Manga / Soul Eater

Careful now, they'll take your soul. ^Characters
(From left to right)
Back row: Tsubaki, Liz. Middle row: Black☆Star, Maka, Death the Kid. Front row: Soul, Patty, Blair.

"A sound soul dwells within a sound mind and a sound body."

Soul Eater is a Shōnen manga by Atsushi Ohkubo which was serialized in Monthly Shōnen Gangan from 2004 to 2013, with a total of 113 chapters. It received a 51-episode anime by Studio Bones in 2008. As of January 2011, Monthly Shonen Gangan has run a prequel/Spin-Off titled Soul Eater Not! by the same mangaka, running alongside the original series while covering and expanding on events prior to the original story.

In the world of Soul Eater, a human soul that falls to corruption has a chance of transforming into a "Demon Egg", which in turn has a chance of hatching into the ultimate avatar of madness.

To stop this from happening, Death himself has set up the Death Weapon Meister Academy in Death City, Nevada. The DWMA trains warriors ("Meisters") and Weapons (humans who can shapeshift into weapons) to fight and retrieve the evil souls before they become Demon Eggs. A Meister and Weapon who manage to collect 99 corrupt souls and one Witch soul receive the highest honor: the Weapon becomes one of the Death Scythes, servitors of Death himself.

The main characters include:

• Maka Albarn and her scythe, Soul Eater (just call him Soul). She's a raging workaholic, he's a slacker, but they make a great team. They almost made Soul into a Death Scythe at the beginning of the series, but failed on a technicality and have to start over.
• Black☆Star and his Morph Weapon Tsubaki: Black☆Star is a would-be master assassin who has trouble reconciling the concepts of "stealth" and "shouting about how awesome you are". His partner Tsubaki is an incredibly patient and capable Weapon who can transform into multiple ninja weapons, from a chain-scythe to a smoke bomb.
• Death the Kid and his twin-pistols the Thompson Sisters: Son of Death himself, whose incredible natural power is offset by his extreme Obsessively Organized behavior, being absolutely obsessed with symmetry. The Thompson Sisters serve as his weapons: Liz is the older and more cynical sister, while Patty is younger and goofier.

The series is basically what happens when the plots of Shaman King and Harry Potter are pulsed together in a blender, Studio BONES is put in charge of the animation, and what appears to be the world's craziest graffiti artist and world's biggest Tim Burton fan is hired as animation director. It should be noted that, since the manga was still being published monthly when the anime aired, the anime starts to deviate from the source manga after about the first third of the series and pretty much creates its own climax and ending.

The anime was acquired by Funimation, with tantalizing previews on their website. All of the episodes are viewable on their video portal (which is only viewable... In America...and Canada) and their YouTube channel. The series used to air on US television on Toonami on Saturday nights at 1:30 AM Eastern.

See also Elemental Gelade, a similar concept with a more futuristic sci-fi bent. Shaman King shares lots of similarities with this series — a partner as a weapon, characters design, etc. See also Tweeny Witches and Little Witch Academia, two anime series about witches with a similar art style, premise, and themes.

See also Fire Force, another series made by Ohkubo, which was revealed to be a prequel to this series in its final chapter.

Notably, the character of Eibon and the Book of Eibon are both borrowed from the works of Clark Ashton Smith. Smith was a friend and contemporary of H. P. Lovecraft; his works are filled with Shout Outs to the Cthulhu Mythos and debatably comprise part of them. The influence of the mythos on Soul Eater can be seen in the series' focus on madness, power, and godhood, especially portraying madness as something akin to an infectious disease.

Not to be confused with another Soul Eater, nor the literal kind.

---

Warning: The following tropes are from the anime and manga. Be VERY careful with spoiler text.

