall. The older sister, Liz, is a tall cynic with a cowardly streak who often finds Kid's perfectionism aggravating. Patty, on the other hand, is childish and constantly off in her own world. All together, these characters make for a refreshingly varied cast to follow into the Soul Eater world.

Following their respective introductions, the next several episodes center on bringing in the supporting cast, starting with zombie teacher Sid, and mad scientist teacher Dr. Franken Stein. The show is full of real-world historical and fictional references in its characters, with meisters taking down Jack the Ripper, Al Capone, Phantom Thief Lupin, and Mad Monk Rasputin in the first several episodes.

With the recurring cast established, the next episodes give them adversaries. Malevolent witch Medusa works as the DWMA school nurse by day, and conducts research on Kishin creation by night, looking to stir up trouble. Her first research subject: a severely disturbed gender-ambiguous child named Crona, whose weapon appears in the form of a black-blooded giant springing from his back.

Up until the introduction of these villains, the show handles itself as a slick, well-paced production balancing itself with extreme, bloody violence in one hand and a great sense of humor in the other. In this regard, I'm enjoying Soul Eater in a way similar to One Piece: action shows tend to work better when they don't take themselves too seriously. Like One Piece, I was drawn to the show by its impressively intense violence — no punches pulled in the fighting scenes. Likewise, serious moments are frequently interrupted by humor, and these generally work well without drawing on too many tired clichés.

As I mentioned, however, there is some stumbling once the villains make their appearance. When things get too violent for our heroes to handle, the show's tone completely changes and for the most part, the humor disappears. As soon as Medusa begins targeting Maka and Soul for her research, things get serious a little too quickly, while we're still just starting to get to know these characters. It's hard for sharp-edged melodrama to make anything resembling a real impact when the characters at its epicenter are far from fully developed. This brings me to my second issue with the show: pacing. Soul Eater is well written on the whole, especially for an action series, but after the first few episodes, a disjointedness hits the pacing pretty hard. The viewer makes some pretty big jumps forward in time early on, and there's some issues with the episode-to-episode flow — you want the show to slow down a little, and give you more time to get to know the characters. Instead, they grab you by the scruff of your neck and chuck you headfirst into serious territory.

Despite these issues, Soul Eater is still a very entertaining show. The character designs, like the characters themselves, are distinctive. The animation is rich in quality and full of color for such a dark show. The action is intense, bloody, and satisfying, and the jokes mostly work. The music fits too — whether it's the TM Revolution opening, scream rock ending, or complementing background score. Some tracks even include rap lyrics. On every technical level, Soul Eater is well executed, and on each of its creative levels, it works. It's like someone took Bleach's angst-reapers fighting big death monsters and slapped the show around, telling those damn kids to learn to laugh a little.

While my experience with these first thirteen episodes wasn't without its flaws, I had fun. That's far more than I can say of Nabari no Ou. I'm looking forward to seeing how the latter half of season one turns out, as well as all of season two. There are good action shows out there and there are bad ones. I've reviewed both. This is one of the good ones, so if you're looking for an action series that'll knock your socks off with intense, bloody fighting and make you chuckle besides, you really can't go wrong with Soul Eater. Here's hoping future episodes work out the disjointedness and the pacing improves.