Alternative TitlesEnglish: SoulTaker Synonyms: The SoulTaker Japanese: ソウルテイカー
Information
Type: TV
Episodes: 13
Status: Finished Airing
Aired: Apr 4, 2001 to Jul 4, 2001
Duration:
25 min. per episode Rating:
PG-13 - Teens 13 or older
L represents licensing company
StatisticsScore: 6.591 (scored by 3890 users)
Ranked: #43532
Popularity: #1487
Members: 9,907
Favorites: 32 1 indicates a weighted score
My Info
Popular Tags
action adventure dementia gothic horror |
SynopsisAfter the human colony on the moon was destroyed by disease, Kyosuke Date and his mother flee to Earth- separated from their family. They take refuge in a cathedral where his mother hides as a nun for reasons unknown to Kyosuke. After dangerous people find their sanctuary, his mother stabs him before she herself is murdered.
Days later, Kyosuke finds himself alive and in the house of a mysterious girl who claims to be his twin Runa- and she is not the only one! Runa suffered a similar fate at the hands of her adoptive mother; however her soul was divided into several pieces making "flicker girls" who are being hunted by the evil Kirihara Group. The reason Kyosuke survived: his body's DNA conformed to the disease and he is able to transform into a fearsome alien mutant known as the SoulTaker.
Kyosuke begins his battle against a hospital of evil mutants and dangerous corporate assassins in order to save himself and the sister he has never known. |
Related AnimeSpin-off: Nurse Witch Komugi-chan
Side story: SoulTaker Omake
Characters & Voice Actors
Staff
Reviews
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i_c___c_i
23 of 37 people found this review helpful
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13 of 13 episodes seen
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| Overall |
4 |
| Story |
2 |
| Animation |
5 |
| Sound |
7 |
| Character |
3 |
| Enjoyment |
4 |
Take a darkly corny story and setting straight out of Nagai Go's head, throw some bland characters to the mix as well, hammer some "complex" and "deep" (as in, cheese with a complex mix of stinky yeasts that will get stuck deep inside your throat after you swallow it) themes in there, and lastly wrap it all up in very ambitious and over-the-top visuals that are okay to horribly animated... and what you get is "TheSoulTaker". I find it really hard to put my finger on what exactly makes this anime bad, because there are so many things in it that are a hit or a miss depending on who's watching, and so many things that are simply lacking no matter how you look at it.
For example, the animation... when it comes to style, it's full of cool, over the top imagery that may or may not be symbolic, a very pronounced use of intense colours and flat backgrounds, nonstandard or unusual camera angles and a lot of cuts in a scene. The lot of these are part of the director's visual signature, and even though I liked them I can't say they'd be to everyone's liking. But leaving the style on the side, the actual animation is plain bad. The animation quality goes through so many bumps and falls that by the second third of the anime I simply gave up paying attention to it. There are a few scenes that have decent animation too, not just a unique visual style... but there are also times in the series when its quality is downright horrible, when there is actually almost nothing animated and you're just staring at a slideshow of pictures that aren't even that detailed, like just filling half the screen with one colour or another. It's just a "fine" example of burning the candle on both ends - someone obviously wanted to do more than they could do or afford to. I'd like to cover my eyes and ignore such poor animation quality since visually the anime is pretty interesting and for the most part I kinda liked it, but I can't... because this style isn't always working as an advantage for the anime, especially when combined with the content of the series. For example, at one point the characters talk about betrayal and an image of Judas from Da Vinci's "The Last Supper" painting is shown; I just felt embarrassed for the creators and simply had to rest my face in my palm for a short while after that...
And that's because SoulTaker's story is full to the brim with cheesy, generic stuff. Mutants? Check. Aliens? Check. (Pseudo)Demons? Check. At least it doesn't have zombies... oh wait, never mind. Not to mention a (post) apocalyptic setting, a virus that transforms humans into mutants (oh the biological redundancy of that fact), clones etc. It's likely that this was conceived as a parody at some point, but that idea was lost along the way since SoulTaker takes itself pretty damn seriously. For most of the anime, the story follows a demon alien that is a mutant on his very slow paced hero journey - in the beginning he's the typical naive bloke that's just looking for some answers and trying to save a certain someone (and many of her partial clones along the way), but he fucks some shit up in the process, goes through some dramatic moment and his character graduates from his younger self. And of course, since his character development is now complete the "real" story is revealed and everything is rushed and pushed towards a conclusion. There are of course a couple or so plot-twists in the story, but during those moments it just switches tracks from generic route A to generic route B. In short, the story is bad, poorly paced and full of cliches.