A-L

• Absurdly Sharp Blade
  • Soul has been shown to be able to cut through stone pillars and a really large Mosquito when in his Demon Hunter form.
  • Mifune's swords sink several inches into the ground, or the walls whenever he throws them. And they don't even seem to be particularly magical.
• Action Girl: Most of the female cast, since they're all well-trained in how to hunt and kill monsters, as well as hand-to-hand combat.
• Adaptational Wimp: Several of the characters in the anime get this. They're not really any less competent, but many of them don't reach the heights of power their manga counterparts did, due to the series having a Gecko Ending.
  • Crona/Ragnarok never becomes a kishin. On the other hand, they manage to keep up their sanity, so they come out ahead there.
  • Soul never becomes death scythe. In the manga he killed Arachne and devoured her soul to become one, but in the anime Asura betrays and eats her instead.
  • Death the Kid never succeeds his father, due to the latter being Spared by the Adaptation.
• Aerith and Bob: Just among the main cast, we have Death the Kid, Black☆Star, and Soul Eater alongside Maka, Patty, Liz, and Tsubaki. And it just goes on from there. Soul Eater Not! later explains that they can register at DWMA with whatever name they want.
• All Men Are Perverts: Though she does care for her male friends, Maka believes in this as a result of her father cheating on her mother. Soul's tendency to get nosebleeds around attractive women doesn't help. Humorously, Liz and Tsubaki end up being the most perverted of Spartoi (as revealed during the Gender Bender) and even the now-male Maka gets a nosebleed looking at Black☆Star.
• All Witches Have Cats: Inverted. Blair, who Maka and Soul thought was a witch, turned out to actually be a cat that had a human form and magic and merely dressed like a witch.
• Almighty Janitor: The Desk Lady, the Desk Lady so much. While Kid's attacks left a clown unfazed in the battle of the moon, the Desk Lady smashed it with the force of a raging Gorilla. It helps that she refers to herself as a gorila.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Witches, with few exceptions, are considered this due to the "Sway of Magic", which leads them towards destruction.
• Ambiguous Gender
  • Crona. Recognized as ambiguous numerous times by characters within canon itself. The official English translations of the manga and anime use "he" simply because it's the closest English has to a widely used gender ambiguous pronoun ^note Although using "they" would have been a much better alternative. There is no solid canon support for Crona being any gender, partially thanks to third-person pronouns ("he" & "she") being almost completely unused in Japanese. Word of God is that Crona's gender is unknown. Later translations eventually went with they/them, as this usage became more widely accepted with the greater visibility of nonbinary gender identities.
  • Fire and Thunder, until chapter 67 shows them in older bodies. Fire is a boy and Thunder is a girl.
• Amusing Injuries:
  • In the first fight between Black☆Star and Kid, Black☆Star still has the head wound Soul accidentally gave him, even after the battle. The injuries last for the usual amount of time, but it's shown as comedic.
  • People nailed by Maka's 'Maka Chop' (Hit in the head with the spine of a book) in the anime, at least, have a book-shaped dent in their heads for a bit, and occasionally tiny decorative fountains of blood, but next scene are back to normal. Death's Reaper Chop does the same thing, except he uses his large, square-edged hands instead of a book. Usually on Death Scythe.
• And the Adventure Continues: They don't fully beat the Kishin, just subdue him enough that he becomes a seal around the Moon. The witches save the heroes, Kid is informed of his dad's passing and eventually takes up his position. Black☆Star goes on to train as usual while Maka just reflects on what happened. At Kid's initiation ceremony, he abolishes the persecution of witches, citing Soul as the Last Death Scythe. Marie is revealed to be pregnant with Stein's child and a celebration is thrown with Soul providing the music. As he does, Maka vows to show Kishin what true courage is and to see Crona again.
• Animal Eye Spy: Medusa and Arachne, via snakes and spiders respectively. Medusa is also able to implant her snakes in people to see through them, as well.
• Animal Motifs
  • Medusa and Arachne both have the motifs of predatory animals (snake and spider), whereas their henchmen have the motif of their prey. Frogs (Eruka) and mice (the Mizune sisters), whose names are the Japanese words for "frog" and "mouse" with their syllables reversed (kaeru and nezumi) for Medusa. Mosquito for Arachne.
  • Kim has a raccon motif and Angela is associated with chameleons. In fact, every Witch seen so far has a clear Animal Motif (with the exception of Mabaa).
  • Noah is associated with bugs. To be more precise, greed!Noah with caterpillars/grubs and wrath!Noah with ants and stag beetles.
• Anime Hair: While both Soul and Black☆Star have spiky hair (though the former lampshades it in Soul Eater Not! when he's shown to have lost his hair gel), their hairstyles pale in comparison to Ox Ford's sheer pillars. During the invasion of Arachne's castle, Ox pretty much outright says that his pillars are the source of all of his powers. When he breaks them off (not rip; break, like they're made of ceramic), his soul actually starts weakening.
• Anthropomorphic Personification
  • The Clown, who is madness made flesh.
  • As of now, it been explicitly stated that Lord Death is an Eldritch Abomination / Anthropomorphic Personification of death, and his actual name is Death. Kid is actually a fragment of him, given a unique personality and independence, and Lord Death ceases to exist once Kid comes into his full powers. Kid himself just looks like a normal teenage boy. According to Kid, this was intentional on the part of Lord Death during Kid's creation, and his appearance is likely to help him get closer to humanity than Lord Death ever could.
• Anti-Advice: In the anime's ending, while Marie and Crona are searching for Medusa, there's a montage of them searching a swamp. After a while Crona decides to simply go in the opposite direction to the one Marie picked.
• Anti-Villain:
  • Mifune, the noble Samurai who fights only to defend the child witch Angela. Note the irony in his rival being Black☆Star, an assassin working for the good guys. Most assassins are not good people in this series.
  • Eruka may or may not be an Anti-Villain. Yes, she's a witch. Yes, she wants to revive Asura. But that's only because if she doesn't follow Medusa's orders, her snakes will eat Eruka from the inside out. Also has a giant tadpole named Otama Jackson for a pet, who she treats with a lot of love.
  • Free may or may not also be an anti-villain, for the same reasons as Eruka. He began following Medusa as gratitude for her rescuing him from Witch's Prison, and by the time they're reviving Asura he seems to be afraid of some sort of punishment for failure and/or disobedience (being immortal, he doesn't have to worry about being killed, but she could presumably still make his life pretty awful in other ways). Much like Eruka, we never really see him on his own. We know that he hates DWMA, but mostly out of a fear of Lord Death trying to take his soul. Aside from simply helping Medusa the only really evil thing we ever see him do is slaughtering the Witch's Prison's guards when they try to prevent his escape, and in his defense they tried to kill him first.
    • Also worth mentioning is the color of his soul in the anime. Innocent humans and good people have blue souls, while evil people all have red souls (or purple, if they're witches). Free's soul, however, is green, implying that he's not really good or evil.
  • Crona doesn't really want to be an antagonist, but their messed-up childhood, as well as Medusa's god-awful parenting skills, make them out to be one. Later in the manga, they're using madness without Medusa, sure, but it's all because they think getting rid of order will make everyone free.
• Arachnid Appearance and Attire: Arachne, since her Animal Motif is spiders. She has black hair, black lips, and wears a black dress with a collar that looks like a spiderweb.
• Arc Number: 42, which when spoken aloud in Japanese is "shini", the Japanese word for "death."
• Archaeological Arms Race: Eibon's Demon Tools and the process of "keep away from Kishin" involving them. Specifically B.R.E.W and the Book of Eibon, and with good reason, as B.R.E.W is whatever you desire it to be, and the Book of Eibon is a collection of magical and dangerous creatures that can be summoned at any time by the user and actually IS Eibon himself at one point.
• Arm Cannon: Death the Kid's soul resonance attack, Death Cannon.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking
  • "You're stubborn and reckless. All you like to do for fun is read, so you're boring. And you have fat ankles." As said by Soul, to Maka, when working out their issues.
  • Also, Hero completes Excalibur's insane requests and tolerates his annoying habits, but can't stand him sneezing.
• Art Evolution: Very noticeable in the manga. The art gets a little more complex and detailed as the series goes on, and character's faces grow a little longer, their eyes not as large. There are some things that do get simpler, though, such as Maka's pigtails.
• Artistic License – Gun Safety: There's a pretty big reason people don't fire guns upside down in real life. See also Juggling Loaded Guns entry. Though, to be fair, Kid is neither a normal person nor using normal guns.
• Artistic License – Space: At first it was just a Weird Moon and Weird Sun, but another arc has taken this to a whole new level with a conveniently close moon, and a lot of other insane astronomy. Really, the entire arc is based of this, as well as Artistic License – Physics.
• Art Shift: Whenever someone is going insane or experiencing some intense emotion, their expressions tend to go off-model and their eyes go wild. Happening more often as the series goes on.
• Ascended Meme: In chapter 74, Excalibur sings his little song which up until that point was only heard in the anime. All together now! "Excalibuuur~! Excalibuuur~!"
• As Long as It Sounds Foreign: The library contains a number of books with foreign titles, for example, "Dzień dobry, Nie ma za co," which is Polish for "Hello, you're welcome."
• As Long as There Is Evil
  • In manga finale, Crona tells Maka that Asura, the embodiment of fear, cannot be killed as long as there is fear in the world. This is why they proceed to seal him on the Moon instead, and it is likely that Lord Death sealed Asura under Death City in the first place for the same reason.
  • The anime pretty much has the same stance. Sure they beat Asura and destroy him. But he claims as long as there's madness and fear he'll never truly be gone. Maka counters however that as long as people have courage, there will always be a way to drive him back.
• Ass Kicking Pose: Kid's Stance of Sin is a very odd-looking variant. Most of his reaper martial arts stances qualify as this.
• Astral Checkerboard Decor: The floor of Soul's Mental World has a checkerboard design.
• As You Know: Egregious example in the first episode, as it's used by name. Possibly Justified, since Death is also warning them as a teacher to students. "Don't screw up." They do.
• Attention Whore: BLACK☆STAR! It's practically his Fatal Flaw, as his need to be seen and heard destroys any stealth he has in the field. He gets better as the series goes on.
• Attractive Bent-Gender: When everybody's gender gets switched by the Book of Eibon, Tsubaki is found commenting on how incredibly cute Soul looks, as well as getting flustered over Black☆Star, while Blair manages to seduce a succubus and in the process make Kilik swoon.
• Audible Sharpness: Maybe it's just Soul saying "Ting"?
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Excalibur, who is something of an Infinity +1 Sword, is so awesome, that when a failure student claims him, he becomes THE BEST MEISTER in the school. The problem is he has an insane amount of unreasonable demands that he makes to the point that people generally decide that his power is totally not worth it. The weapon form itself is exceedingly practical and easy to use, and extremely awesome. It's just the PERSONALITY that makes it unmanageable. It's heavily implied that Excalibur is actually an Eldritch Abomination that is the personification of rage. He's just that annoying.
  • Soul. Anyone whose ever done any kind of weapons training knows that having your only cutting edge on the side of your weapon that faces YOU is not good. Scythes are extremely impractical weapons in real life and hard as hell to use in a fight against any other weapon. Traditionally, even spearmen would carry a short sword on them in case the enemy got past the pointy end of the spear (the only part that they were concerned about). The fact Maka can wield Soul and beat up magic and sword users is a testament to her awesomeness.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Parodied; at one point, Kilik gets into a fight with a mook with a magitek headset that lets him accurately predict exactly what moves Kilik will use to fight him. Unfortunately for the mook, he has absolutely none of the skills required to actually make use of this data, and promptly surrenders.
• Ax-Crazy
  • Maka under the effects of the black blood when she fought Crona. She was happy to get injured.
  • And later Soul when he cuts Crona's black blood sphere that held Tzar and his meister imprisoned.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: Maka and Black☆Star do this when fighting Sid, and again during the battle on the moon against Crona. A three-way one between Stein, Zubadiah, and Alexander in the same arc.
• Badass Boast: Black☆Star makes too many to count, but particularly good one comes up during the final battle against Asura.
  "If a God can do it, I don't see why I shouldn't be able to! There is nothing I cannot do!!"
• Badass Bookworm: It's easy to forget under the maniacally grinning, scythe waving badassery, but Maka is a nerd that spends most of her free time reading and has really no idea how to play basketball or to dance without crushing her partner's feet. Don't forget about Ox, he pretty much describes himself as such. Stein probably counts as well. He's the only character other than Maka who's shown actually reading a book on-screen, and also the most powerful meister to ever attend the Academy.
• Badass Crew: Spartoi, which is the elite squad of the DWMA that all the main kid characters end up being part of.
• Badass Longcoat: Maka. With a sweet new white one to parade around in school, as of joining Spartoi. Special mention to Death the Kid in the manga; during the beginning of the Baba Yaga's Castle arc he temporarily sported a trenchcoat with the same closures and shoulder-decals as his blazer and a collar like the cloak he sometimes wears on outings. It was invisibly ditched before he could fight in it, but he still looked even more badass than usual in it. No sign of it in the anime, though.
• Badass Normal: Mifune in the anime. No magical weapons or overt supernatural powers — all he's got is a backpack full of swords, and he still fights both DWMA teachers, Almighty Janitor students and a Kishin on equal footing. The Manga, however, explicitly reveals he has a supernatural connection with his swords.
• Badass Teacher: The DWMA staff in general, though Stein is the one with most examples.
• Bait-and-Switch: In Episode 47, there are three cases of multiple people's reactions to the Death City Robot, such as Mosquito and Death the Kid. In the first two, Excalibur (who is included) simply says "fools", as usual. Then when the Death City Robot eats the Kishin, he says "hmm" instead.
• Bait-and-Switch Character Intro: All three of the main meister-weapon groups are introduced like this in their Debut Queue episodes/chapters.
  • The title character, Soul, is the biggest example of it. He's initially introduced as a somewhat shallow young man who insults his partner and talks a lot about being a "cool" guy. It reaches a head a little later when, frustrated at his inability to defeat the not actually a witch Blair, he very despicably and cruelly gives up and switches sides to be with Blair instead of Maka, even dropping Maka in a trash bin and insulting her, saying "anyone would choose someone with a body like Blair's over you and your flat chest." After Maka calls him out for being a bastard, he reveals it was actually just a deception to get Blair to drop her guard and set her up for the kill. After all, cool guys don't cheat on their partners.
  • Black☆Star very quietly and skillfully infiltrates the hideout of the Al Capone gang during the middle of a dinner celebration, and gets the drop on them with effortless ease... but instead of quietly assassinating the villains, he gives a boisterous speech about how awesome he is and then declares that his job is done, right before being chased off by gunfire. He then shows no remorse for it when his weapon partner, Tsubaki, calls him out on it, saying that he was the biggest star in the room. This establishes him as the Brilliant, but Lazy, Small Name, Big Ego, Highly-Visible Ninja. It's further established at the end of the episode, when he challenges the samurai Mifune and despite having trouble at first (specifically because of his flaws) manages to get serious and effortlessly win with a single move, showing that he really is as powerful and skilled as he claims he is... when he can manage to get his act together.
  • Death the Kid's introduction has him chase down a fleeing villain and corner him, only to get side-tracked because Liz and Patty messed up their Ass Kicking Pose, allowing the villain to escape and establishing his Obsessively Organized tendencies. He gets another one later in the same episode when he finds himself unable to attack the evil super-mummy hiding inside a perfectly symmetrical sarcophagus, and is nearly killed before the mummy itself appears in all its asymmetrical Body Horror glory, at which point Kid declares that it makes him feel "violently ill" and utterly destroys it... and the pyramid they're in too.
• Bait the Dog: Inverted with Soul and Maka's introduction. After several unsuccessful attempts at killing Blair, Soul finally gives into her Duel of Seduction, drops Maka into a dumpster, and insults her when she asks why, causing her to break down in tears. Then, just when the audience is set to hate him forever...
  Maka: Hey, Soul. You said that all women make wild assumptions without reasoning first, right? That's what you said? Well, what reason do men have for cheating? It's not fair!
  Soul: Heh... how am I supposed to know? I can't answer that. [Arm transforms into a scythe, trapping Blair inside the curve of the blade.] After all, cool men don't cheat on their partners, do they?
• Ballroom Blitz: One of the episodes, where the Kishin is eventually released. Soul and Maka's scene in the Black Room might count as well, seeing as they are dressed up during that scene and in imminent danger of succumbing to insanity.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: Asura is totally naked when he first appears, but with no visible genitalia. Justified as he hadn't quite finished putting on his skin at the time. Every other time we see him is with clothes.
• Bare-Handed Blade Block: Stein can do this because he can attune to any spiritual attack. Those corrupted with Black Blood can harden their blood beneath their skin, often using this to catch blades.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Subverted. Death the Kid, watching the other main characters battle Stein through Death's mirror, fears they're going to die and forces Death to enroll him in the DWMA so that he can join them in their battle, but he gets distracted by his OCD and fails to actually reach them in time. They end up not needing him anyway.
