chaoticlivi:
listen, trying to describe Soul Eater to anyone who isn’t very familiar with certain types of tropes and storylines - especially ones commonly found in anime and manga - is a fucking trip.
“he turns into a scythe, but he can also play the piano during battle. like, FROM the scythe. sometimes the scythe turns into a piano. but it’s all him. also, his partner has wings on her soul and they can make the wings come out of the scythe.”
“so there’s a dangerous magic book that the characters go inside and experience the seven deadly sins. no, it’s not dante’s inferno, but it is a reference”
“the sexy lady is their cat/their cat is a sexy lady”
“the grim reaper is a school headmaster in nevada”
All right, story time.
All you need to know is that, A, it’s the first week of freshman year of college–you know, orientation week where no one has anything to do because they’re too worried about the freshman class wandering off and getting eaten by bears or whatever–and B, there are about a dozen people (all in various stages of heat-induced exhaustion on our un-air-conditioned campus) draped over couches and chairs in the informal lounge in the student union.
The dude with the computer wired up to the TV says, “Here, I’ll show you guys the first episode of an anime.”
My ass, having never seen an anime before in literally my entire life, sits there and goes “sure” along with every other semi-functional person in the room.
The first episode of Soul Eater happens on the screen. Over the course of the twenty-two minutes, about half the people in the room have wandered off because they lost the plot, and those of us who are left are all sitting there slightly slack-jawed and baffled. It ends, the dude pauses it and goes “Okay, do you all want to watch another.”
There are a couple beats of dead. Freaking. Silence.
Finally I sit up from where I’d been watching it and go “What the fuck did I just witness.”
The dude smirks and goes “Soul Eater. Do you want to watch another episode?”
Fast forward to the end of the week (about five days) and everyone who made it through the first episode has seen two complete seasons of Soul Eater.
It’s now been three years and I’m pretty well versed in the anime thing at this point. I honestly don’t think I’ve been really STUNNED by an anime since Soul Eater.
Do I necessarily recommend starting with SE? No, no I do not, it’s like saying “Yeah man, gateway drugs are for the weak, hit me up with some of that hallucinogenic mushroom and come back for me next month.”
On the other hand, it’ll make everything else seem downright freaking NORMAL in comparison.
(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)
