There are two kinds of students who enroll at Death Weapon Meister Academy... The Weapons and the Meisters. For the weapons these are adolescents who have the ability to shapeshift their bodies into actual living telepathic weapons... They dont get to choose which weapon they become but the possibilities are endless. They can become classic bladed weapons like scythes and swords modern weapons like guns and flamethrowers or even multiple different ninja classics. For the Meisters these are the students who train to wield the weapons and each Meister is tasked with finding a partner they can not only get along with but resonate with all the way down to their souls. That being said Tsugumi Harudori has been faced with a unique problem... She has not one but two different Meisters vying for her allegiance An insecure introvert with the ability to become a halberd Tsugumi has to choose between the space cadet Meme and the rich tsundere Anya Hepburn if she can survive long enough to make up her mind. Ive written a ton of these reviews and its become pretty common for me to stumble across some massive surprise while Im researching the background information on whatever anime Im writing upand by research I mean a quick glance at about three different websites including wikipedia. For Soul Eater Not my biggest surprise was on its own fairly unexpected... I was shocked to find out that this spinoff from Soul Eater was animated by the same production company as Soul Eater because good Lord do they look nothing alike. Yeah the character designs are more or less similar but everything else is completely different. Not also doesnt look like anything ELSE that the legendary Studio Bones has ever madethat Ive seen and I think the reason for both of these divergences is the fact that it had a relatively unique director. Masakazu Hashimoto had his hands all over this production which tells me that Bones didnt really care too much about it because as far as Ive seen Hashimoto does not have a great track record. Its bad enough that he has ties to ShinChan which is one of the first titles you should bring up the next time some idiot argues that theres An anime style. He directed a few of the franchises movies and hes also listed as a production director for the Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood movie which... Woof. This is his only main directorial project for Studio Bones and that says a lot. I will say that the animation isnt terrible Ive seen way worse looking animation than this under far less damning circumstances... But its clearly trying to replicate the animation and aesthetic of the original Soul Eater and failing miserably to do so. Im also willing to bet that Bones didnt want to fork over very much money to this production likely because of the poor critical and commercial reception to the latter half of Soul Eater and while the costcutting measures arent ALWAYS blatantly obvious they do stick out once in a while with faces freezing in awkward positions characters being raised and lowered in tandem so it looks like theyre walking together and once in a while youll get some truly awful looking mouth flaps that dont look like theyre genuinely attached to the characters face. Visually speaking the overall feel is that they were trying to produce a blushy slice of life melodrama within the world of Soul Eater and Im not saying that idea couldnt have possibly worked but I dont think the director had any idea how to marry those two concepts. The new characters look like generic designs that were altered slightly to fit the Soul Eater aesthetic with the exception of the villain but more on her later. Character movement is stiff more often than not any character who isnt moving in the shot is usually offmodel and while there are a few okay action scenes most of them are pretty poorly choreographed especially in the later scenes where Anya and Meme are supposed to be wielding Tsugumis halberd form together. The producers were at least competent enough to understand budget allocation using the bulk of their resources on scenes requiring more active animation and taking shortcuts everywhere else to compensate and that alone saves the production from coming off as a complete disaster but its still not a great looking anime especially for a Soul Eater spinoff. I dont have anything especially interesting to say about the dub but I dont mean that in a bad way. What I mean is that whether you love them or hate them Funimation is just really good at dubbing anime as long as the writers arent taking too many liberties with the scripts. Not doesnt have this problem so its just what youd expect another really good dub. Several actors from the first Soul Eater anime are reprising their roles here and with the exception of Micah Solusodwho does kind of phone it in a little but considering how little his character Soul has to do here you cant really blame him everyone sounds just as good as you remember. Particular praise goes to Laura Bailey as Maka Chuck Huber as Doctor Stein and Cherami Leigh and Jamie Marchi as the Thompson Twins none of whom sound like a single day has gone by since their last outing. There are a few black characters played by white actors... Theyre all from the original show and the dubbing scene in the mid2000s can fairly be referred to as a different time... And for the three new main characters? Lindsay Seidel Alexis Tipton and Brynn Appril were relative newcomers at the time but they did the best they could with the characters they had and theyve all gone on to make an impact in the years since. Its been a long time since I reviewed the original Soul Eater... And I mean a long time like back when my old blog was still active... And while I dont think Ive rewatched it since then it is a show I find myself constantly remembering which is a testament to how memorable a series it actually was. I think I might have been too harsh on that series at the time because while I dont take back any of my criticisms of it... I had serious issues with its plot worldbuilding and generally poor writing all of which I still think people should pay more attention to when praising it... But I do appreciate that it had a lot of things going for it. Soul Eater is a fun show. Its easily one of the most unique and original anime ever made and it had a sort of ballstothewall creative energy that never left me feeling bored. It had its failure but thats because it was bold and it was never afraid to take risks. I kind of want to rewrite that review and bump my 6/10 up to a 7/10... Which is weird because as I mentioned IN that review I already bumped it from a 5 to a 6 after watching Soul Eater Not gave me a whole new appreciation for it. So what is Soul Eater Not? Is it a sequel a prequel or a midquel to the source material? The answer is I dont know its kind of unclear. Im pretty sure it comes before the original series on the timeline but there are certain character development elements that would suggest otherwise unless Im just seeing things. The only thing I can say for certain regarding its relationship to Soul Eater is that its a step down. That feels weird right? From a certain point of view Soul Eater is the perfect anime to support not just one spinoff but dozens as the setting offers endless possibilities and the ability to explore them... Hell as unclear as some of the franchises lore details are a bunch of spinoffs would be the perfect way to figure out what the hell a Meister gets out of their weapon becoming Deaths scythe or why nobody ever just uses real weapons instead of transforming