  • Also played straight by the adults from time to time, notably when Stein and Spirit show up to save Maka from Crona in their first encounter.
• Bittersweet Ending: The manga ends on this note. The heroes win the day but can't fully kill Asura just reseal him, this time on the moon with Crona electing to stay behind to make sure he doesn't get out. What's more Lord Death dies after handing his power over to Kid, making him the new lord of death with Liz and Patty naturally still supporting him. But, in an agreement he had with the witches for their help, Kid abolishes any more hunting of them with Soul being declared the final Death Scythe, and peace seems to be set between the two groups, even Medusa's former cronies get a pardon. Likewise Black Star is now a accomplished ninja with Tsubaki's support, Stein and Marie get together with the latter pregnant with his child, Soul has made peace with himself and embraces his potential even playing the piano again and Maka seems to have... somewhat reconciled with her father and ends the story promising someday she'll find a way to save Crona.
• Blush Sticker: Blair, when she's catty. Patty, always.
• Black Blood: The Black Blood. - Averted: There's lots of red blood throughout the show, so this doesn't apply. This is actually the Phlebotinum.
• Black Comedy Rape: Death the kid walks in on Patty and Liz being molested by a mummy. This is Played for Laughs.
• Body Horror:
  • Medusa is capable of inserting snakes into someone's body that all burst out at once on command. Soul has nightmares of bursting out of Maka's body.
  • Crona and Ragnarok. Episodes 7 and 15 come to mind (7 being their first appearance, 15 Ragnarok's 'Black Dragon' transformation upon the "Nidhogg").
    • The hallucinations caused by Asura's revival involving biting people's faces and ripping the skin off like laffy taffy. Along with the grotesque body forming from a bag of flesh.
  • Tezca's numerous copies of himself fusing back together in some very unsettling ways, with legs and arms in all the wrong places.
• Bowdlerize: Lord Death did this to himself before the series began, since when he started the academy, his badass mask and deep voice scared all the children. Every once in a while he reminds us that these are purely cosmetic changes.
  • Out of universe, this happened with a few of the scenes adapted from manga to anime: Free's introduction cuts out the part where he kills the guards coming after him by crushing with a huge ball of ice and the flashback to Crona's childhood changes Medusa forcing Crona to kill their pet rabbit to "defeating" a small dragon.
• Book Snap: Maka's "Maka Chop" is whacking the object of her ire over the head with a book. If she's reading a book at the time, she typically snaps it shut before beginning to say "Maaaaaakaaaa...".
• Breather Episode: Episode 25 has the main cast playing basketball after a grueling 7-episode story arc.
  • Basically any episode where they're NOT fighting is considered a breather episode (ex., the evening ball episode before the end, and the Ultra-Test).
• Breath Weapon: Asura's signature attack involves him somehow pulling his weapon up from his stomach to stick out of his mouth and fire a laser. Insert relevant meme here.
• Brick Joke: A few.
  • Remember all those grave markers in the Death Room? The anime ending strongly implies those are all the graves of kishin.
  • Remember when Soul mentioned, right back in the very beginning, Lord Death's Seven Lights? Neither did Noah.
  • Anime only: Maka, Soul, Black☆Star, and Tsubaki see who can make a basket for rights to defeat Asura. Maka makes it.
  • In episode 9 of the anime, in Excalibur's first appearance, he asks Black☆Star and Death the Kid if they know what his hat is. 23 episodes later, he finally answers the question: It's an english seaweed roll.
  • A brick joke from within the same episode of the anime: episode 28 is named "The Sword God Rises - Does It Have A Sweet Or Salty Taste?", which seems like a meaningless, gibberish question. At the end of the episode it turns out it was talking about a candy that Mifune gave to Maka. The answer? Salty.
• Bros Before Hoes: Soul and Black☆Star. Though not just hoes; anything, really.
• Brown Note: Crona's poetry has the ability to instill extreme levels of depression in anyone who reads it.
  • That sounds familiar... Well, both Hayate and Crona had evil parents, so this was bound to happen.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: A very large amount of the cast, particularly the teachers at the Academy. For instance, Spirit is the most powerful Death Scythe in the world, but is a Lovable Sex Maniac and Bumbling Dad. Stein is the most talented Meister to have ever graduated from the Academy and is a brilliant, amoral scientist, but has a certain tendency to travel around on a swivel chair whenever possible and is a bonafide maniac. Marie has lightning powers and is another powerful Death Scythe, but is so obsessed with getting married that she once tried to start a relationship with a toilet. And Tesca Tlipoca...another Death Scythe who wears a giant bear head mask and can apparently understand a monkey's language. The list goes on and on.
• But Not Too Foreign: If Black☆Star's words when he visits Tsubaki's home are to be believed, Maka has at least a little Japanese in her. Since "Spirit Albarn" isn't a particularly Japanese name, it's possible that it comes from her never-seen mother.
  • Which would mean her mother is a rare blonde Asian, or Spirit's hair is dyed, like Cat Valentine. Though one has to remember this is anime we're talking about...
• Call-Back:
  • During Maka, Soul, and Crona's rematch in the church, Crona once again repeats "the doors only open inward" from the first fight... then proceeds to demolish the doors to get out.
  • The final chapter of the manga contains several Call Backs to the prologue chapters, namely Blair smothering Soul with her breasts, Black☆Star spying on Tsubaki bathing and Kid grabbing Liz and Patty's breasts.
• Calling Your Attacks
  • Tamashii no kyoumei!^note Soul Resonance
  • Vector Arrow!
• Campfire Character Exploration: Crona and Marie share a scene around a campfire as they're on their way to find Medusa and Stein. Marie reveals that she still hasn't entirely forgiven Crona for tricking her into drinking Medusa's snakes so that Stein's madness is accelerated, and she's waiting until she makes sure that Stein is safe.
• Captain Ersatz: Black☆Star should immediately remind you of another loudmouthed, egotistical kid ninja. Also both have similar reasons for their behavior (being called "demon chid" all their life).
  • Black☆Star is basically a combination of Naruto and Sasuke. Think about it: a hyperactive, knucklehead, kid ninja who's the last of his clan, uses a sword, has crazy markings appear on his face when he in his dangerous, yet powered up form, and even has a special kind of star symbol in his eyes.
  • Black☆Star is supposed to be an exaggeration of the whole Highly-Visible Ninja Hot-Blooded Idiot Hero thing.
    • He does however get better, and can be very threatening when he gets serious.
• Cast of Snowflakes: Body types in particular vary a lot, especially among the women in the cast, from the tall but curvy Tsubaki to the flat-chest Maka to the Thompson sisters, who have different heights and proportions (and to Kid's annoyance, breast size).
  • In the manga though it unfortunately falls under sameface syndrome hardcore.
• Cats Are Magic: Blair is a cat with magical powers, she often gets mistaken for a witch.
• Cats Are Mean: Or at least, big enough Jerk Asses to force you to start a quest to defeat one hundred opponents all over again, just for the heck of it!
  • Her entire role in the Clown arc was tormenting the Flying Dutchmen.
• Catchphrase: Half the cast, at least.
  • Maka says "I'll take your soul!" or something similar (she even says it at the end of each episode preview after the closing credits).
    • Soul does it in her place too, sometimes.
    • "MAKA CHOP!!!!"
  • Black☆Star has his "YAH-HOO!" when he's showing off.
    • "Not a single being in heaven or on earth is as holy as I." (This is a line from the Buddhist canon, believe it or not, alleged to have been spoken by Buddha himself. In Japanese, the first few words are... get this .. "Tenjho Tenge.")
  • Sid likes the phrase, "That was the kind of man I used to be."
    • Of course, before he became a zombie, it was "That's the kind of man I am".
  • Crona has two; "My blood is black", and "I don't know how to deal with [X]."
  • Excalibur's "my legend began in the 12th century", and "FOOLS!."
  • Death the Kid's "Kichiri Kachiri", which could be translated as "Precise and Perfect".
  • Stein's "I want to dissect [X]."
  • "REAPER CHOP''!!!!"
  • Free is a bit rusty at the whole magic thing, so his mishaps are usually accompanied with an emphatic "GODDAMMITSHIT!"
    • As he's using his magic, he often repeats "Wolf! Wolves! Wolf! Wolves!"
• Cat Girl: Blair, in a rather original way.
  • She even invokes Cats Have Nine Lives in the first episode, but changes this halfway into "Cats Have Nine Souls."
• Censor Shadow: Applied under Giant!Asura's robes.
  • Also used with weapon characters, since their souls appear nude when their bodies are in weapon form.
• Centipede's Dilemma: When Maka and Soul are unable to resonate during the battle against Free, Maka starts thinking about how she usually fights and resonates with Soul.
• Chained by Fashion: Free could probably take off that shackle whenever he felt like it.
• Chainsaw Good: Giriko
• Chaos Is Evil: While order isn't portrayed as inherently good, it's a whole lot better than the mess that a world without sanity or laws would create.
• Character Development: Crona, particularly in the anime. They start out as a near blood thirsty monster who loves to kill and eat souls. But as the story goes on, it becomes clear that they are being used by their mother. This is not a Heel–Face Turn because they remain afraid of everyone inside DWMA, only listening and following Maka. They slowly learn to appreciate Marie, then the whole cast, delivering one of the most adorable moments in the series history. It takes a grand total of 30 episodes for Crona to truly become good.
• Characterization Marches On: Over the course of the anime, Soul becomes less hotheaded and more of the laid back 'cool' guy he always strives to be. It's not Character Development because this was never something addressed or called out on, it just happens and nobody notices. He makes Maka the hotheaded on in comparison.
• Character Title: Subverted. This interview with Atsushi Ohkubo says the "Soul Eater" in the title refers not to the partner of the true main protagonist Maka, but to an enemy faced towards the end of the story that can devour souls. Surely enough, Crona refers to Asura as the "Soul Eater" in the penultimate chapter, making this an Antagonist Title.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Humans in Soul Eater are often capable of superhuman levels of might with proper training, and some like Black Star push it up to eleven by committing feats that defy the laws of physics. It's implied the ability to do such crazy feats is directly tied to the strength of one's soul, as Mifune demonstrates thanks to his exceptionally strong soul.
• Chaste Hero: Kid.
• Cheaters Never Prosper: In episode 14, Soul is caught with answers written on his clothing, so he's stripped down to his underwear. After that, he attempts to cheat by copying off of his neighbors' tests, but runs into the problems of Kid still filling out his name and Patty making a giraffe out of her test. Since the test is only an hour long, he doesn't have enough time to do anything effective and the test is over.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Enrique and Tezca Tlipoca were quickly introduced (as mysterious bear and monkey) during chapter 47, when the DWMA students were going to Arachnophobia's base. They weren't mentioned or seen again until chapter 60, when Arachne died and Medusa was about to kill Maka.
• Chesire Cat Grin: A rather disturbing version of this that showed teeth was used when Maka was in the Envy chapter of the Book of Eibon.
• Chewing the Scenery: When Black☆Star wants to be visible, he is visible.
• Childhood Friends: Maka and Black☆Star.
• Church Militant: Justin Law is a very devout Christian, but also the Death Scythe in charge of Europe. Interestingly he views Lord Death as God. Nobody corrects him.
  • To make it stranger yet, Justin Law turns out to really worship the Kishin instead in the manga...
• Cigarette of Anxiety: Doctor Stein tends to do this when he needs to calm down. It's subverted once after his second fight with Medusa, where rather than calming down he's has a bout of Laughing Madness because of the Kishin being released. This is later exploited to frame him for the murder of BJ, by leaving a packet of his favorite cigarettes (which the local shopkeeper orders in for him specially) at the scene.
• Clear My Name: Stein gets to do this, right while/after going completely insane. Thank Death for True Companions.
• Clown Species: Clowns are living embodiments of fear and madness. The first Clown Maka and Soul encounter in the manga does resemble a monstrous circus clown, with a bulbous nose and permanent grin, but later clowns have different forms and act as an unbeatable line of defense for Asura when Shibusen lay a full-on assault of the Moon.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: Excalibur. Explains why no one tries to wield him, ever, despite being the most powerful of all the weapons.
  • And Patty. So very, very much. Giraffe!
    • Not to mention Marie, willing to marry a toilet just so she won't be an Old Maid.
    • Free got himself sent to witch prison for the sole purpose of digging out with a spoon. He then found out that witch prison serves meals with chopsticks.
    • Though at least Free has the excuse of being immortal. A few years of digging out of prison with a spoon wouldn't have really amounted to much in the long run. He probably hatched the idea out of sheer boredom.
    • Lord Death, although a lot of it is apparently Obfuscating Stupidity.
  • Practically everyone in the series is this to a greater or lesser extent.
• Cluster F-Bomb: The English translation of the manga by Yen Press becomes this around Volume 7 with the switch to a new translator. Rather jarringly, characters (especially Black*Star) start dropping F-bombs left and right, with almost every other swear word you can think of in between. Then there's Giriko, whose mouth is by far the foulest.
• The Collector: Noah, deciding to add Kid to his Tome of Eldritch Lore along with anything else he finds interesting.
  • Collector of the Strange: Again, Noah.
• Color Failure: Several examples. Most recently in episode 46 when Excalibur turns up in the Death Room. Lord Death, Yumi and Spirit go white for several seconds before promptly resuming their conversation and ignoring the newcomer.
• Combat Parkour: Death The Kid is an expert at an Improbable Age, though being the Grim Reaper's son probably didn't hurt. He uses backflips to dodge attacks and create distance between him and his opponent.
• Combat Stilettos: Marie, which is kind of ridiculous considering she's a Lightning Bruiser.
• Combat Tentacles: Medusa's vectors, Asura's wrappings after he escapes Death City, Pharaon's Wrath's bandages, and to a lesser extent, Black☆Star and Tsubaki's shadow attacks. Most recently, Crona's thorn... vine... whip-like... shadow... things??
• Comedic Underwear Exposure: All of the Panty Shots were removed from the Anime, but Lord Death picking up Rachel!Medusa by the back of her dress and exposing her pumpkin panties (multiple times) was left in.
• Compliment Backfire (or possibly Compliment Just-As-Planned): After Crona devastates a whole city using the black blood, Medusa makes dinner(!) and tells Crona how proud she is(!!). Crona freaks out, first attacking Medusa for her hellish experiments and forcing them to abandon Maka, the only person who made Crona happy, then for acting so strangely ("Who are you?! What have you done with my mother?!"). The Clown is pleased: Crona is now completely independent and able to receive the Kishin and Medusa's vectors indicate she's not quite dead.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: After Death the Kid is captured by Noah, Gopher attempts to tourture Kid for fun and profit by beating the shit out of him, to no avail. Once Gopher finds out about Kid's OCD, he tortures Kid by drawing on only one side of his face, and by using a back scratcher to scratch one of the boy's nipples, but not the other.
• Cooldown Hug: Maka and Crona. Also, Marie and Stein.
  • And yet another example in episode 50, which can be counted as something of a subversion.
  • Played with in chapter 84 when both Maka and Kim hug Stein in order to stop him from being affected from Soul madness.
    • Though this wasn't a standard Cooldown Hug, as both of them had some sort of power they were using to keep him sane.
• Corner of Woe: Crona is very familiar with it. (S)he even gave it a nickname!
• The Corruption: Effectively what Madness and its variants is, negative energy that makes a person lose any kind of standards and pursue their desire for no reason or benefit. Most villains can gather it in various forms weaponize it for Mind Rape. The Black Blood, for example, can cause it as a Dangerous Forbidden Technique.
• Country Matters: Maka in the Hungarian dub (see Precision F-Strike for more details).
• Covert Pervert: The Guide in the book of Eibon said how long you are in gender-swapped form is proportional to how lustful you are. Notice that Tsubaki is the only one specifically worried about not turning back. Liz is third-to-last to her annoyance, Tsubaki is second-to-last which upsets her very much, and Blair is last...no surprise there.
• Creature-Hunter Organization: The DWMA was founded to train Meisters and Weapons (who power up by eating souls) to hunt "Demon Eggs" (humans who have become corrupted by consuming the souls of the innocent), Kishin (Eldritch Abominations that form from said humans when they get too powerful) and their strongest, Kishin Asura, as well as Witches (from whom the weapons originally got their abilities).
• Credits Running Sequence
• Creepy Crosses:
  • The Death Room is full of (mostly wonky, as it happens) crosses.
  • One epilogue scene (during the final episode credits) shows Lord Death burying a red/evil soul in the field of crosses, using one cross as a piledriver/seal of some sort.
• Creepy Good: Dr. Stein who, despite being one of the main characters' most powerful allies, is unbelievably sadistic. Everyone short of Lord Death himself is terrified of the guy.
• Crossover: Happens when the in-universe manga works Soul Eater and Soul Eater Not! decide to use similar characters. In the Soul Eater manga, Akane Star and Clay Sizemore show up as members of the Central Information Office, complete with aged appearances and new hairstyles.
• Cross-Popping Veins
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Black☆Star can be very effective when he puts his egomania aside and starts focusing.
  • Lord Death. He did adopt a new look and persona to go with his Dumbledore-ish role. But, like that Headmaster, he can drop them pretty damn quickly.
• Couldn't Find a Pen: Played for laughs, surprisingly for this trope, when Black☆Star is caught sneaking into Stein's office to steal exam answers. He's beaten bloody and hung up for the class to see. When Soul gets his cheat-sheets taken away (though, fortunately, not also beaten bloody), he notices Black☆Star trying to get his attention by starting to write on the wall next to him in his own blood. Soul is hopeful that maybe Black☆Star will write some exam answers...nope, it's only his signature, complete with star in the middle.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Black☆Star gets completely humiliated in his second fight with Mifune. The worst part is that Mifune was holding back the whole time and didn't even seriously injure him.
