About Soul Eater
Soul Eater is Atsushi Ohkubo's gothic action-comedy, serialized in Square Enix's Monthly Shonen Gangan and adapted by Bones into fifty-one episodes between 2008 and 2009. It takes place at Death Weapon Meister Academy in Death City, a school in the Nevada desert run by a personified Death who speaks in a deliberately silly cartoon voice. Above it hangs a sun with a laughing face; the moon has one too, and it bleeds.
Students pair off. One half is a meister; the other is a Demon Weapon, a person who can transform into a scythe, a pair of pistols, a chain scythe or a war hammer. The stated goal is arithmetic: consume ninety-nine evil human souls and one witch's soul, in that order, and the weapon becomes a Death Scythe serving Death directly. Get the order wrong and the count resets to zero, which is the first real setback the main pair suffer.
The series follows three partnerships — Maka and Soul, Black Star and Tsubaki, Death the Kid and the Thompson sisters — as a witch called Medusa infiltrates the school as its nurse and works toward waking something sealed beneath it. That something is Asura, the first Kishin, a being who consumed souls out of fear until he became fear itself. Death City sits where it does precisely because the school and the prison are the same building, which is also why Lord Death can never leave.
What the Soul Eater Quiz Tests
Our Soul Eater quiz is written around the fifty-one-episode anime, which diverges from the manga in its final third and reaches its own ending. Easy levels cover the academy, the meister and weapon system, the main trio of pairs and Death the Kid's symmetry problem. The middle levels test Medusa's infiltration, Ragnarok and black blood, the Star Clan, Arachnophobia and Excalibur's one memorable word. The hard levels go into Maka's Grigori Soul, Stein's old weapon partner, why Lord Death is bound to Death City, Justin Law's weapon form and how the anime actually ends — which is not how the manga does.
Key Characters
Maka is the least physically imposing student at the academy and its most stubborn, with a rare soul type and the ability to perceive other souls directly; her defining quality is that she keeps walking toward things that frighten her. Soul performs indifference constantly and then takes a near-fatal wound protecting her within a few episodes, which sets the gap between his manner and his actions for the whole series. Black Star is volume as a personality, the last of a clan of assassins determined to surpass a god by shouting about it. Death the Kid is the most technically capable meister present and is regularly incapacitated mid-fight by a picture hanging crooked. Crona, raised in isolation by Medusa and fused with a demon sword, is treated by the series as genuinely injured rather than quirky, and their shift from antagonist to friend is the emotional centre of the story.
Available Quizzes
Soul Eater Trivia
50 hand-crafted questions across 5 categories. 10 levels of increasing difficulty.
Which Soul Eater Character Are You?
Answer 10 questions to discover which Soul Eater character matches your personality!
Random Mix
Questions from all 31 anime including Soul Eater. The ultimate challenge.
Characters
Maka Albarn
Soul Eater Evans
Black Star
Death the Kid
Crona
Soul Eater Fun Facts
- Consuming souls in the wrong order — a witch before ninety-nine humans, or an innocent soul at any point — resets a weapon's count to zero, which happens to the main pair early on.
- Lord Death physically cannot leave Death City because he is bound to the seal holding the Kishin Asura beneath the academy.
- Death the Kid's three white hair stripes, the Sanzu Lines, are deliberately incomplete, and the asymmetry is a plot point rather than a design choice.
- Franken Stein can wield almost any Demon Weapon because he adjusts his own soul wavelength to match theirs, which is why he is considered the academy's greatest meister.
- Ohkubo never specifies Crona's gender, and the Japanese text avoids gendered pronouns entirely — which is why English translations and dubs have handled the character inconsistently.
- The anime overtook the manga and wrote its own ending, so the final arc from roughly episode thirty-five onward exists only in animated form.
Soul Eater Quiz — Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes of Soul Eater are there?
Fifty-one, produced by Bones and broadcast from 2008 to 2009. There is also Soul Eater Not!, a twelve-episode prequel spin-off with a much lighter tone and a different cast.
Does the Soul Eater anime follow the manga?
For roughly the first two thirds, yes. The anime caught up with Ohkubo's ongoing manga and wrote an original ending, so the final arc differs substantially. Readers who want the intended conclusion need the manga.
How does someone become a Death Scythe?
A Demon Weapon must consume ninety-nine evil human souls and then one witch's soul, while wielded by their meister. Only then do they qualify to serve Lord Death directly as a Death Scythe.
What is black blood?
An engineered substance that grants enormous resilience and power at the cost of inducing madness. Crona was raised with it and Soul is infected during an early fight, leaving both characters with a permanent internal problem the series never fully resolves.
Should I watch Soul Eater or read the manga?
Watch the anime for the animation, the voice work and Bones at its most stylish; read the manga if you want the ending Ohkubo actually wrote. Many fans do both, watching to around the point of divergence and then reading on.