partners. Thats not to say Not doesnt make an effort to expand the lore but moments like that are few and far between and you can kind of figure out just how much of an underachiever this series is right from the start. Lets see the best way to describe this would be... Remember the final season of Scrubs? Right in the first episode they introduce you to the actress the studio chose to replace JD as the main character but they didnt really have an identity prepared for her so they basically just experimented with her personality by just having her react to her new environment and a bunch of onenote gimmicky new costars? And the returning cast members did fine but they were still just glorified cameos to try and elevate these new characters despite the likelihood that the writers were too used to the previous cast to handle introducing that many new faces at once and the whole thing felt like a forced and unnatural attempt to capture lightning in a bottle again? Yeah thats basically how Not begins. Tsugumi even has her own JD moment when she sees a successful student doing something for charity and then imagines herself in his position. I can identify Nots three major problems right off the bat and just for sport Im not going to count its failure to live up to the original as one of them. First problem Tsugumi is barely a character. Shes your typical average nice girl trope who always does the right thing unless her emotions force her to act out of character and her only real flaws are the fact that shes occasionally clumsy and the fact that shes insecure about some things. I could not describe her personality if you paid me to and while Ive never been quite fond of throwing the term Mary Sue around as Id say about 90 of its online usage is incorrect I do think it applies to Tsugumi pretty well. She is not a remotely interesting character and neither are either of her friends who are some pretty simple archetypes overall. Meme is your average space cadet character and Anya is your typical rich tsundere whos fascinated by commoner things. Theyre Yui and Mugisan from KOn basically. They satisfy the bare minimum requirements for a slice of life school melodrama but in the universe of Soul Eater they fall well below par. For the second problem its the fact that there really isnt anything driving the story. Now dont get me wrong Im not accusing this show of not having a plot... Tsumugi having to choose between two potential wielders IS a plot its just a really weak one. Meme and Anya both attach themselves to Tsumugi pretty quickly after barely even making a first impression and while Id be willing to believe theres enough groundwork established for either one of them to pair up with her there is nowhere near enough of a connection for both of them to fight over her instead of conceding and looking elsewhere. The whole idea of weapons and meisters needing to be compatible is also kind of thrown out the window if youre wondering why Tsumugi doesnt just pair up with the girl she has the strongest resonance with. Either way Tsumugi having to choose between them may be the plot but its left by the wayside for more than half the series to make room for silly shenanigans until the writers finally decide to force a conflict over it late in the series and the payoff is unsatisfying to say the least. And the third problem this shows writing just doesnt have a great level of competency behind it. So a little backstory here with most of my reviews I dont usually cover everything I want to. Maybe I forgot to mention something or I left something out because I couldnt think of anywhere to bring it up naturally or hell maybe the review is too damn long at that point. One particular regret of mine is that in my Shimonetta review I mention some references I shouldve found funny but didnt but I dont think I specified what they were. They were a JJBA reference where the main character quote that rapidfire punching sound effect while kicking someone in the nuts and the dub at one point recites Carlins 7 Words You Cant Say on Television. My point was that both of these jokes fit the material so perfectly that you would have to put actual work into fucking them up but the bad writing caused them both to fall flat anyway. My point is Not does something like this too. A few times actually but my favorite example is the character Misery based on Annie Wilkes from the Stephen King novel of the same name. She ties Tsumugi up during her first night at the school and attempts to mutilate her with a hammer to make her look like a book character. On paper this is fucking genius considering how Soul Eater likes to play with and twist around historical and fictional antagonists. In practice however Tsumugi is rescued then scolded for not getting along with Misery who goes completely unpunished after being subdued and the incident is never brought up again. You se what I mean when I say that a joke that has no excuse to not be funny can be fucked up by bad writing and baffling execution? Far be it from me to criticize professional writers but maybe if Misery was an actual witch and Tsumugi and her partners had to actually defeat her the joke would have stuck the landing? I know Im just some internet nobody but come on. And the entire show is like this running on ideas where theres a clear vision but no sense of competant execution anywhere to be found. For the majority of the series if it wasnt for the Soul Eater branding and all of the otherwise pointless cameos Not would have gone down as nothing more than another painfully generic and cliched highschool slice of life melodrama. The characters are generic their conflicts are generic it even features the same old same old generic PG level fanservice thats meant to manipulate younger male audiences while censoring itself just enough to air on TV. There are some nice parts... We get an extended look at the backstory of characters Liz and Patty and that whole episode is pretty good. Then again they also explore side characters Jackie and Kim a little more but their dynamic reeks of queerbaiting. The villain is cool... No seriously the big bad evil witch who shows up in the final act is awesome legitimately well designed and threatening enough to have fit right in with the main show although she does get nerfed in the end when the animators give her the aim of a freaking stormtrooper. So yeah I cant say theres nothing good in this show but I cant justify having to wade through all the tedious nothingness to get there. Soul Eater Not is available from Funimation and the original manga is available stateside from Yen Press. I have no idea who this anime was made for. I have a pretty good theory about why it was made what with the manga probably seeing some degree of success in certain circles and Bones wanting to wring a little more cash out of a popular property but who was this made for? I cant imagine most Soul Eater Fans wanting to see their cool halloweeny action anime twisted into a high school melodrama and I cant imagine followers of girly slice of life anime were begging to see their favorite genre injected with this degree of weirdness. Im sure there are some people out there who wanted to see that combination but enough to justify this shows existence? I dont know man. The original Soul Eater was a train wreck but at least it was an entertaining train wreck full of creative energy and wacky ideas. Soul Eater Not on the other hand is just boring. Its not an interesting spinoff its not entertaining on its own merits its not well written in general... Its just Not. I give Soul Eater Not a 3/10.