  • Much earlier in the series, Stein wipes the floor with Maka and Black☆Star at the same time.
• Cursed with Awesome: Black Blood makes you damn near invulnerable and allows you to regenerate from almost anything. It also makes you batshit crazy.
• Curse of the Pharaoh: In Chapter 3/Episode 3, the necromancer witch Samantha tries to create an army of mummies for her own bid at world conquest. However, when she tries this with the mummy of the Pharaoh Anubis, he is resurrected as an Undead Abomination that devours her, proclaiming that anyone who dares violate the sanctity of his tomb will share her fate.
• After possessing a child, Medusa goes to make a deal with Lord Death. However, Lord Death repeatedly picks her up by the hood, much to her annoyance.
• Dark Magical Girl: Crona, the Demon Swordsman. Woman? We're...not sure.
• Dark Is Not Evil: All of Black☆Star and Tsubaki's most powerful techniques revolve around Tsubaki shaping her meister's shadow into a weapon. Sometimes several weapons.
  • Arguably Lord Death, Kid and the GOO (if not all their fellow anthropomorphic... things). At best, they're eccentric (the GOO's manner being very reminiscent of the Grim Reaper), at worst downright scary. Even Kid when he gets suitably provoked, and definitely Lord Death.
• Deadly Hug: How Tsubaki slays her brother.
• Deal with the Devil: Literally... er... figuratively. We're not sure. But the Black Blood gives a dream image of an actual devil offering power.
• The Death of Death: In the manga, Lord Death passes away the moment his son, Death The Kid, awakens his reaper powers. The reason for this is because there can't be more than one Grim Reaper.
• Debut Queue: The prologue introducing each main character one by one. Also, episodes 1 thru 3 introduces each team one by one.
• Defeat Means Respect: Discussed when Maka begins her second battle against Crona, she taunts Crona's weapon Ragnarok by pointing out the way he's talking about her suggests this trope.
• Despair Event Horizon: Maka in chapter 74 and 75. Considering how she usually is, it's rather disheartening.
• Determined Expression: In the anime, there's a shot of each of the main characters displaying one in turn just before the first battle for the B.R.E.W.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Yup. Literally.
• Dirty Coward
• Distracted by the Sexy: Blair the Cat uses this for comic relief AND in battle.
  • Then inverts it in the chapter of lust when she's turned into a man, and is STILL smoking hot to the opposite sex.
• The Ditz: Patty
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Death trying to pick out a weapon for Kid looks a lot like arranging a marriage, and Kid wants none of it because there's no symmetry in any of them.
• The Dog Bites Back: Subverted, when Crona loses the power from thier black blood and, by extention, Ragnarok is weakened, Crona hits him. He gets angry and more than ever he teases Crona, who still can't defend themself.
  • And then later on when Crona apparently kills Medusa. You really can't say that the bloodbath that followed wasn't very much deserved.
• Doomed Appointment
• Dr. Fakenstein: Dr. Franken Stein, natch.
• The Drag-Along: Liz has her moments as this. She hates ghosts, monsters, and anything else abnormal and scary, but being Death the Kid's weapon she has to go with him anyway.
  • Quite literally Death the Kid himself in his debut episode. Let's just say that he takes home decor veeery seriously...
• Dramatic High Perching: Black☆Star loves this one, though it doesn't really help. In one case, he was so high up nobody could hear him shouting.
• *Drool* Hello: Eruka has a hallucination of the Kisin doing this.
• Eccentric Mentor: Lord Death. In the anime dub, he even sounds like Dumbledore from Potter Puppet Pals.
• Eldritch Abomination: The Kishin. The strongest of them, even Lord Death isn't sure was ever human to begin with. In addition, Eibon is a direct reference to H. P. Lovecraft.
  • Not to mention whatever the hell Noah's got stashed away in the Book of Eibon looks like Cthulhu made of ink.
    • It's now referred to itself as a Great Old One.
    • GOO says there were originally eight "Warlords", three of them eaten by Kishin. These beings all have powers over terror, rage, power, knowledge, and order which drives mortals mad. Oh, and it also calls Death the Kid as "fragment of Law" which sort of explains his obsession with symmetry.
  • Also, Maba-Sama. As tall as, if not slightly taller than, Angelica, has bat-like wings, which are generally useless, since she prefers to hover; and one of the very few close-ups of her face makes her look like she was built by someone from a Tim Burton visual effects studio.
• Embarrassing Middle Name: Subverted. Soul Evans doesn't like people using his last name.
  • Soul Eater is just the name he registered in DWMA, the Eater part is not real.
• Empathic Weapon: Weapons are a race in Death City, having both human and weapon forms. Their power increases when they match the "Soul Wavelength" of their Meister partners.
• End of an Age: Excalibur discusses this in Chapter 113 in the wake of Shinigami's death, believing that the next age will belong to the humans and that Kid must oversee it. After that, he starts talking about going out with Kid to eat.
• Enemy Civil War: Medusa and Arachne have a rivalry that spans centuries; Medusa and her followers will apparently "help" DWMA if it means Arachne will suffer.
• Enemy Mine: Medusa leads DWMA's operation against Arachne's base in the manga.
• Epic Fail: Several, of varying hilarity. For instance, group training against Stein. Ox electrocutes Maka and Black☆Star, Black☆Star One Hit Kills him, and an untouched Dr. Stein Lampshades it all.
• Epiphany Therapy: Marie's 'redeeming wavelength' in the anime. Also, Death the Kid literally beats the crazy out of Black☆Star at one point, bypassing a moment of Time to Unlock More True Potential that ensued in the manga.
  • Black☆Star returns the favor to Death The Kid when the Great Old One drives him insane.
• Even the Girls Want Her: The succubus. It's also proof positive that Maka and Spirit are from the same family tree.
  • Also, Soul and Kilik as girls are prettier than they should be.
• Equippable Ally: Provides the page quote
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Asura is defeated in the anime because he cannot comprehend the concept of courage.
  • Medusa seems to genuinely not get why Spirit and Stein are so disgusted by the way she speaks about Crona.
  • While not evil, Crona was raised in a very evil environment and as a result is completely baffled by the lack of abuse received from the gang at the DWMA.
  • Stein has a relevant line when witch Medusa confesses her love for him:
    Medusa: I love you, you know. A man after my own heart.
    Stein: Don't be stupid. At your core, Medusa, you're just like me. You can't possibly understand a concept like love.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: In chapter 106, Crona learns that the Kishin is not a toy.
  • As does the Necromancer Witch when she resurrects an ancient pharaoh and incurs his wrath.
  • When Arachne attempts to form an alliance with the Kishin, he agrees... After beating the crap out of her without moving an inch from his seat. Why? He wanted to show her that he wasn't her servant and could kill her and her entire army at any time.
• Evil Makes You Monstrous
• Evil Versus Evil: Lady Medusa vs. Lady Arachne. Occurs late in the manga only (not in the anime)
• Evolving Weapon: Handwaved since most weapons are part human too, and by eating souls, they become stronger.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin
• Exposition Diagram: Occurs occasionally, for example when Kid explains why he prefers the number 8 to 7.
• Expressive Hair: Maka's pigtails in the anime stand up and/or wiggle when she's agitated.
• Expy: So many:
  • A fair amount of the characters bear a strong physical resemblance to several characters from B.Ichi, Ohkubo's first manga. For example, Emine◊ resembles Crona◊.
  • All Black☆Star needs is an orange jumpsuit and blonde hair.
  • Speaking of Black☆Star, his father White Star sure looks an awful lot like Kakashi.
  • Arachne bears a strong resemblance to Lulu. She also looks very much like Lust except with a different hairstyle.
  • Dr. Franken Stein seems to be an expy of a number of different characters, as follows:
    • First, he seems to be a Composite Character between Dr. Victor Frankenstein as well as his monster.
    • He greatly resembles Shaman King's Faust VIII.
    • Mostly, he is very similar to Kakashi. Let's see... they're both badass genius prodigies with silver hair, both have a stupid thing happen to them on their first appearance (the eraser trick gag with Kakashi, Stein falling over in his swivel chair), both give their students a dangerous, high stakes test early in the series (Kakashi's bell test, Stein's remedial lesson), both have lightning powers (Kakashi's signature move, Stein's Soul Force attack), and both were loners as children (Stein because he was Axe-Crazy, Kakashi because he was an arrogant I Work Alone type).
    • Nobody sees Stein's resemblance to Juji Kabane? I mean just◊ look◊!
  • Marie Mjolnir bears a great resemblance to 1930's bomb fetishist Nice Holystone, to the extent that they're both voiced by Colleen Clinkenbeard in the English dub.
• Extra Eyes: Asura, who is covered in them.
  • Eyes Do Not Belong There: No, they do not.
• Eyepatch of Power: Marie Mjolnir.
• Eyes Always Shut: Buttadaki Joe
  • Stein too, at times.
• Face Doodling: Black☆Star, to Maka.
  • Gopher to Kid, after discovering his OCD (Kid seemed impervious to torture, but then he noticed the corners of Gopher's mouth were uneven and completely lost his cool).
• Face–Heel Turn:
  • After a Heel–Face Turn Crona pulled this, going back to Medusa.
  • Death the Kid seemed to be headed this way when an encounter with a Great Old One caused him to go crazy, but snapped out of it after getting an earful (and a few punches) from Black☆Star.
• Faceless Goons: Arachnophobia has plenty of these.
• Faceless Masses: All the other students at DWMA. While some get simplified faces and some clothing detail they're not colored in and are all purple.
• Face Your Fears: The entire theme (particularly the anime version). Indeed the Big Bad's main failing is cowardice.
• Faint in Shock: Death the Kid is Obsessively Organized and is absolutely obsessed with symmetry. This causes him to overreact when his symmetry is disrupted:
  • He faints after Soul cuts a couple of centimetres off one side of his hair, as this meant it was not perfectly symmetrical anymore.
  • He also has a complete breakdown and passes out after he erases too hard and tears his test paper.
  • This seems to happen any time he is not perfectly symmetrical. Liz mentions that if he tried to not use Guns Akimbo, "he'd get a Nosebleed and pass out". However, this only seems to apply to Kid himself. if he encounters an asymmetrical enemy, he's more likely to fight back with Unstoppable Rage.
• Fake Defector: Soul in the first chapter/episode when he seemingly left Maka to be Blair's weapon.
• False Crucible: This is how Maka and Black☆Star are introduced to Stein
• Fanservice: Dude, it's a shonen anime!
  • Female weapons generally appear naked when shown within their virtual world while transformed. The male Soul started clothed, but became naked when he had a giant scar to show off. Mercifully, the way-too-young-looking Fire and Thunder appear clothed.
    • And when the twins temporarily age-up, Fanservice comes hand-in-hand with a shocking revelation.
  • Blair the Stripperiffic Cat Girl is practically Fanservice incarnate, particularly in the anime. Debut scene? Bathtub.
  • In the manga and the anime, Blair also has a Cat Fight with the equally Stripperiffic Mouse Girl Mizune.
  • The Art-Director of the show began putting a huge emphasis on Maka's legs beginning in Episode 27.
  • Not to mention Stein's Shirtless Scene.
  • The fanservice tends to be much more tasteful in the anime, generally speaking. Liz and Patty's... moment with the Pharoah is toned down compared to the manga.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: Mostly subverted by Kid, but played straight by his hair, much to his chagrin (though he'll completely subvert this when the lines of sanzu on his hair DO all connect). Also, Tsubaki has only one visible stocking.
• Fantastic Firearms: Liz and Patty Thompson are twin sisters who can turn into pistols which are wielded by Death the Kid. It is established that they fire their soul energy.
• Fate Worse than Death: Asura was sealed away in a bag made of his own skin.
• Field of Blades: Mifune's Infinite Sword Style.
• Flipping the Table: Referred to in the anime when Death flips Baba Yaga Castle upside-down.
• Foreign Language Title
• Foreshadowing: While fighting Sid in the graveyard, Black☆Star listens for their opponent's soul wavelength using Tsubaki. Kishin souls are adapted as red, but Sid's soul was blue, hinting at the true nature of their 'Mission.'
  • In the Pride chapter of the Book of Eibon, Excalibur's humility in letting the heroes use him without his provisions, utterly defying the Book's power over sins, is the first hint that he is actually a Great Old One.
  • Asura's soul is said to spread Madness throughout the world. This is an ability of all his kind, and something Shinigami and Kid were/are capable of in their own way but refuse to do.
  • Medusa survives being killed by Stein by using the Madness of Asura's escape. She pulls off the same trick when Arachne turns herself into a disembodied Kishin-like being of madness (and had previously told her sister how she survived her first 'death'). Her death by Crona's hand is also under suspiciously similar circumstances...
  • Numerous times late in the manga, the moon is seen in the background whenever Justin Law praises the Kishin. Guess where the Kishin just so happens to be hiding?
  • One of Kim and Jackie's abilities changes Jackie into a 'broom' that Kim can ride on. Kim is revealed to be a witch.
  • Before she fights Stein and Spirit, Medusa notes the exceptional soul wavelength control of a Death Scythe. This is both a trait of the Death Scythes in general, and Spirit's specialty. This turns up when Soul becomes a Death Scythe himself, and later when Spirit joins the battle on the moon.
  • An early villain tells Kid that he needs to be wary of the Kishin 'closest' to him. Shinigami brushes this off as a metaphor about fear and courage being two sides of the same coin. The hint towards Asura's actual closeness to the school quickly appears to clear this up, and we see Shinigami's figure of speech in how the cast deals with fear. But in hindsight the reference was more literal than Kid realised or his father would admit to. Asura is Kid's brother and they are both in opposition yet very similar to one another.
  • The entire storyline with Kid, Crona and the Flying Dutchman. It is here that Kid hears that Death and Asura may be somehow connected (see above, he not unreasonably assumes it's purely metaphorical), and here where Kid and Crona have their disagreement over fear and power, specifically Kid's declaration that to conquer fear Crona should "strengthen [their] soul". Come the end of the series Death and Asura are revealed to be Humanoid Abominations with a personal connection, and Crona has indeed dealt with fear by strengthening their soul, and choosing to imprison Asura for as long as possible.
• Four Is Death: The phone number used to call Lord Death is a play on words using this trope.
  • When Crona has a dialogue with their alter ego inside their head, they refuse to answers 42 questions before the alter ego leaves. Of course, 42 in Japanese is a homonym of "to die".
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: The main and supporting characters.
  • Sanguine: Black☆Star, Patty, Kirikou: Extroverted, cheerful, energetic, and talkative—in Black☆Star's case, he's also pretty egotistical.
  • Choleric: Maka, Ox Ford: Both are very task-oriented and studious, are hard-workers, tend to take the lead, and are very passionate for what they do.
  • Melancholic: Death the Kid, Kim, Harvar: Analytical, organized, practical; all three tend to be the most critical of the cast.
  • Phlegmatic: Soul, Jackie, Hiro: In the two former cases, both are generally laid-back, reserved, witty, and at times indifferent. Hero is quite patient (at least, enough to put up with Excalibur), open-minded, but at times a bit too docile.
  • Leukine: Tsubaki and Liz: Both girls are the most "neutral" of the team, more often than not having to put up with their partners' shenanigans as opposed to getting directly involved in them. That said, they are loyal to said partners, albeit willing to knock them down a peg if needed.
• Freudian Excuse: An unusual example, since they're not evil, but Crona unquestionably obeys Medusa's orders, even understanding they're evil, due to the way they were raised.
• Friend to All Children: Mifune
• Furo Scene:
  • Blair is introduced in a furo scene. Also, Tsubaki takes a bath after studying for the big exam.
  • After many chapters with little to no fan service, we get a scene with nearly all the female leads in the shower — which was immediately followed by nearly all the male leads in the shower. Apparently Okhubo had been taking a few lessons in gender equality when it comes to fanservice.
• Full-Frontal Assault: Kaguya is basically naked except for her cloak. The only thing offering any kind of "modesty" besides are the markings on her limbs and torso, although they actually bring more attention to her exposed breasts than away from them. This doesn't stop her from being extremely violent and dangerous.
• Fusion Dance: The Mizune sisters can combine in various ways.
  • Madness Fusion, the act of fusing with a Clown. It affects both body and mind, making one into a batshit crazy abomination. The only character to have done it so far is Justin Law, although Medusa powered up her snake tattoos at one point by fusing them with the Purple-Dyed Clown.
  • Kaguya and White Rabbit, who are both Clowns, fused together shortly before they died. The result had both of their attacks, White Rabbit's Combat Tentacles , and Kaguya's personality.
• Fun with Subtitles/Lemony Narrator: Where else but in the Soul Eater manga can you find captions like "The Next Day" with a musical note right underneath it?
• Gangsta Style: The Kid takes this to its ridiculous extreme by inverting his guns and firing with his pinkies.
• Gecko Ending: The anime splits off from the manga after the BREW recovery battle, setting up the remaining time for a premature ending.
• Gender Bender: As of chapter 72 in the manga...it's somehow canon. And surprisingly enough, Kid (who gets the most genderbending fanart) is the only one who doesn't go through this. To make up for that, there's Kilik.
  • Giriko has a slightly more permanent gender bending experience because his soul is now in an Opposite-Sex Clone. He's annoyed that he's a woman, but it's better than nothing.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Awesomely handled by Patty on Kid as he broke down at the sight of the Otama Bombs asymmetrically strewn all over the place by Eruka, while on his way to stop her and Free from awakening Ashura.
• Girl with Psycho Weapon: It's just a rather dangerous-looking scythe...
  • Also Tsubaki is a psycho weapon; at the very least after she absorbs her brother's soul/power.
  • Kim with Jackie when they're brainwashed by Arachne; Jackie (the flamethrowing lantern, naturally) on her own when trying to protect her meister during the same arc.
• A God I Am Not: Said by Black☆Star once he reaches Physical God levels of power. Very interesting, considering that for a long time all he did was shout about how he would one day surpass God.

