What is the price of a soul?

A sound soul dwells where again?

Soul Eater is a shounen battle manga about students from an elite school of warriors tasked with monitoring supernatural phenomena and protecting the very lives of those around them. Seems pretty basic until you realize that half the student body turns into the very weapons you use in battle! And to make it even more appealing, most of the characters names are tropes or homages to monsters of old myths or even cinema to the random historical figure blown to weird proportions. Author/mangaka Atsushi Ohkubo in his first volume spends the first three chapters introducing the three leading groups of main characters in the story. Each chapter giving brief summaries of who they are and how they operate under the rules of the academy itself.

In the first chapter we are introduced to Maka Albarn and her partner the human scythe, Soul Eater. Both have just collected their 99^th human soul and are about to report to the school headmaster, the Grim Reaper himself! Except he’s a total goofball who behaves more like a worried yet strict parent, and it is here that we are introduced to Maka’s father the womanizing and arrogant Death-Scythe, yes that is his legal name. and they tell her that the next step before “graduating” is to acquire the soul of a witch, a with called Blair…see where this is going? The goal of each student in the academy is to defeat 99 human souls that have been corrupted by the dark forces and then defeat a witch’s soul to effectively turn their weapons into the next weapon for the Grim Reaper.

Then in the second chapter, we are introduced to the duo of Black Star, a blue haired energetic and attention starved ninja and his weapon Tsubaki, a calm and composed ninja weapons master. During their introduction they blunder in the assassination of Al Capone, and are sent on another mission to defeat a  witch. However when they arrive to the site, they witness a lone bodyguard who has set up countless swords all over the area. Will Black Star be able to survive the encounter with his strongest foe yet?

And finally in the last character introduction chapter, we have non other than the child of the Grim Reaper himself, Death the Kid. A prodigy and only taking on the elite missions along with his partners the twin sisters Liz and Patty who can both turn into pistols for rapid fire and precise shooting. However, as we learn in the first couple pages, Death the Kid is obsessed with symmetrical perfection, to the point that it cripples him in pain and anguish thus rendering him useless when in front of beautiful symmetry however when faced with asymmetrical odds, he loses his composure and goes ballistic on the enemy.

These prologue chapters help to cement these heroes or antiheroes depending on the situation, as the ragtag lovable bunch of the series. Soul Eater is all in all a very campy at times fanservice filled series in the beginning of its run , but later on evolves into a more mature story that those who stick with it until the end, will no doubt love.