The characters aren't a terrible improvement over the story either. Actually some of them felt quite out of place, or exist mainly for fanservice. Like the optimistic and pure-hearted (but occasionally violent) loli that's an import from a kid's show or some mahou shoujo anime, who dresses in a few pretty pink outfits and is on screen mostly to cute things up. Funny thing is that, to me at least, she provided some of the more enjoyable moments in the anime, which is obviously not a plus. Their voice actors did a decent job but some of the things they say pushed my "laugh uncontrollably at unintentionally funny things" button. To mention the more "deep" and "serious" stuff these characters talk about would be slightly "spoilerific". So I'll exemplify that with something that isn't too important - they call their attacks. Imagine now a couple of boar bats dueling out through the sky yelling stuff like "Lighting Strike" and "Lighting Crusher" at each other, in Engrish... pretty fucking funny don't you agree?
In the entire anime, the only thing I had no problems with is the soundtrack, which isn't half bad. I don't know how positive an aspect that is though. If I wanted to listen to music I'd just, you know, listen to music... not watch an anime. And the soundtrack isn't really that good either, or maybe it just lost it's appeal surrounded by all this other garbage. Fans of any of the stuff I mentioned above might like this anime though, or at least they might like it more than I did. It definitely held some potential... it just didn't deliver on that and ended up being quite underwhelming. read more
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ladyxzeus
13 of 25 people found this review helpful
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13 of 13 episodes seen
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| Overall |
6 |
| Story |
5 |
| Animation |
9 |
| Sound |
6 |
| Character |
6 |
| Enjoyment |
6 |
The one word about SoulTaker is "colours".
Colours, colours everywhere!
The art of this anime is simply astounding. It breaks all the rules about colouring patterns, uses innovative games of light and shadow and the overall achievement is a confusion of bidimensional planes: awesome!
But... While the art is original and superb, the rest is pretty much mediocre. We can't really ask too much from a plot that mixes winged monsters, aliens and shotguns, except for high doses of bloody entertainment. They give it to us and, somewhat, the amazing art is appropriated to the flow of the events. The characters don't have any especially original trait: they "work for the story".
Amazing for the eye-breaking art, you should not hold any more expectations about SoulTaker. It's still a very enjoying and easy to watch series (except if you have epilepsy, of course, then it would not be recommended) read more
Recommendations
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Both very supernatural and hard to follow shows.
I recommend you watch them slowly and connect the dots little by little, then you will find both shows very horrific and formidable, yet somewhat entertaining and interesting.
Both shows are equally good.
Both series use the same director, have similar, dark and gothic atmosphere and consists of massive variety of art styles.
Main difference is that Petit Cossette is supernatural drama, while SoulTaker can be defined as action-adventure title.
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Both have unique design and color setting and make use of unusual camera angles and animation style. This due to both have in their staff Akiyuki Shinbo as Director and Akio Watanabe as Character Designer.
Plotwise we have a few similarities, since it follows a boy, who happens to encounter some girls during his journey.
There's also a side character who helps the protagonist in some way, Shiro Mibu in Soultaker and Meme Oshino in Bakemonogatari.
Although the two anime are following very different patterns (action thriller for SoulTaker, and a mashup of several genres for Bakemonogatari) they both feature supernatural or almost supernatural elements, and a few very accentuated similarities in how their content is presented:
They were both directed by Shinbou Akiyuki, something that is immediately obvious in both anime's visual style, with a lot of frequent cuts and camera changes, plenty of over the top almost surreal imagery, and an overall theatrical atmosphere. The two anime also share the (chief) animation director and character designer, Watanabe Akio, which adds even more to the graphical similarities between them.
The characters are similar on more levels than just their design however. Although their stories differ, in both shows the main character is not quite human (or far from being one) and encounters various girls he wants to help as the story progresses. In both anime he is aided by a more experienced and knowledgeable character, and even though their personality differs, in both anime this character has a laid back demeanor. And lastly, in both anime there is an energetic young girl/loli that hangs around or clings to the main character.
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Opening Theme"Soultaker" by Jam Project
Ending Theme"Memory" by Shinji Kakijima
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Fansubbing Groups
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Kaminari [Kaminari] (Brazilian Portuguese)
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