I'M HUMAN! IT DOESN'T MEAN I'M WEAK! THINGS AREN'T ALWAYS AS YOU THINK THEM TO BE!!

• God-Emperor: Lord Death, although he's very low-key about it.
• Godhood Seeker: Many characters, minor or otherwise, covet the power of a Kishin to reach godhood. Some try by eating every soul they can, giving in or empowering themselves with Madness, or making their own Kishin or form of Madness.
• Gone Horribly Right: In the anime, Lady Arachne's plan to make Kishin Asura fall in love with her. As soon as he realizes his feelings, the Kishin rushes to kill her.
• Good Is Dumb: Crona becomes less powerful following their Heel–Face Turn, but this is justified due to having been purged of all the souls Ragnarok consumed.
• Good is Not Nice: Lord Death skinned Asura alive.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: Free. This is self-induced two ways: One, he just doesn't defend because he's immortal. Two, he hits himself with the occasional spell mishap.
  • Kim, after being mortally wounded by Havar. Turns out she's a tanuki witch.
• Gorgeous Gorgon: Medusa and Arachne.
• Gorn: In the manga, Black☆Star's fight with Mifune. Chapter 79 may have just set a record.
• Goth: An odd yet refreshing example of combining this with modern/urban American themes. Take a look at the characters depicted on this page and tell us they don't just scream Goth.
• Goth Spirals: In a city like Death City, these are bound to pop up.
• Grand Theft Me: Medusa possessing a little girl named Rachel. In the manga, Medusa pulls this on Arachne.
• Gratuitous English: Excalibur's song in his second appearance.
  • Also, when he speaks of the part of his past when he was a street hoodlum (in the same episode), many Gratuitous English words pop up onscreen, including even an aversion of Precision F-Strike (at a point, the word "PUCKIN'" appears).
• Greek Letter Ranks: Crona's various attacks are named with the pattern "Screech [Greek Letter]", from least powerful to most powerful. In this case it emphasizes the cold and clinical conditions they were raised under and the fact that their abilities are experimental; other characters use more traditional attack names.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: On one hand we have the DWMA, the good guys, that hunt down those that eat the souls of innocent humans and bring chaos to the world. But at the same time, they have no problem hunting down witches, even if they did nothing wrong to deserve it, just to enhance their abilities and are not above using threats (like putting explosive collars on captive witches so that they would be forced to cooperate). On the other hand we have the witches, that while tending more towards evil, are more gray than actual black ( they even later help the DWMA defeating the Kishin). However, when concerning Medusa, Arachne and Asura, it is a case of Black-and-White Morality.
• The Grim Reaper: Lord Death. We see a flashback to his more traditional persona and he comments that his current "goofy" appearance is as not to frighten the children at his school.
• Grim Up North: The Brew Tempest arc.
• Guns Akimbo: Death the Kid not only uses twin pistols, but for some reason fires them upside down and using his pinkies to pull the triggers.
  • Kid holds the guns inverted so that they double as tonfa in close-quarters combat.
  • Also, due to his Obsessively Organized tendencies, he can't bring himself to use just one at a time!
• Gun Fu: Death The Kid, naturally.
• Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Excalibur.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Maka's father is a weapon while her mother was not, but slightly averted in that she doesn't seem to be any different to other humans.
  • In the Soul Eater universe, being a weapon or meister is a part of your genes like your hair color and whatnot. And Maka got the meister gene from her mother.
  • A flashback in the manga has Soul's brother commenting on how their family had just enough of the "Weapon Bloodline" for it to manifest in Soul.
  • In the anime, Maka activated her "Weapon Bloodline" to fight Asura.
    • In the manga, the 'weapon bloodline' mentioned above was the result of Arachne using Eibon's work to create the original Demon Weapons (the Nakatsukasas are direct descendants). So, being a Weapon is genetic but the result of tampering, not 'natural' evolution, as it were. Maka has unusual traits - demonslayer wavelength, Grigori soul - but these are put down to being very rare in humans rather than a result of her dad being a Weapon.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Free is sliced in half by Mosquito. He gets better.
• Halfway Plot Switch: The manga and anime starts with the principle characters capturing 99 souls and 1 witch's soul so any of them can become the new weapon of Lord Death, who is basically the Grim Reaper... too bad! Witches eventually become actual antagonists, and that goal is set aside completely to defeat them. The manga eventually circles back to its original goal, while the anime has an original ending that forgets it.
• Halloweentown: Death City
• Handsome Lech: Spirit.
• Handwraps of Awesome: Black☆Star seems to have swapped his old gloves for a pair of these after his last rematch with Mifune.
• Hammerspace: Maka's book, which is somehow always suddenly there whenever she does a Maka Chop.
  • This actually becomes a plot point, her Maka Chop while she was inside the Kishin summoned the only book that was around; the Book of Eibon.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: The pixies that live in Excalibur's cave become this trope when said sword is gone.
• Has a Type: Explored in the manga when Spartoi enter the Book of Ebon. The first chapter, Lust, turns everyone into a reflection of the kind of person they lust after.
• Head Desk: Free slams his head against a tree repeatedly during the infamous GODDAMNITSHIT! scene.
• The Heartless: Humans who corrupt themselves by consuming innocent souls become "Kishin Eggs."
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: Crona
• Heel–Face Turn: Crona. Double subverted in the anime and manga, albeit in very different ways.
• Hellish Pupils: Medusa, oh does she ever. She's even the page image!
• Helping Would Be Kill Stealing: Discussed in the first episode. Lord Death and Spirit watch Maka and Soul struggle with and Spirit suggests helping them. Death responds that while they could defeat that enemy "with a single REAPER CHOP" that would not help the kids create a death sycthe.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Stein may count as this; his habit cutting people/things up is played for laughs.
• The Heroine Maka Albarn.
• Highly-Visible Ninja: Black☆Star. Even when he isn't trying to appear dramatically and give a speech, he still tends to fight with as little stealth as any of the rest of the cast.
• Hit Me, Dammit!: Maka pulls this on Black☆Star as a way of making up. He doesn't hold back.
• Hot Witch: Medusa, Arachne, and the Mizune sisters when they fuse together. Blair should count, but doesn't because she's not actually a witch. Eruka is more Cute Witch than hot, and Angela is most definitely a Cute Witch.
• Homoerotic Subtext: Parodied when Black☆Star and Soul team up to fight Death the Kid.
  • In the manga, one of the later villains (Noah) has a Battle Butler who seems to run on Ho Yay.
  • Spirit and Stein are rather worth mentioning. What with Spirit supposedly being a ladies' man, he sure spends a lot of time being subtexty with Stein.
    • Or Spirit is a firm believer in bros before hos.
    • There was that one scene with the cigarettes in the ending credits of the final episode....
  • Also, possibly Crona and Maka... Umm maybe?
• Hot-Blooded:
  • Ox Ford.
  • Why not throw Black☆Star in the mix?
  • Kilik.
• Hover Board: Death the Kid has one.
• Humongous Mecha: The anime earns this one in episode 47.
• Hungry Weapon: all the Demon Weapons gain power by eating souls. One of the protagonists (and series itself) is even named Soul Eater.
• The Hyena: Patty. This girl finds a disturbing number of things funny.
• Hyperspace Mallet: See Hammerspace, above
• An Ice Person: Free has ice powers, but he's a bit rusty and ends up freezing himself as often as he does his foes. Good thing he has his other ability.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: Black☆Star
• I Am Your Opponent: Maka versus Crona. Black☆Star doesn't like it much, but he gives in.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The anime has the main title, followed by a subtitle in the form of a question.
• Idiot Hero: Black☆Star is a parody of it.
• I Lied: Pretty much how Medusa cons Maka into defeating Arachne and gaining her new body.
• Immortality:
  • Complete Immortality: Free has absolute regenerative immortality and does not age.
  • Body Surf: Giriko implants his personality and memories into his children one generation after the next.
  • Lord Death and the Gorgon sisters seem to possess some form of immortality as well.
• The Imp: Ragnarok in his Sleep-Mode Size. Also, the imp inside Soul's Mental World.
• Improbable Use of a Weapon: Pretty much anything that doesn't fit below will fall into this thanks to Rule of Cool. The best example being that Kid fires Liz and Patty upside down and uses them like tonfa in close combat.
• Improbable Weapon User:
  • Kim's weapon partner, Jackie, is a lantern. A fire-breathing lantern that has an alternate form that allows Kim to climb on and fly, but still, a lantern is an oddity in a world of guns, scythes, hammers, and so forth.
  • And special mention to Justin. He's a friggin' guillotine. Who wields HIMSELF in combat.
  • Then there's the fifth Death Scythe, Tezcatlipoca, who is a mirror. And the meister who uses him is a monkey.
  • East Asia's Death Scythe is a magic lamp. Yes. We're not even kidding.
• Incessant Chorus: Excalibur.
• Inconsistent Translation: A bit of a minor one, but the English dub alternates between referring to some of Tsubaki's various forms by their English names (chain-scythe, ninja star) and their Japanese ones (kasari-gama, shuriken).
• Insane Troll Logic:
  Lord Death: We... Well, it's not like we have serious meetings anyways... Something like this is good sometimes.
  Marie: IDIOT!! We're never serious, so we're allowed to be crazy sometimes? That's ridiculous!!
• I Will Wait for You: Non-romantic (unless you ship them) version. Crona makes this sort of vow to Maka when, right before they make their Heroic Sacrifice and imprison themselves alongside Asura, she tells them that she'll come back for them someday and tells them to wait for her. The series ended right after, but on the hopeful note that they may yet be reunited, someday.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Black☆Star. Despite being an arrogant jerk that often sets back his and Tsubaki's goal and rubs people (Read: Maka) the wrong way, he is very loyal to his friends: when Tsubaki is fighting her brother, he sits very patiently watching and yells at anyone who disturbs her "show"; he tells Crona that if they are having problems with anyone to let him know, and Black☆Star will take care of them; and when Maka is paralyzed, he and Tsubaki go to track down who did it to her.
• Juggling Loaded Guns: Death the Kid, when he shot Soul and Black☆Star during their bromance hug by accident.
  • Yes... accident.
• Kangaroo Court: Kid and company face this when they enter Witch realm to ask for witch's help in Moon battle. They're tied up and brought to the court when they expected a talk, and are given no chance to defend themselves. By the way, the court doesn't give anything other than death sentences. The session culminates in sentencing Kid million times to death for being a shinigami.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Tsubaki's (so far) ultimate form is a black katana. Mifune also uses katanas.
  • And as of the recent chapter, Ragnarok apparently. Triple-wielding!.
• Kid Hero: Four of the main characters.
• Kill It with Fire: ...And did we mention Jackie also doubles as a flamethrower?
• Landing in Someone's Bathtub: In the first episode, Soul ends up landing in Blair's bubble bath when he jumped through the window of her house. Luckily, his face landed between her breasts.
• Large Ham: Excalibur. Hamminess is also Black☆Star's default state (see Chewing the Scenery), although he is rather less hammy during his Let's Get Dangerous! moments.
• Laser Blade: Tsubaki's 11th-Hour Superpower in the anime.
• Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: One of the creatures Maka fights in the original end credits animation is a giant version of Wolf Man's daughter from Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School
  • In addition, the corrupt souls that Maka harvests tend to be variations of Horror Movie villains; Jack the Ripper, Jason, Freddy Krueger, Sadako, etc.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • In the English dub, during a mission that takes place in a magnetic field that turns you into a memory after 20 minutes: "Come on, we've got to prioritize, this show's only got 10 minutes left!" There happened to be 10 minutes left in the episode, too.
  • In episode 37, Soul says something along the lines of "Special training isn't cool. Leave that to characters in shonen manga."
• Left Hanging: Without spoiling too much, the anime ended with quite a lot of plot threads left dangling.
  • Although not quite as bad about it, the manga also left quite a few things unaddressed.
• Legendary Weapon: Excalibur is considered the strongest of weapons (which, in this setting, is a race) and his power is considered the stuff of legend. Any Meister who wields him is pretty much unstoppable, and many have tried, as his location and exploits are well documented. What isn't, is the fact that he is completely insufferable and no one can stand him long enough to use him for long.
• Let's Get Dangerous!:
  • When the eyes on Lord Death's mask go from round-and-dopey to triangular-and-angry, everyone in the next 3 mile radius should kindly RUN AWAY if they don't have a will written.
  • Also, Kid with one of the Sanzu lines completed = bad. Kid with one of the Sanzu lines completed, and NOT having an OCD breakdown = Kiss Your Ass Goodbye.
  • Black☆Star when he's not being a Large Ham.
• Lightning/Fire Juxtaposition: One minor group consists of Kim Diehl & Jacqueline Dupre as the id (fire), Ox Ford & Harvar D. as the superego (lightening) and Kilik & Pot of Fire and Pot of Thunder as the ego (one of the pots is fire based, the other is lightening based). Kilik is also an example on his own, since using two elements symbolises that he's really good at synchronizing with weapons ( at one point he's able to wield four partners at once, when most meisters can only manage one).
• Like Parent, Like Spouse: for both Maka and Soul, AND Maka and Crona as a Ship Tease
  • Maka's primary objective is to make Soul have the same power level as Spirit so he can replace her father. Spirit may not like Soul because of how similar he is to himself at that age.
  • With Crona and Maka, while Maka has absolutely NOTHING in common with Crona's biological mother Medusa, she actually has a few things in common with Marie, who basically treats Crona like her own child. Both Maka and Marie are willing to forget the rules to do what is right and stand by the people they care about the most. In the manga, Marie defied Lord Death's orders to help Stein investigate the murder of Joe Buttataki, while Maka defies Lord Death's orders to kill Crona when they were put on his list of evil people for the Academy to hunt down. Also in the anime, they both were willing to do the same thing again for the same people, albeit for different reasons, Marie quit her job to take advantage of a loophole in Lord Deaths deal with Medusa to not send anyone from the DWMA to kill to save Stein from Medusa's madness and Maka disobeyed orders to go help Crona since they volunteered to go to make amends for their betrayal. They even both save their partners from madness with their special soul wavelengths, Marie used healing wavelength on Stein and Maka used her anti-demon wavelength on Soul. Their relationships with Crona are also similar in how kind and gentle they are with them, with the only difference in the anime is that Maka was more willingly to forgive them than Marie wasn't willing do so right away due to Steins condition caused by their betrayal, and said she couldn't trust or forgive Crona until Stein was brought back(though Marie later regretted being so harsh to them and saying that). This is a rare case having more in common with your love interests mother figure than biological mother, but it may be big reason why some prefer Maka and Crona being shipped together over Maka and Soul.
• Living Shadow: An effect of the Dark Blade.
• Loads and Loads of Races: There are many races in the Soul Eater universe which are:
  • Humans
  • Demon Weapons: Humans with the ability to transform into weapons.
  • Witches
  • Sorcerers or Warlocks
  • Evil Humans: Humans who consumed too much souls to the point they become inhuman monstrosities.
  • Monsters (such as Werewolves, Bloodsuckers or vampires, Clowns, etc)
  • Shinigami
  • Demons
• Lonely Piano Piece: Appears in the final battle after Maka and Soul wake up to find that the rest of their True Companions have all been defeated. Of course, they were asking for it, given how Soul both plays the piano and uses this for a literal Theme Music Power-Up.
• Longer-Than-Life Sentence: Taken to its logical conclusion when the witches' Kangaroo Court sentences Free (who's functionally immortal, Nigh-Invulnerable and was already serving an indefinite sentence when he was introduced and broken out of their jail) to multiple death sentences. Of course, he gets off lightly compared to Death the Kid (the son of the Grim Reaper himself) who they sentence to a million death penalties.
• Long-Lost Relative: Asura is this to Kid.
• Lost in Translation: In the original recording, Joe Buttakaki argues with Lord Death about his coffee requirements, requesting Mandheling coffee beans. Mandheling sounds like "mandolin", so Death, confused, holds a mandolin. In the English dub, they change it so both characters just say "coffee beans", meaning it's no longer a miscommunication, and Lord Death holds a mandolin for absolutely no reason!
  • In a similar instance, Lord Death and the Death Scythe Spirit are having a philosophical argument about telling jokes and women's underwear. In the original recording, they compare the importance of repetition in jokes to the repetition in layers of lasagna, which props a helpful popup on the screen to explain the comparison. In the dub, the comparison is taken out of the dialogue, but the popup remains, referring to a lasagna which none of the characters are talking about.
• Lovable Sex Maniac: For all his flaws, Maka's Dad is a well meaning, caring and lovable fella.
• Love Bubbles: Spoofed with the "break-up" between Soul and Black☆Star.
• Loves the Sound of Screaming: Justin Law has a moment.
• Lovecraftian Superpower: A few examples, the series being what it is, but the most obvious is Crona who can use their blood as a weapon. Not only does it become a sword, but if it is cut out of their body, it can be controlled to make blades and needles out of the spilled drops and it makes their body very durable against cutting attacks.
• Lucky Charms Title: An odd example. Rather than the title of the show, Black☆Star's name is always spelled with a ☆.

