The Verdict

Blackstar and Maka carry out their maintenance and Death the Kiddecides to join Shibusen.

Now Sid has lead the group to Franken Stein’s house, Shinigami and Death the Kid watch on, knowing that Maka and Blackstar don’t stand a chance against the doctor.

Blackstar, Tsubaki, Maka and Soul are apprehensively approaching the house when Dr Stein appears, rolling out on his office chair.  The group can’t seem to take Dr Stein seriously, and he begins to look at their souls – Maka’s soul is hard working while Soul is laid back and Blackstar has a difficult over energetic, self absorbed soul which is perfectly matched by Tsubaki’s willingness to adapt and accept others.

After analysing the group, Stein launches into attack, and the group release that he’s not as daft as he looks.  Maka attacks Stein with soul, but the two are easily knocked back by Stein.  Maka uses her ability to see souls to analyse Stein’s, and is horrified at what she sees, as unlike the groups small souls, around about the size of a fist, Stein’s soul resonates all around him.  Stein also doesn’t attack with a weapon, but his bear hands.  Shingami, still watching with Kid, explains that a soul’s power is amplified by a weapon, so the fact that he can easily overpower Maka without one means his soul is extremely powerful.  Maka becomes paralysed with fear and Stein picks her up and talks about dissecting her for experiments.   Blackstar gears up to stop Stein from hurting Maka.  Like Stein, he attacks without a weapon and seems to inflict some kind of damage to the doctor.

Meanwhile in his usual Hostess Club, Deathscyth is talking to new hostess Brea about his previous master Franken Stein.  Distressed over his past memories, he tells Brea and the other hostesses how Stein used to cut him and look at his insides during the night without Deathscyth noticing until his ex-wife pointing out that he was covered in cuts.

Back to the fight, Stein grabs Blackstar’s head, using the full power of his soul to electrocute him.  Limp, Blackstar falls to the ground and Tsubaki cries out and runs to him.  Death the Kid can watch on no more and demands to help the group with their maintenance.  Shinigami reminds him he’ll have to be a member of Shibusen  Soul meanwhile convinces Maka to get up and fight and together they preform the Witchhunter.  However the attack doesn’t even phase Stein, and Maka falls to the ground exhausted.  Stein approaches her once more and Soul bravely covers Maka’s body with his own to protect her.  Delighted, Stein tells Maka and Soul that they’ve passed their maintenance, and the whole situation has been a test.  Blackstar gets up, apparently fine and the group are a little bemused.

The following day at school Maka hears that their new teacher has been decided, and Maka is happy for anyone but her father to teach the class -  until Doctor Stein rolls in, who tells the class that hteir first lesson will be disection! 

It’s Death the Kid’s first day at school, and his OCD has caused him to be three hours late.  At Shibusen Blackstar and Soul have cut class, leaving Tsubaki and Maka to face another dissection lesson with Dr Stein.

As Kid, Patty and Liz approaches Shibusen, admiring it’s symmetry, he attracts the attention of Soul who is sitting outside of the school.  Interested to test the son of Shinigami, Blackstar suddenly announces that he’s come to assassinate Death the Kid, standing on one of the spiked platforms above him.  As Soul points out that you can’t assassinate someone if they know it’s coming, and Blackstar accidental breaks the platform, destroying the symetry, sending Kid into a rage.  He accepts Soul and Blackstar’s challenge of a dual, and quickly proves to be more powerful than Blackstar and Soul combined.

The commotion outside soon stirs the class into a frenzy and Maka informs Dr Stein that it’s her and Tsubaki’s duty to go and oversee the fight if their partners are fighting.  Reluctantly Stein leaves his dissection and escorts the girls outside where Kid is making easy work of Soul and Blackstar.  He manages to get a clean shot of Blackstar, who realises that the bullets from Kid’s guns are actually resonanting from his soul.  Stein comments on how it’s incredibly hard to sync up three souls, but because Liz and Patty hold such great respect for kid their souls can all meet the save wave length.

As the battle continues, Soul and Blackstar try to sync up their wave lengths and fight together, which proves unsuccessful.  Soul tells Blackstar that to remain friends, they can never try teaming up like that again.  Bored of the battle, Kid decides to finish things by preforming his resonance attack, Death Cannon.  It looks like Kid’s won this duel, until he collapses.  Soul releases that he accidental sliced some of Kid’s hair off, and Kid became unbalanced and released he was no longer symmetrical, so fainted. 

Liz and Patty pick Kid up to take him home, and Shinigami turns up to meet his son.  Maka tries to look at Shinigami’s soul, but is confused when she can’t see anything.

Wow, Soul Eater’s really grown on me.  Episode six was the first bit of anime that’s made me laugh out loud while watching alone for a while now.  It does look like the rest of the story is going to be a bit of a slapstick comedy, but oh well.  One of the things that really is striking me is the violence.  Poor Blackstar seems to come close to decapitation, and at least suffers massive head trauma every episode!

The series continues to impress with it’s odd characters also.  Everyone seems so well thought out that their little habits have become their defining features, rather than past events.  It also helps to make sure that one character doesn’t over shadow the others.  I’ve actually already watched the next two episodes, but had this half-typed up when I started watching.

Thanks to animekritik for recommending me this!  I’m really enjoying it and it’s changed my opinion a little about anime this year!