No spoilers below.
Okay so I finished Soul Eater and I have some mixed feelings about it. It was something of a guilty pleasure for me. The fights were neat and the story was okay but the characters felt too stereotyped and one dimensional. (I mean come on... One of the main trio is a whiny emo bitch with a crippling OCD that more than once almost kills him.) It was just barely good enough to keep me engaged but overall I feel like I should have watched something else.
The first third of the 51 episodes has gratuitous fan service and the amount of deus ex machinas used increases linearly in the last third, culminating in the last episode where the amount of bullstuff is just overwhelming. The final few episodes were just completely ignoring logic and in-universe rules for the sake of being badass. This attack that used to be difficult to use and took a lot of strength? forget that let me use it all the god damn time. You might explain it with the uh... change of environment... or them getting several times stronger during a few episodes that's quite a stretch. My main problem is really with that loving semi-automatic death cannon. forget that.
The writers also sacrifice logic in plot points because some actions of certain characters do not make sense in the given situation but they did it anyway because it's cool I guess? One enemy was actually defeated with the power of motherloving friendship. They also squeezed in a mech fight. Mind you not mechanic robots but giant magical things. But it's still a mech fight. The show doesn't have the balls to kill off (non-evil) characters (not a spoiler) even though they had perfectly fine "death scenes".
I suppose it's a very very generic and typical shounen. If you're looking for a Dragon Ball Z set in a magical universe, fighting with actual weapons, no drawn out fights (2-3 episodes max for notable battles central to the story arc.) and a pretty small focused cast you might like Soul Eater. I gave it a 6 on MAL.
PSA: There are three Excalibur episodes that are pure filler. I recommend watching the first one (Legend of the Holy Sword) so you know what it is and the episode does have some plot but you can seriously skip Legend of the Holy Sword 2 and 3. The last two are 100% pure filler with no consequence to anything and they're not even funny apart from like two short scenes. Not worth your time.
Speaking of which. Why the forget was Excalibur in the final showdown? That makes no sense. The writers just wanted as much of the cast in the last battle as possible. Dumb.
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