M-Z

• Mad Doctor: Stein.
• Made of Iron: Black☆Star mostly.
  • When first introduced, Kid got impaled numerous times and was covered in blood, but just got straight up again and shrugged it off.
  • Though to be honest, most of the main cast have taken great amounts of damage and treated it like it was nothing.
    • Crona. Pretty much impossible to damage through physical means.
• Madness Makeover: Justin Law
• Madness Mantra: Hurry up, hurry up. Rid yourself of your fake skin. Give into your weight and walk on. The glorious light illuminating the way out is almost in your sight.
  • My blood is black... Those doors open inward... My blood is black...
• Madness Montage: Stein's visions
• Mad Scientist: Dr. Franken Stein; with special emphasis on "Mad".
• Magical Barefooter: Medusa is always barefoot except when she is masquerading as the doctor at the DWMA. It's such an identifying part of her character that when she takes over the body of the little girl Rachel, the final sign of her complete domination of her new body as she leaves Rachel's house is leaving her sandals on the sidewalk.
• Magic Skirt: With the frequency that she is thrown rolling backwards and all the tumbling she is doing, it's quite surprising that Maka hasn't become the queen of Panty Shot with that short little skirt of hers.
  • The manga averted this for a bit, but later chapters have played it straight.
• The Magnificent Seven Samurai: The main protagonist and their partners form a group of 7. Maka the leader and her partner Soul is the lancer, Black☆Star the big guy with Tsubaki the chick, Kid is the smart guy with two chick partners Liz and Patty.
• Manchild: Spirit, Maka's sweet and immature Lovable Sex Maniac of a dad, and Marie the innocent and romantic schoolgirl.
• The Man in the Moon - And the Sun!
• Marked Change: Black line patterns while using the Dark Blade.
  • Kid gains three vertical lines across his mouth while using Madness by Order. They make him look like someone has sewn his mouth shut.
• Marshmallow Hell: Blair does this to Soul on occassion.
• Masculine, Feminine, Androgyne Trio: Maka (a sweet and responsible girl) and Soul (an impulsive "cool guy") formed a trio with Chrona after the latter's Heel–Face Turn. Chrona is androgynous and never had their gender confirmed.
• Matricide: Played with. Crona kills their mother Medusa because she had been nice to her, something Crona was so unused to that it made them think Medusa was actually an imposter.
• May Contain Evil: Averted. The pills Medusa prescribed for Maka are just normal herbal medicine for improved blood flow. Of course, this does help to catalyze the Black Blood.
• Meaningful Name: Most of the cast.
• Mental World: The room inside Soul's mind.
  • Also Crona's "Oceanless Beach", the city Stein wanders through in his Madness Montage, and the purple lake where Tsubaki fights Masamune could possibly count
  • The black void inside Asura is either this or some sort of pocket dimension.
• Mind Screw: Stein. Literally.
• Minor Flaw, Major Breakup: Hero finally dumping Excalibur because of his sneezing.
• Mobile City: In the anime, Death City is revealed to have legs and to be able to get up and walk around. This is set up early, with Dr Stein pointing out that the only way for Death to chase the Big Bad would be if Death City grew legs and started walking, lampshading the ludicrousness of such a thought and making it so that no-one would assume that it could, in fact, happen.
• Moment Killer:
  • During the scene in the infirmary shortly after their first battle with Crona, Maka is shown standing beside Soul's bed and starts to tear up while looking at an unconcious Soul. She just about gets to finish making a heroic promise before Black☆Star literally crashes into the room and starts strangling Soul on his bed.
  • Also, when Maka meets Crona in the desert in episode 39, she decides to forgive Crona and they share a hug when Soul is suddenly annoyed and just wants to get the heck out of there.
  • :At the very end of the manga, Excalibur tells Kid that coming into his full power as a Shinigami has led to his father's death. He then inspires Kid with a big heroic speech, which segues directly into deciding what he wants to eat (interrupting Kid's own speech in the process.)
• Monster Clown: All of them. Clowns are the Anthropomorphic Personification of madness, Humanoid Abominations that spread and feed on madness. Following the release of the kishin, they can be produced naturally or artificially. While there are a few clown characters, one clown in particular is notable for plaguing Maka and Justin Law.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Stein
• More than Just a Teacher: Most of the teachers at DWMA are also Living Weapons or wielders of those weapons.
• Morph Weapon: Tsubaki
• Morton's Fork: The attraction type, as Maka's father warns off Soul from trying to make a move on his daughter - then reacts poorly when Soul says he wouldn't "settle" for her.
• Mother Russia Makes You Strong: Tsar Pushka is the Death Scythe in charge of Russia, and both he and his meister Feodor are fucking hardcore. Feodor alone beat the shit out of Crona, and the two of then together came pretty close to killing them for good.
• Motherly Scientist: Doctor Medusa (subverted: She plays the nice doctor, but she's secretly poisoning her patients.)
• Motifs:
  • Escaping fear through obtaining power is a recurring theme that shows up as early as Sid-sensei's debut.
    • The first Kishin, Asura, was so afflicted with fear that he started murdering innocent human beings to consume their souls for the power it would give him. His fear remained un-sated... and still does, to this day.
    • Black*Star's physical condition is second only to the gods... and when confronted with the limits of his human body he grows frustrated and angry. When school nurse Naigus warns him that ongoing use of the uncanny sword will potentially kill him and that he's forbidden from using it, Black*Star picks a fight with Death the Kid to prove his physical condition to himself. His refusal to accept his limitations reminds the staff of someone else who went mad for the same reason, his father, White*Star.
    • In an inversion of the motif, when they confront the clown in the Nidhogg factory, Soul and Maka have a heart to heart about madness and come to the conclusion that courage is a kind of madness itself.
  • There are strong religious motifs in Soul Eater.
    • Soul admires the gothic cathedral that he and Maka investigate right before they meet Crona for the first time.
    • The witches have public gatherings known as witches masses.
    • Justin Law wears the zucchetto, mozzetta, and cassock of a church bishop and makes the hammiest displays of religious piety to the god of death.
    • Arachne is described as The Heretic among witches.
  • Resonance, in both the literal sense of sound and the metaphorical sense of emotion and mind.
    • Soul-resonance is the Synchronization of a weapon and its meister—the relationship of a meister and weapon is compared to an electric-guitarist and the guitar's amplifier.
    • Crona doesn't use soul-resonance like a normal meister—indeed, Crona is constantly at odds with its own weapon Ragnarok and is generally only able to tolerate and use him in fits of madness. Instead, the demon weapon Ragnarok creates its own literal resonance by shrieking at the top of its voice. This perverse alternative to soul-resonance is called screech resonance.
    • After being infected with Ragnarok's black blood, Soul gains access to a special piano that appears to let him use Ragnarok-like sound-resonance in combination with weapon-meister soul-resonance. The powerful resonance of Soul's piano is essential to Maka, Death the Kid, and Black*Star resonating as a team in battle, and Soul later inviting Maka to play it herself gives her anti-demon wavelength a Next Tier Power-Up, upgrading the Witch-Hunt Slash to the Demon-Hunt Slash at the same time.
    • Justin Law's headphones invert the pattern, using sound to cut Justin off from everyone around him and preventing him from resonating with anyone. Justin's loud voice and the big speakers of his car appear to be him compensating for this.
• Mr. Fanservice: Kid and Stein
• Ms. Fanservice: Any female character that's not Maka, Eruka or the twins in the anime. In the manga there are nooo exceptions.
  • The twins get their moment, but we lose the "Ms" for one of them.
• Mugging the Monster: How Liz and Patty meet Kid.
  • While visiting Italy, Soul is confronted by a street gang and beats them effortlessly. Unfortunately for them, they pull this again later against Crona and Ragnarok, and get eaten for their trouble.
• Multi-Take Cut: Any time Death the Kid fires the Death Cannon, there are four takes of the show from different angles (counting the first one); the one exception in the anime is the final fight against the Kishin, where he fires it multiple times without the cuts.
• Multiple Reference Pun: The Thompson Sisters
• Must Have Caffeine: Hello, everyone. My name is Joe Buttataki and I'm a java junkie.
• My Greatest Failure: Maka sees Soul's defending her from Crona as this on her part for being unable to protect him, while Soul argues that it's his job to protect her, not the other way around.
• My Name Is Inigo Montoya: It's a shonen anime; of course this one gets a workout. All the protagonists use it repeatedly.
• Naked Apron: the Succubus
• Naked First Impression: This is how Soul finds Blair.
• Naked on Arrival: See the above.
• Naked on Revival: Asura. He then makes:
  • Improvised Clothes: Out of his own skin.
• The Napoleon: Black☆Star.
• Nepharious Pharaoh: Witch necromancer Samantha tries to summon Wrath of the Pharaoh, a malevolent spirit residing in the Pyramid of Anubis. The sarcophagus of the Pharaoh is perfectly symmetrical, making it impossible for the Obsessively Organized Kid to destroy it. Then the Pharaoh steps out of the sarcophagus to give the final strike, and he is revealed to be horribly asymmetrical. Cue Kid's Berserk Button hitting the floor.
• Never Say "Die": Oddly enough, this trope is present in the English dub when Crona's training as a child with the baby dragon "little one" comes up. Flashbacks show Medusa ordering them to "defeat" rather than kill it. This is strange, given that other parts of the dub seem to have no problem mentioning death.
  • Medusa probably figured that telling Crona to kill the "little one" would have freaked them out even more.
• New Old Flame: Marie and Buttataki Joe in the manga. Temporary; Justin Law kills him shortly after.
  • Because Buttataki has a different role in the anime, the role is given to Stein there instead.
    • Though, that can also be seen in the manga. He's referred to as her "first love" and she's obviously pretty close to him, so it can be construed as at least a subtexty New Old Flame.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: The Gecko Ending gives them to Maka and Kid out of nowhere.
  • Kid's later turn out to be Canon.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: When "The man with the Magic Eye" escapes from prison, one of the guards trying to recapture him freaks out when he survives 5 spears being thrust through his head, turning a flamethrower on him... this winds up charring the stocks around his wrist to char, allowing him more freedom.
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: Patty can occasionally delve into this.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Sid is a ninja meister zombie teacher!
  • And Free is an immortal magical werewolf!
  • And Giriko is a chainsaw wizard!
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Noah and Justin versus Stein, Sid, Marie, Nygus and Tezca. [[spoiler:Well, maybe not Tezca.
• No Name Given: Free is known only by his nicknames.
  • Justified since Free was in jail so long that even he forgot his own name. He decided to name himself "Free" because he was finally out of prison.
• Non-Indicative Name: Only one Death Scythe ( and much later in the story, two) is actually a scythe. Some translations of the manga change the name to Death's Weapon.
• No One Could Survive That!: At least twice in the manga, and definitely even more times in the anime.
• Nosebleed: Blair's effect on Soul.
  • Maka has a tiny one when she's genderbent and has a look at an entering Succubus. Hilariously enough, Soul is not pleased.
• No Sense of Direction: Marie constantly gets lost at DWMA, even though she's supposed to be an Alumna. Crona and Ragnarok kind of use this to their advantage once to get out of trouble, saying they were also lost when they go into a restricted area. It took them two hours to find Crona's dorm room while being led by Marie.
  • Shown again by Marie when her and Crona are on their way to Medusa's hideout. Marie points the two in the direction of a series of confusing signs, the first of which lead to snakes, the second which led to quicksand and the third which led to this creepy (possibly Nightmare Fuel) crayon monster. At the fourth sign, which is pointing in three different directions, is when Crona breaks the chain (before it went downhill) and leads the duo that time.
  • Free also. After infiltrating Baba Yaga's castle the team split up to destroy the Magic Tool Locks that protected Arachne's room. Free was assigned to destroy Lock number 1 of 8. Because of his lack of direction, however, he went instead towards tower 2. However he ended up in tower 8 on the other side of the entire castle. Luckily this let him meet up with Kid and pull off a personality change and stick it to Mosquito rather easily. ...Mostly
• Not Quite Dead: Repeatedly. Especially for the witches, mostly Medusa.
• Not What It Looks Like: Soul. Oh, Soul...
• Noun Verber: Soul Eater. Crona the Demon Blader (although that depends on your translation; most have it as Demon Swordsman).
• Lightning Bruiser: Many, but Black☆Star particularly stands out. Marie's Lightning Rope ability makes whoever's weilding her an unusually literal example.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Lord Death developed his child-like persona for the sake of his students, as he would often scare them in his old form. However, some of his original hardcore personality shows up in his fight with Asura.
• Odd Couple: Nearly all Meisters and Weapons are opposites of each other, and as they find a medium their power increases.
  • Makes one wonder about Lord Death, looking at his current collection of Death Scythes. Even accounting for Spirit being 'the' Death Scythe, that's an awful lot of contrasting personalities going on amongst the introduced area heads. Azusa's uptight, Marie's a ditz...
    • On that note, who imagines a Grim Reaper carrying a sniper rifle/crossbow, a hammer or a mirror? Puts a slightly different spin on the term "odd couple".
    • One of the reasons that Spirit doesn't go searching for Kishin was along the lines of him being "the only one who can truly be called a Death Scythe".
• Official Couple: Marie and Stein at the end.
  • Ox and Kim are, notably, the only official couple among the teenage characters.
• Offscreen Teleportation: How in the Hell did Spirit and Stein get all the way from Death Valley, Nevada to Italy so quickly?!
  • He works for a Physical God that sometimes lives in a mirror. One would imagine Lord Death has some sort of teleportation magic.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • When Soul appears in front of Maka to take a slash from Crona. Maka's expression is this.
  • In the manga, during the Baba Yaga invasion arc, Kid and Free fight Mosquito, and at first it looks like they have the upper hand. But then Mosquito turns into his vampire form from 400 years ago, and nearly kills them both in less than a second.
    • And then Mosquito gets one of his own when he realises that Kid has the real Brew. Kid then forces him to retreat.
  • The first time we see an Oh, Crap! moment in the anime is when Maka uses her Soul Perception ability against Stein to see the strength of his soul. The shock sent her into a short Heroic BSoD.
  • Kid has an Oh, Crap! moment when Noah, who had just thoroughly mopped the floor with Mosquito, suddenly appears right next to him.
• Oh, No... Not Again!: Black☆Star takes the cake when after seeing Excalibur in the Wrath chapter of Eibon, which naturally pissed him off, the group leaves the chapter with Black☆Star (and pretty much everyone else) glad to be ridden of the annoyance, only to find Excalibur again in the next chapter. Black☆Star's reaction? Well...
  Black☆Star: [upon seeing Excalibur] OH HELL NO!
• Ominous Latin Chanting: Shows up during the fights between Lord Death and the Kishin, and during most of the Kishin battles.
• One Head Taller: In the main cast, the female weapons are significantly taller than their male meisters. Soul and Maka are at pretty much the same height.
  • Not anymore, they aren't. Soul had a growth spurt, it seems. As did Black☆Star. Kid is still a lot shorter than Liz, but he's grown too.
• One-Man Army: All the main characters in the Battle on the Moon arc.
• One-Winged Angel: Done by the Demon God in the anime
• Only One Name: Black☆Star
  • Although technically he is from the Star Clan and his father was named White☆Star, so you could argue that Star is the family name.
• Only the Chosen May Wield: Due to their personality overlap and personal relationships, each weapon can generally only be wielded by whatever meister it is assigned to at the moment. Particularly advanced meisters (including all of the adults on the show) and deathscythes appear to be exceptions to this.
  • Justified in that it is explained at a meister and weapon must tune their souls in order to fight together. The adult meisters and weapons have simply learned how to tune their souls to different partners.
  • Ironically, the trope is averted with Excalibur. He is the most powerful of all weapons yet can easily be wielded by anyone who wants to; the main obstacle to partnering with him is putting up with his obnoxious personality and the strict rules he makes his wielders follow.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Lord Death is a silly goofball most of the time, except when he's dealing with Asura. In fact, during his last fight with Asura, the longer the fight goes on, the more serious and less goofy he gets. At the end he barely even sounds like the same entity, as lampshaded by Spirit.
  Spirit: I know he's the god of death, but I've never heard him sound so murderous before!
• Opaque Lenses: Stein, most of the time, also Asuza.
• Open the Iris: Inverted with Maka. Her normally invisible pupils widen when she is emotionally shocked, or using her 'soul vision' to see other people's souls. Crona too, in addition to their eyes completely changing color when s/he's freaking out.
• Order Versus Chaos:
  • One of the major themes of this story. Basically, Order isn't inherently good, but Chaos is inherently evil.
• Orifice Invasion: Medusa does this to a little girl in the suburbs to possess her, and later again to get Arachne's body.
• Our Fairies Are Different: There's a fairy or two in Excalibur's cave. This is the only time they show up in the whole series, though.
• Our Souls Are Different: They're little blue orbs that appear when someone is killed. Eating them makes you more powerful but also slowly turns you into a twisted monster; however, Demon Weapons can consume tainted souls and Witch souls with no negative side effects. While a person is still alive, their soul manifests as an orb surrounding their body, visible only to people with Soul Perception. The size of this orb is a rough indication of someone's power.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Mosquito, a vampiric creature called a Bloodsucker. He appears as a shrunken old man with a long pointed nose, but he can shapeshift into the forms his body has taken over the centuries. His 100 years ago form is enormous and very, very tough. His 200 years ago form is grotesque and quadripedal, with an even bigger nose than his other forms. His 400 years ago form is where he crosses the Bishōnen Line : A Lightning Bruiser who looks much like a classic "noble vampire" and can turn into a swarm of bats. His 800 years ago form is a twisted One-Winged Angel that gets promptly offed by Noah. He can also heal himself by drinking the blood of others through his nose.
• Our Witches Are Different: The witches in the series come in Cute Witch, Wicked Witch, Vain Sorceress, and Old Mistress varieties. At first, most except Angela seem evil, but this is being elaborated on in later chapters of the manga. Which (ha!), in the manga, leads to a Witch Hunt, where Medusa, the evil Witch, sells out the good witch who had joined DWMA to get away from the others.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Once Sid becomes a zombie, he retains his personality and abilities but his skin turns a dull blue and his face gets frozen in a permanent grimace. He also gains the ability to quickly tunnel through the ground and he picks up the habit of saying "that's the kind of man I was!" instead of "that's the kind of man I am!"
• Out-of-Clothes Experience: When the weapons speak in their weapons forms, other than the title character. In other words, only the girls are naked. However, a few chapters in Soul gets a big scar across his chest and starts showing up shirtless in weapon form to show it off. After that, everyone is always naked in weapon form regardless of gender.
• Over-Enthusiastic Parents: Spirit/Deathscythe/Maka's Papa. What he lacks in ability he makes up for in effort and love.
• Palantir Ploy: Arachne uses her spiders as spies to track enemy movement.
• Partial Transformation: Pretty much the only way a Weapon can effectively fight without a Meister to wield him or her. Giriko is particularly skilled at this. He's a chainsaw, so of course he can turn his arms and legs into chainsaws, but he can also obtain Instant Armor or Super-Speed by strapping chains to his chest or the soles of his feet.
• Pet the Dog: Upon hearing that Maka was injured in a battle and is now bedridden, Mifune gives Black☆Star a 'get well' candy to give to her. Medusa too can have some kindhearted moments, prompting Soul to ask, "Why would someone who could say something so kind decide to mess up the world? Are you really that cold-hearted?" Medusa doesn't respond.
  • Unlikely to be a true example, as it's just Medusa being a very cruel Manipulative Bitch using a supposed parent-child bond with Crona against the kids, Maka in particular, to gain their favour.
• Phrase Catcher: Excalibur, usually invectives.
  • Not a phrase, exactly, but everyone who's met Excalibur makes that same horrible face.
• Phone Word: The number to call Shinigami is 42-42-564 (shini-shini-goroshi, "death-death-murder").
• Physical God:
  • The Grim Reaper Lord Death and Kishin Asura.
  • Black☆Star becomes a Physical God simply by becoming so powerful that he can no longer be considered human.
  • Kid also ascends to godhood during the Battle on the Moon.
• Plot Pants: This is prevalent with all of the recurring characters, with the exception of the members of Spartoi, who have two sets of Plot Pants.
• Power Born of Madness: In Chapter 42, Maka and Soul evidently agree that "insanity is the source of strength." The strongest example of this appears to be the black blood, although other characters seem to receive some form of power boost from insanity as well.
• Power Degeneration: Black☆Star
• Power Echoes: A rather humurous example with Black☆Star in episode 13. When he breaks out his demon blade form for the first time against Free, everything slows down and an echo of "shadow star... star... star... star" can be heard. Turns out it was Black☆Star repeating the last word over and over again as he passed out mid-attack.
• The Power of Family: "Bonds" is a soul-resonating phenomenon exclusive to family members such as parents or siblings. No matter the circumstances, it seems that a family member can always wield another should one be a Meister and another a Weapon (the most famous example being Liz and Patty). Even Soul Resonance attacks are possible like when Maka used Witch Hunter wielding her father, Spirit, against Crona. However, despite that, resonance between family members is not as strong due to a similarity in wavelength.
• Power Gives You Wings: Manga only Maka possesess the rare angel-winged Grigori type soul, which she uses to create wings for Death Scythe Soul to fly.
• Power Perversion Potential: Masamune can provide both bondage and single-handed gangrape. Soul can and has been used for things he oughtn't be used for in doujin and H-rated pictures. Let us not speak of Medusa's extras in literally every Medusa-centric doujin ever. Time will only tell if Noah has it.
  • His book can Gender Bend people.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: While the first three quarters of the anime is more or less taken exactly from the manga, after that the Gecko Ending kicks in and things (obviously) start getting different.
• Precision F-Strike: There's a couple in the Hungarian dub amongst a great deal of Cluster F Bombing: "I'm gonna kick... HER ASS!" and "Go crawl into a cunt!"
• Prepare to Die - In the anime, Medusa to her own child, Crona. Uses the And Now You Die variation.
  • Lord Death to Asura after the latter escapes from DWMA.
• Product Placement: The book Maka is always reading is Gangan, the magazine the manga is serialized in.
• Pronoun Trouble: With Crona's gender left ambiguous, fan scanlators, subbers, and dubbing companies were sometimes forced to make a best guess. This has led some fans to claim to know Crona's true gender, even though there's no canonical support.
• Psychic Link: Soul Resonance can do this.
• Psychoactive Powers: The soul wavelength.
• Psycho for Hire: Giriko.
• Psycho Serum: The Black Blood.
• Pun:
  • Mandheling brand coffee sounds like mandolin, which is why Lord Death keeps strumming a chord every time he talks to Joe Buttataki about coffee.
  • When Kid first meets Soul and Black☆Star:
    Soul: Whoa!! It's Shinigami-sama! In real death!
  • "I already made a reservation. Just in case. At the Death-staurant...that French place on Third Street." -Investigator B.J.
• Punny Name: Dr. Franken Stein and Eruka (spelled with the same syllables as "kaeru", Japanese for frog), just to name a few...
  • Also, Maka is an anagram of "kama", which is Japanese for scythe.
• Puppeteer Parasite: Another lovely trick of Medusa's; After her main body is cut in half, she goes to a modern day suburbia in snake form, and slithers into a random child's mouth; taking over her body and running off. It Only Works Once, so she can't do it again.
  • Later, it turns out she can do it again.
    • Medusa explains to Arachne that it was splitting up her soul (to avoid it being eaten by Death Scythe), not the possession, that she could only to the once, due to the Kishin's soul wavelength at that point.
• Putting the "Pal" in Principal: Shinigami-Sama/Lord Death is respected and beloved by everyone in the organization, his image and name plastered all over Death City and is even looked upon as a symbol of worship to some.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Lampshaded and defied with Stein and Spirit's victory over Medusa. They win, sure, but they were fighting to prevent the Kishin's revival and their victory came from Medusa being distracted by sensing the Kishin's wavelength. Stein comments on the bitter irony of them winning because they failed, then admits that the thrill of bisecting Medusa makes up for it, to Spirit's disgust.
• Rank Up: All of the Meisters and Demon Weapons that make up Spartoi go from One-Star to Two-Star.
• Recruited from the Gutter: It's revealed that the Thompson sisters were originally criminals before Death the Kid recruited them as his weapons. Liz originally planned to take Kid for a ride, but relented when she realised how happy Patty was now they finally had a home.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Most of the shots of the Big Bad in the 4th credit sequence is Red, Black, Grey, and inspired by insanity.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Asura plays it straight, while Soul averts it.
• Redemption Demotion: Ragnarok, who's basically bound to Crona notably shrinks upon Crona's Heel–Face Turn
• Repeat Cut: Maka's Demon Hunter finishing blow on Mosquito in episode 36. Kid's "Death Cannon" technique frequently evokes this as well. Also Maka punching out the Kishin.
• Ring-Ring-CRUNCH!
• Rubber Face: Soul does this to Maka to make sure she's not an imposter. She passes when she hits him with a Maka Chop.
• Rule of Cool: Death the Kid shoots his pistols upside down. With his pinkies.
  • It is suffice to say that this pretty much describes the entire series.
• Rule of Symbolism: The final battle against Asura in the anime version is entirely this, which irritated many fans due to the rest of the series not being like this at all. To make a long story short... the entire team pull out all of their most powerful attacks against the kishin without doing hardly any damage at all, until Maka and Soul are all alone. Maka pulls progressively more desperate techniques, including willing herself to fall asleep and fight him while sleeping so that she won't feel afraid. In the end, however, Maka gives him a speech about bravery and then destroys him with one punch. The symbolism comes into play when you remember that Asura is the Anthropomorphic Personification of fear and paranoia - more power won't make you feel less afraid, neither will surrounding yourself with strong allies, and you can't sleep to escape either because you'll eventually wake up; the only way to defeat fear is to be brave.
• Rule of Three: Discussed by Shinigami and Spirit during negotiations with Medusa.
  Spirit: *to Medusa* What's your problem, can't you take a joke?
  Shinigami: And it was expertly executed too! Repetition is the foundation of humor.
  Spirit: Three times is best.
  Shinigami: Absolutely, I agree!
• Running Gag: The "I-have-met-Excalibur" face.
  • Stein's chair falling over and dumping its rider as soon as it runs over the bump in each threshold.
• Sadist Teacher: Stein. He just wants to cut you up so bad...
  • Subverted. While he can be a certifiable loony, and God help you if he's legitimately going after you, at worst (while sane) he's a Stern Teacher. He genuinely cares for his students, and they (especially some of the girls) like him right back.
• Safety in Muggles
• Samurai: Mifune.
• Sanity Slippage:
  • Dr. Franken Stein.
  • Death the Kid while he's in the Book of Eibon. Black☆Star snaps him out of it though.
• Sarcastic Devotee: Soul, to Maka.
• Scaled Up: Medusa can do this.
• Scarf of Asskicking: In the manga, Tsubaki's Shadow Star Form Zero.
  • Both Black☆Star and Tsubaki get one after joining Spartoi
• Scars Are Forever: Soul gets a large scar during the first fight with Crona; it remains visible on his body for the rest of the series.
  • Also, in the manga Black☆Star ends up with a clean scar that bissects the star tattoo on his shoulder after his last fight with Mifune. Even the healer can't remove it, and Black☆Star essentially claims that's because it represents his Character Development.
• Scary Shiny Glasses: Dr. Franken Stein is pretty much obligated to do this. Azusa regularly uses this to intimidate people. Ox Ford also fulfils this trope in a less scary fashion.
• Screaming Warrior: Black☆Star.
  • Maka may have him beat here.
• Schizo Tech: Outside of Death City is a mishmash of technological eras. Ancient Japanese villages and modern-day Suburbia and everything inbetween.
• School of Hard Knocks
• Science-Related Memetic Disorder: Stein seems to suffer from some form of this.
• Sealed Evil in a Six Pack: The Kisin Asura probably counts; he was sealed in a bag made of his own skin and his blood was drained and taken elsewhere to weaken him. Injecting the bag with black blood unseals him.
• Self-Restraint: Medusa when she surrenders herself to Shibusen.
• Series Goal: The meisters and weapons are supposed to be gathering 99 human souls and 1 witch soul, but this goal becomes mostly irrelevant once the Knight of Cerebus is introduced.
  • Not exactly irrelevant, just not the be-all and end-all for the series. Once Maka and Soul actually get the Death Scythe rank (well, Soul technically) the reality of the position is quickly impressed upon them; Death Scythes exist for a reason, and their abilities are necessary. Which is rather different from the original impression, where it appeared that the position was sought for the sake of it; none of the kids seemed to know what being a Death Scythe involved.
  • At the end of the series the original goal of making Deathscythes is visited again, though with a twist. In the final chapter of manga, they conclude their entire practice of making Deathscythes.
• Seriously Scruffy: In the anime, after the Kisin is released, Soul drags Maka away from her studies to play basketball in order to avert this trope. Stein inverts it; when his appearance is going downhill, it's usually a sign he's in no fit state to work.
• Seven Deadly Sins: The Book of Eibon is organized into seven chapters based on the seven sins. It starts with Lust, then progresses through Gluttony, Envy, Wrath, Pride, Sloth, and finally Greed, supposedly organized by the corrupting influences of each vice. As well as creating artificial constructs named Noah
• Shapeshifter Weapon: About half the cast.
• Shinigami: Interestingly, only Lord Death and his son are directly referred to as this. Meisters and Weapons have varying origins; some are born in Death City, and some Weapons were "found" as humans. It's a blurry line, as Maka is the daughter of a Meister and her Weapon Partner.
  • The Funimation dub refers to Lord Death and Kid as Reapers, instead.
  • Thanks to the manga explaning some things, it seems now to be more clear.
    • Grim Reapers have distinctive souls, and there are only two in the cast - Lord Death and Kid - and it seems to be a race rather than a designation.
    • The Weapons are descended from experiments by Arachne to fuse the souls of humans with the transformative souls of witches - their ability to switch between human and Weapon forms is genetic.
    • The anime uses Maka's parentage to give her special abilities, whereas the manga has not; she is apparently a normal human, albeit one with a few rare traits and a very handy infection.
    • That being said, the manga hadn't yet specifically ruled out the possibility of Maka having latent weapon powers yet and it is a shonen series so really it's still up in the air.
• Ship Tease: There are numerous potential couples in this series.
  • Maka is very devoted to both Soul and Crona, who reciprocate her sentiments. Further, Maka is blatantly jealous whenever other women have intimacy of some kind with Soul, such as Blair throwing herself at Soul to "play" or Dr. Medusa claiming Soul has confessed inner worries to her that Maka knows nothing about.
  • Tsubaki and Black*Star both have quiet and obvious moments, such as Tsubaki chastising Black*Star not for peeping on her in the bath but for being too obvious about it.
  • Medusa tries to seduce Stein into madness, but she has a Foil in Stein's Old Flame, Marie.
  • The first Repeat Show ending features scenes of the main meisters spending time with their weapons—except for Maka, who is positively anguished over Soul's absence—set to a wistful ballad.
• Shirtless Scene: Soul in the exam episode, and when Maka walks in on him after a check up on his scar.
  • Stein of all people gets one in the anime. Fangirl reaction was as expected.
  • Don't forget Free. Even Asura was envious of his sculpted physique.
  • In the manga only, Ox, Harvar, Kilik, and the Pots, after taming a giant by dancing naked with him.
• Shōnen: Between the fights, the powerups, and the training to be stronger, this is a textbook Shonen series.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: Averted; comic relief Excalibur is included until the very end of the anime. And that's not even mentioning his latest role in the manga...
• Shout-Out: Has its own page.
• Sibling Team: The Thompsons
  • Siblings in Crime: How they worked before they met Death the Kid.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: Liz is level headed, while her sister Patty is a complete space case.
• Sigil Spam: The Shiningami mask in Death City.
• Significant Anagram: Maka is an anagram of "kama", the Japanese word for scythe. Eruka is an anagram of "kaeru", the Japanese word for frog, and Mizune is an anagram of "nezumi", the Japanese word for mouse.
• Single-Stroke Battle: In the anime, the third and final showdown between Black☆Star and Mifune
• Sinister Scythe: Interestingly, only Soul himself and the most recent Death Scythe (Maka's father) are true examples of this; despite their name, the Death Scythes consist of various types of weapons.
• Sinister Southwest: Death City, Nevada, is a Weirdness Magnet by its very nature. A lot of the series takes place all over the world, but Death City itself is home to all maner of supernatural phenomenon, including both a deranged sun and moon in the sky.
• Slasher Smile: So, so many examples. Medusa's is particularly demonic; Maka's is surprising when you realize just how much control she has over it.
  • The Sun and the Moon BOTH have one!
  • Soul also shows his off a lot, too.
  • In chapter 69, Medusa and Justin Law seem to engage in some kind of Slasher Smile arms race.
  • Don't forget madness incarnate Asura.
  • And Stein whenever he gets a screw loose...
  • Patty sports one when she kicks Black☆Star in the nuts after he unwisely decides to ask for a time-out at the very beginning of their sparring match to get his hands tied up to supposedly make it even.
• Slipknot Ponytail: When Tsubaki morphs into Enchanted Sword mode, her hair is let down.
• Sliding Scale of Comedy and Horror: Jack the Ripper is shown travelling the street and finds a girl. It immediately comes up, slashes the girl in half and eats her soul (This is all shown through a Shadow Discretion Shot). Right after Maka and Soul take her down, this is immediately followed with some comedy. How is this not an example of this trope? There are also a few more examples such as:
  • Crona's weapon coming out of their body
  • Tsubaki's brother. Enough said
  • When the witch gets eaten by King Tut in one of the early episodes starring Death the Kid. To describe it accurately, it pulls the witch inside, all you hear are some crunching sounds and as if that wasn't enough there is BLOOD coming out of its tomb.
  • Soul emerging out of Maka's body in his dream
  • Do I even need to mention Dr. Stein?
• Small Name, Big Ego: Black☆Star.
• Smoke Out: One of Tsubaki's forms is a smoke bomb.
• Smug Super: Black☆Star, AND DON'T YOU FORGET IT!!!
• Slow-Motion Fall: Happens to Soul when he's done Taking The Sword for Maka.
• Soul-Cutting Blade: Masamune.
• Soul Eating: Humans with the weapon bloodline (essentially a gene which allows them to become an Equippable Ally) can eat the souls of other humans to grow stronger (the good guys only consume the souls of corrupted humans, villains tend to be less picky), so long as they also consume at least one witch's soul. Those that indiscriminately eat other humans slowly become Kishin.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Except Arachne, every character that died in the manga survive the anime.
• Spell My Name With An S: Many fan translators spelled the Demon Sword meister's name as "Chrona" or "Krona" until the third ED revealed the spelling to be "Crona."
  • Some people prefer spelling 'Kid' with an extra 'd'.
• Spinoff: Soul Eater Not
• Spoiler Opening: Subverted. In the second opening, we see Soul holding an unconscious Maka. In the series, it's actually Soul who falls unconscious at a pivotal moment, and Maka is the one who must save him.
  • The fourth ending is actually a Spoiler Ending.
  • For those watching the anime for the first time through the recently released Repeat Show, which so far is just the original episodes with brand new opening and closing sequences, the new opening features characters who don't even appear until the second half of the anime. It also gives away Crona's Heel–Face Turn by showing them alongside the heroes at all times and even helping them take down a giant golem.
• Special Edition Title: In the episode where the aforementioned Heel–Face Turn occurs, the end credits change from the usual "Maka walking in place alone" to "Maka and Crona walking together" to demonstrate it.
• Standard Female Grab Area: Sort of played straight during the introduction of and subsequent first fight with Stein. Stein grabs Maka by one of her ponytails at one point, almost completely immobilizing her. While this is certainly more effective (and more painful) than the arm, one would usually expect that a strong Action Girl like Maka would be perfectly capable of throwing a few elbows into Stein's stomach or something. Had the size of Stein's soul not made her sink to her knees in fear and had she not exhausted her strength in using (what was at the time) a technique that was her most powerful and which she was still inexperienced in, then Maka might have attempted an escape.
• Stealth Mentor: Sid and Stein were first introduced as enemies.
• Stealth Pun: Dr. Franken Stein is a Mad Scientist with an enormous screw through his head, which he turns to keep his mind on the problem at hand. He is also The Corruptible, and the closest person at DMWA to full insanity. In other words... he's got a SCREW LOOSE.
  • In Episode 3, when Death the Kid is seeking souls for Patty and Liz, Lord Death tells him about a witch who's ressurecting mummies in the Tomb of Anubis. She uses her mummies to collect human souls, which she uses to make more mummies. There's even a bit of a graphic showing how five mummies create two mummies each, who create two each, who create two each... she's running something of a Pyramid Scheme.
  • The witches' ultimate weapon is called B.R.E.W.
  • Given all the other music references in this show it should be a surprise to no one that the Werewolf is fought in London
• Stock Ninja Weaponry: Tsubaki isn't just proficent with "ninja" weapons; she transforms into them (more specifically she has smoke bomb, kusarigama, tanto, giant shuriken and katana forms). Black☆Star wields her. Interestingly, Black☆Star's mentor Sid (despite being ninja themed) averts this trope by specialising in knives (his partner takes the form of a modern, Western survival knife).
• Stress Vomit: A comedic example in the anime. Maka's team loses a game of basketball, so as a forfeit she has to offer to spend the weekend with her Bumbling Dad. He's so happy at the prospect of unexpectedly spending time with his sort-of-estranged daughter he vomits.
• Strong as They Need to Be: See the New Powers as the Plot Demands entry, above
• Supermode: There's the basic Resonance of Souls, the more advanced Chain Resonance, using the power of the Black Blood, Maka's Witch Hunter and Demon Hunter attacks, Black☆Star's Fey Blade mode and his blade modes after unlocking Masamune's true power, Kid's Lines of Sanzu, Free's werewolf form, Mosquito's younger forms, and many others.
  • From Mosquito's comments about the Grim Reaper, Kid's Sanzu Lines seem not to be a supermode so much as an example of a future 'normal' mode.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: Medusa, complete with Hellish Pupils.
  • Kid has gold eyes, but it is his striped hair that indicates his supernatural nature. The eyes just make him look that bit more odd.
• Superpowered Evil Side: Maka and Soul using the Black Blood
  • Kid's Madness of Order form. After its first appearance he gets better at controlling himself, but it's still pretty risky.
• Superpowerful Genetics: Being a weapon.
• Tailor-Made Prison: The Demon God being imprisoned with his own skin.
• Take a Third Option: During the last Mifune vs. Black☆Star fight in the anime. Mifune asks Black☆Star if he will choose the "Path of the Demon" or the "Path of the Warrior". Black☆Star (somewhat predictably) decides that neither path is good enough for him, and choose to forge his own path forward. He never really elaborates on what the path is, but it clearly comes with powerups (the Enchanted Sword grows about a foot longer and glows red.)
• Take Our Word for It: We don't actually get to read Crona's poem, but it must've been pretty depressing, since it sends anyone who reads it into a Corner of Woe.
  • It even sent Black☆Star into a Corner of Woe! That must have been some poem.
• Taking the Bullet: Soul takes the bulle- er, sword for Maka.
  • Crona also does this for Maka when Medusa is about to attack her. They then die, sort of.
  • Also, in episode 48, when Asura attacks Kid (or the bystanders in general?) Lord Death takes the shot instead and gets blown to bits. Ouch.
  • Soul does this again for Maka in episode 51, when Asura is just about to deal a finishing blow.
  • Chapter 79 has Sid push Marie out of the way of an attack, costing him an arm in the process.
• Talking Animal: Blair, who is technically just a cat with magic strong enough to be able to assume a human form.
• Talking Is a Free Action: Villains will literally stand by patiently, sometimes for over a minute, as the heroes formulate a new plan out loud.
  • Lampshaded by Soul during the fight with Stein:
    Soul: He's been waiting patiently for you to finish this temper tantrum. Isn't that so polite of the good Dr. Stein?
  • Medusa lampshades it too in episode 19:
    Medusa: Holding a strategy meeting right in front of your enemy? Is that really the best idea?
• Talking Weapon: Ragnarok, which can also use its mouth for Crona's Screech Alpha attack. Excalibur is also a talking sword, however much the cast might wish he wasn't.
  • Technically, all Demon Weapons are this, to the point that in the first chapter/episode, Maka is honestly worried when Soul stops talking to her while in scythe mode.
• Tamer and Chaster: While the anime isn't devoid of fanservice, it still tones down a lot of the manga's earlier sexual humor.
• Tears of Awe: Death The Kid has been seen crying hotly in the face of especially harmonious instances of symmetry.
• Tear Off Your Face: One of the hallucinations Free and Eruka Frog suffer as they get close to the Kisin's prison is that he's chewing their faces off.
• Tempting Apple: Medusa, the snake witch, is associated with apples several times. One such moment is when Rachel, the child whose body she snatches by disguising herself as a cute dog, is watching an educational television program: A little girl reaching for a certain red fruit, which is then repeated several times: "An apple! An apple! An apple!"
• Thanatos Gambit: Medusa seems to have pulled one of these as of Chapter 87. Crona, in a shocking plot twist, kills her after she showed them motherly affection for the first time; and it turns out that this was her plan from the start so that Crona's Black Blood could be completed. Truly the greatest mother in the world.
• Theme Naming: And how!
  • The witches seem to be named after animals; especially women in Greek Mythology associated with animals.
  • Kishin Eggs are a mishmash of historical/fictional/mythological antagonists.
  • The weapon people, who are usually named after mythological and/or video game weapons: Marie Mjolnir, Masamune, Ragnarok, Excalibur, Soul Eater, etc.
    • Though Excalibur is stated (at least in the anime) to be the Excalibur in Arthurian legends.
  • Two of the students are named after Western Universities (Ox Ford and Harvar D. Eclair, Oxford and Harvard respectively).
  • Mosquito's Police Stinger (both the band The Police and their singer Sting)
    • He is also, appropriately, a vampire. Though one of his transformations has him taking on a more 'traditional' look rather than the insect thing. Unwisely, Liz and Patty point out this look is 'boring' and he "looked stronger before".
  • Blair's Smashing Pumpkin
  • Sid Barrett's The Living End.
  • Patty and Liz's surname might be a dual pun on the Thompson Sub-Machine Gun and the Thompson Twins.
  • Blair's name can be seen as a reference to The Blair Witch Project.
    • In the first chapter, Maka is actually seen carrying around a folder entitled "Maka's Blair Witch Project".
  • On top of that, Maka Albarn is named for Blur frontman Damon Albarn, who voices 2D (a Soul Eater look-alike) for Gorillaz.
  • Sid Barett (Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd) and Kim Diehl (Kim Deal of The Pixies).
  • Kilik's Soul Resonance: Aphex Twin.
  • Justin Law (Cantonese pop singer Justin Lo) The reference is more obvious when you see the names in katakana).
  • Black Star is the name of a Hip Hop group formed by Talib Kweli and Mos Def. Coincidence? It's possible, but given the massive number of music references made with every other character in the series, it seems likely that the band is Black☆Star's namesake. Even more telling, this would round out the three main teams by giving each a musical reference (Damon Albarn for Maka and the Thompson Twins for Kid).
    • Black Star is also a song by Radiohead.
    • In a theme that isn't part of a Shout-Out, all three named members of the Star Clan are named a color and then "Star." Black☆Star, his father White☆Star, and his cousin Red☆Star (though he generally goes by the less obvious Akane Hoshi).
  • Dr. Franken Stein. Need we say more?
  • One Monster of the Week had an attack called Nine Inch Nails.
    • That Monster of the Week 's name is Frey D. Sadako
  • Eibon is named after a character who happens to be a sorcerer in Clark Ashton Smith's story The Door to Saturn. Eibon also wrote "The Book of Eibon" which chronicled his life and was filled with magical spells and rites.
  • The little girl Rachel may have been a reference to Jacob's wife Rachel in the Bible. (Especially considering the obvious reference to Eve, the serpant, and the apple shortly after Rachel's body was taken over by Medusa.)
  • Noah, the collector. Another well-known Noah also spent time collecting things—animals for his Ark.
  • Kishin Asura may be a reference to a group of power-seeking dieties in Hinduism called Asura or Ahura.
• Those Two Guys: Ox Ford and Kilik Lunge. Subverted in the manga when they get expanded roles, not so much in the anime.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Death the Kid.
  Nidhogg: Are you saying you would take away freedom?!
  Kid: I am a Reaper. I grant no freedom to kill.
• Threesome Subtext:
  • Implied with Maka, Soul, and Blair in the last chapter.
• Thriller on the Express: Episode 30 of the anime, "The Red Hot Runaway Express". Kid, Patty and Liz have to board the speeding train and fight an enemy on board for possession of a magical artifact, while a third party outside is fighting both sides.
• Through the Eyes of Madness: Just being in the proximity of a Kishin results in hallucinations and loss of reason.
• Throw the Book at Them: Maka Chop!
• To Be a Master: Collecting enough souls to obtain the rank of Death Scythe
• Token Motivational Nemesis: Nakatsukasa Masamune, is spite of being such an important figure in the life of his sister Tsubaki, is killed within one episode of his introduction.
• Tome of Eldritch Lore: The Book of Eibon. Heavy on the Eldritch now that we know there's a GREAT OLD ONE living in it's last chapter.
• Took a Level in Badass: After getting curbstomped by Mifune, Black☆Star goes to stay with Tsubaki and her family for a few weeks. By the time he gets back, he's unlocked the Dark Blade's true potential and is strong enough to take on Mifune in a fair fight.
• Totem Pole Trench: In chapter 46 Kilik have once his two (very tiny) partners be the head for their disguise as a cloaked Arachnophobia soldier.
  • in Episode 21 of the Soul Eater anime: Blair is fighting the (remaining) 5 Mizune sisters. She smashes four of the sisters with one spell...but the fifth sister behind her starts giggling madly. Activating the hivemind within the sisters (accompanied by speaking in sync and rhythmic finger-snapping), Create a they then proceed to stack themselves in a tower formation. When the last member completes the desired tower, all the Mizune undergo a merger, the five combine to form... a Hot Witch. It Makes Sense in Context... I guess.
• Trademark Favorite Food: B.J. and coffee.
• Transformation Sequence: Kid activating his Resonance of Souls. It was even interrupted at one point.
• Translation Convention: Considering the academy is in America and most of the on-screen text is in English, it's implied that everyone is actually speaking English.
• Trash Landing: During their fight against Blair, Soul drops Maka into a dumpster.
  • Maka again gets the trash treatment after asking Black☆Star to punch her in apology. He doesn't hold anything back, & she goes flying into the trash.
• Triple Take
• The Trope Kid: Death the Kid.
• Troperiffic
• True Companions: The kids develop into this, with both their partners and The Team. Their sensei are already this, most clearly when Stein is both insane and framed for murder, and his colleagues don't just believe in him but get him out of dodge with Marie to clear his name.
• Tyke-Bomb: Crona
• Verbal Tic: For the brief period of time he was on-screen, Al Capone had one of these, you know?
• Vibroweapon: Ragnarok when it screams.
• Unconscious Objector: In the anime, Maka is knocked unconcious and begins using her previously unknown weapon bloodline abilities to attack in the final battle against the Big Bad. He realises she's even more dangerous in this state and and wakes her up forcing her to invoke The Power of Friendship instead.
• Undead Abomination: The Wrath of the Pharaoh (his official name "Anubis") is the malevolent spirit of a Nepharious Pharaoh summoned by the necromancer witch Samantha in a plot to command a mummy army, only for the Pharaoh to devour her instead.
• Underboobs: One of the Fanservicey traits of Mizune's combined form.
• The Unfettered: Asura reveals this as his motivation, particularly when he kills Arachne so that he no longer has to fear her demise.
• Unnamed Parent: Maka's mother has only been referred to in both the anime and manga as "Maka's Mother" or "Spirit's (ex)wife". A scanlater accidentally turned the word for wife into a name (Hence the fact that everyone's been calling her "Kami"), but officially, she's nameless.
• Unsettling Gender-Reveal: The readers get this in Chapter 67 if they thought both of Kilik's weapons were girls.
• Unusual Euphemism: Ragnarok refers to souls as candy.
• Unwinnable Training Simulation: Maka, Soul, Black☆Star, and Tsubaki, once they have apprehended Sid, are sent to kill the person who made him a zombie in the first place. That would be Stein, who is one of the most powerful Meisters in the world. They aren't told this is a test ahead of time.
• Urban Fantasy
• Utopia Justifies the Means: Kid seems to have been hit with this recently. A black mass tells him that he's the God of Order (or something) and that he needs to create the ultimate symmetry by making everything unexist.
• The Vamp: Arachne, so very much.
• Villains Never Lie: In chapter 60 of the manga, Maka gets furious at Medusa when she realizes she lied about Crona.
• Villains Out Shopping: Sort of. In the credits of the anime's final episode, we see Free, Eruka, and the Mizune sisters relaxing in the forest.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Soul and Maka.
  • Maka and Black☆Star; although somewhat more jagged than their mutual relationship with Soul, mostly due to a clash of personality (they were at each other's throats during chapter 33 in particular), it's no less real.
  • Crona and Ragnarok too, at least in the anime.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: All of the weapons, many of the witches, Free, etc.
• Wacky Parent, Serious Child: Lord Death and Kid. They used to provide the page image.
• Wager Slave: The breather episode with the basketball game. If Kid's team loses then they'll move all the pictures in his house slightly off. If Maka's team loses, she has to spend the weekend with her father.
• War Arc: The Arachnophobia and The Moon arc.
• Weapon Twirling: Every single Meister in this series seems to love doing this. It may or may not aid with Soul Resonance or not, but it sure looks cool and eats up a few seconds of screen time.
• Weapon Wields You: Crona in Soul Eater has a sword named Ragnarok that is physically part of their (it's hard to tell) body (via his essence being blended with their blood). They always follows its directions, and during fight scenes is seen to be being dragged around by it.
  • It's pretty much shown that the "Black Blood" in general does this (and can cause a weapon to overwhelm their meister). For example, when Maka's using it and acts Ax-Crazy, her consciousness is basically observing her and finds it embarrassing and Soul has nightmares about absorbing her.
• We Will Meet Again: Sid, to Mifune.
• Weird Moon: In addition to a Weird Sun. Both have faces, the sun laughs ominously and the moon occasionally drools blood.
  • Additionally, the Moon is situated only a little bit above the clouds, close enough to fly to. Its face isn't just for show, either. A cave system can be entered via the nostrils. Its mouth can open. Thanks to Crona, it loses a tooth. Naturally, people are only surprised by the last part.
  • Later it becomes the Can for Asura made of a black blood sphere, the moon appears perpetually eclipsed—except for the eye staring out from the gloom, which can cause further Paranoia Fuel, or inappropriate hilarity over its new semblance to a giant, floating boob.
  • More weird moon shit: Early in the manga, the moon is briefly impaled on two of Death City's towards. And yes, it bleeds.
• Western Samurai: Mifune is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed samurai of non-Japanese descent.
• Wham Episode: Arguably, chapters 87 and 88. Crona kills Medusa in a truly frightening fashion and Maka finds out she must kill Crona.
• Wham Line: "Stupid little brother." Said by Asura to Death the Kid.
• White Gloves: Maka
  • She has white gloves, true, but not exactly inexplicable ones considering the weapon she uses.
• Why We Can't Have Nice Things: In his debut episode, Kid ends up destroying a pyramid.
• Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises: Played straight.
• Witch Classic: Blair the Cat fits into this, although she's technically a cat with strong magic (and thus the ability to shapeshift into a Cat Girl form). Angela (a child witch) is the only other non-antagonistic witch in the series who wears black. The rest of the witches are either a Wicked Witch (and wear the standard outfit, but modified with an Animal Motif and different colours) or avert the trope entirely (particularly Kim, although her non-witch partner just happens to have a flying broom form).
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: An ever-present threat for everyone, especially those infected with the black blood.
• World of Badass: The class focused on in the series is composed of dozens of teenagers (and some even younger!) training and studying to hunt and destroy monsters, and almost every single one of them is a skillful fighter. The teachers of the academy are even more skilled in combat and more. Unfortunately, the villains tend to be just as (if not moreso) capable of putting up a fight.
• World of Ham: Quite. The main contribution to this is Black☆Star.
• World of Weirdness: The world of Soul Eater is this full stop. Between the Sentient Sun and Moon that are inside the Earth's Atmosphere, the various collection of weird monsters and soul-eating creatures, dangerous magical witches, and people that can weaponize their souls or turn into talking weapons, nothing in it is particularly sane or normal by any definition. Not to mention the world worships the Grim Reaper as its God.
  • This ends up justified by the prequel Fire Force where Shinra, his brother, and his mother essentially remade the Earth during the Great Cataclysm where his thoughts became reality in the image of Shinra's wild inaccurate imagination and musings from a Gadgeteer Genius and Mad Scientist. The World of Soul Eater is effectively a product of wild teenager's imagination made manifest.
• Word Salad: We either hear the lyrics to, or hear Justin Law thinking the words to his music.
  " Hey God... Today I killed another pig that was full of antibiotics... HEY GOD!!"
• The Worf Effect: Black☆Star suffers from this (he beats Mifune in his first appearance and takes down Sid, but is utterly overpowered by Stein, bested by Death the Kid, needs help to take down Free, fails to stop Medusa and is one-shotted by Asura during his awakening, following being utterly humiliated by Mifune during their rematch and failing to complete his objective during the battle with Mosquito.) and indeed suffers a minor Heroic BSoD from it. Later in the anime after recovering from his Heroic BSoD, he fights Asura and the Worf Effect started when Asura recovered from Death the Kid's Death Cannon with all three Sanzu Lines.
  • Seems to be reversing in the manga as well, unless Black☆Star loses to Crona...
  • Chapter 79, Tezca Tlipoca is bitten nearly in half by one of Noah's worms. Since we know virtually nothing about him, it's unknown if it'll stick. Stein, Sid, Marie, and Nygus are all also defeated very easily by Noah and Justin Law in the same chapter.
    • Turns out the Tezca we saw get bitten in half was an illusion; Justin knows that Tezca is the only person capable of tracking him, so Tezca faked his death put Justin off his guard.
  • Also, this applies to Tsar Pushka and Feodor. They were killed (or maybe had a Fate Worse Than Death) by Crona in their return to the plotline. It was probably just to show that the new-and-improved Crona can, and will, kill a death scythe and its meister for Medusa.
  • Black☆Star worfs Crona after he masters Tsubaki's Shadow Star forms.
• Worthy Opponent: Despite his love of children, Mifune fights Black☆Star as an equal because of this trope.
  • Eventually. They're not fighting on truly equal terms until their last encounter, as Mifune held back due to his opinion of Black☆Star's youth and attitude. The trope applies once Black☆Star figures out the latter.
• World of Symbolism: The big showdown between Death and Asura could be strongly reminiscent of a debate between Christians and Atheists. Death could easily be substituted for God, while the Kishin could be substituted for the devil, or a nonbeliever. It's actually really interesting when looking at it under those pretenses.
• Would Hit a Girl: When Maka asks Black☆Star to Hit Me, Dammit!, he does. In the face.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Mifune; he only fights Black☆Star when his Morality Pet is threatened, and even then holds back both times.
• Xanatos Gambit: Medusa manages to dupe the Sibusen into raiding Arachne's castle and going up against her forces with the whole intention of taking Arachne's body for herself. When two of your enemies are fighting each other, it doesn't matter who wins. Though, as per the trope, she did have a prefered outcome. Which leads to Maka being used as the Unwitting Pawn.
  • An earlier example is during the battle for BREW when Medusa has the Mizune sisters and Eruka retrieve the real BREW before the DWMA and Arachnophobia can get to it and switch it with a fake BREW while the two opposing sides cut each other down fighting for the fake artifact. She later informs the DWMA of the real BREW's location so as to gain their trust as a part of the previously mentioned gambit to get DWMA to trust her.
• You Killed My Father: In the anime, Mifune killed White☆Star, Black☆Star's father, and Black☆Star eventually defeats him. Though in something of a departure from trope, Black☆Star isn't interested in revenge — rather, Mifune tries to kill Black☆Star because Black☆Star is following in his father's footsteps — his father nearly became a Kishin.
  • It's averted in the manga, however, in which Sid was the one who killed Black☆Star's entire family after they turned to evil, and is now the closest thing Black☆Star's got to a surrogate father. In the anime Sid did still kill the rest of Black☆Star's family, but after Mifune killed White☆Star.
• Your Answer to Everything: Maka says this to Soul about him using brute force early in the series.
  • Interesting how that one worked out, especially in the anime. He asks why she's running off without a plan.
• Your Other Left: Black☆Star apparently has this problem in the anime.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: Black☆Star saved the world and stopped Asura's rebirth from happening with a last attack! ...what? It was a hallucination? ...never mind.
• Your Soul Is Mine!

---

"Would you like to fall into the madness?"

---