Ranked #2669

SoulTaker

I will always remember the first time I saw SoulTaker.

It was very early in the morning (the sun hadn't come out as yet), and I couldn't sleep so I turned on the TV to a channel I know had anime. Then I think I went blind for a few minutes, but soon realised I was watching something called The SoulTaker on Anime Unleashed. I'm giving out my first warning here: if you are epileptic or cannot endure flashing lights and constantly changing colours, then you definitely need to stay away from this anime.

SoulTaker is an anime that's an assault on the senses. I'll get to whether or not that's a good thing.

The story is interesting enough for the most part: young man is murdered by his mother, comes back to life and gets tied up in a scandal that involves a gigantic, powerful pharmaceutical and medical facility known as the Kirihara Group. Oh, and there are mutants. The plot runs on with this 'monster-a-day' theme, not quite unlike old school magical girl or shounen anime. Interestingly enough, though, there is actual progression as each mutant appears; a bit of the plot is revealed every time, and the audience gets to learn more about the mystery surrounding Date Kyousuke. Unfortunately, if you don't have a lot of patience with this anime, then you're going to get very frustrated as the storyline drags on. Yes, drags on. Despite the seemingly straight-forward plot, SoulTaker takes the longest route possible to get where it's going; if you ask me, I think there's a lot of unnecessary dialogue and action sequences.

And here's what makes this anime stand out from the rest: the art. No, it's not exceptional. I can't even begin to describe if it is good or not, because this one definitely relies on your own personal taste. SoulTaker is colourful. Really, really colourful. It seems almost abstract. There are colour themes, and as there are scene transitions, the primary colours of the scene would change quickly from orange to green to purple to etc. etc. I almost got a headache from it for the first few episodes. After a while you will get used to it, but it is definitely distracting. The animation however was pretty good. The fight scenes, well some, were well-animated, and the character design was pretty good. However, the background art ranged from decent to terribly bland. It seems they just splashed colours whenever they didn't feel like drawing in detail. I will say though, there are a lot of visual symbols in this anime. Crosses, churches, and blood, even. I don't know what any of it meant, though, since the only religious event that happened was Kyousuke being murdered in a chapel. Wait, that's actually blasphemy... My mistake.

The sound was not impressive. You won't even notice it half the time since your eyes will be spinning, anyway.

SoulTaker's saving graces are the characters. The main cast is made up of what seems to be a group of outcasts: the reborn monster boy, the mysterious, blase older man, the neko-loli-nurse and all of Kyousuke's 'sisters'. Sometimes these characters are frustrating to deal with, but I will say that most of the storylines following the Flickers are the more interesting parts of this anime. There is a lot of psychological damage done to every member of the cast, and their development is only minimally seen as the anime progresses. It's only really Kyousuke who endures any real change as each episode passes.

SoulTaker is not for everyone, and it certainly was not for me. I did not enjoy watching this series. I kept waiting and waiting for it to end, and it was only thirteen episodes long. It had an interesting start, which interested me, but as it wears on, I began losing interest and nothing could have reeled me back in.

I don't recommend this anime to just any anime viewer. If you like psychological anime or abstract art or heck, if you like mutants, then maybe you should try SoulTaker. Otherwise, it may be best if you avoid this title. read more

The people that made this anime really tried their best to make this anime as bad as it can be, in my opinion. It's rare to run into something that ticks so many wrong boxes as this anime did with me.

I'll give you a breakdown of the scores and the reasons behind why it earned those.

Story: 1
At first glance the story seems quite interesting, however when I watched it, it quickly reminded me of several other anime and all originality of the story went completely down the drain.
It's basically an almost direct combination between Tekkaman Blade, The Guyver and the Devilman AVO. Especially when you get near the ending the similarities with Tekkaman are beyond obvious.
It does have a couple of interesting things but they are completely lost in the almost direct copying of the stories from the other 3 anime.
The complete lack of originality earns this anime a clear 1 for story.

Art: 2
A quick warning if you want to watch this anime, it can seriously damage your eye sight.
The art at first can be described as generic and bland, just mediocre.
However it's quickly made clear what sort of artist they approached for the making of this anime. Someone that loves static scenery that includes huge blocks dyed with primary colours. Someone that takes the lazy way out when deciding which colours would work for this anime.
The static images, the huge amount of giant blocks in primary colours and the cheap visual effects amount to a rather unpleasant viewing of this anime and earn it the rightful rating of a 2.

Sound: 5
Completely unremarkable, but then again, it could have been drowned out by the visual assault of bad artwork and the complete lack of an original story.

Characters: 2
Same with the story, the characters are also a merger between the characters from Devilman, Tekkaman and Guyver. Even the transformed form clearly reminds you of that.
Beyond the main character, the supporting characters are 2 dimensional at best. Shallow stock characters that are easily forgotten and unremarkable in every way.
There are a few characters that do seem interesting, however they get too little screentime and their background isn't really explored.
All of this amounts to a dreadful score on the characters rating.

Enjoyment: 1
It is clear to see where this score comes from. When having read through the previous explanations it's very easy to deduce that watching this anime wasn't enjoyable in any way for me.
The horrible visuals, the unoriginal story and the shallow characters made me want to bury this anime in the deepest crater on Pluto.

Overall: 3
So, overall, this anime is just plain bad.
The only redeeming factors that it has is that it only lasts 13 episodes, so it didn't stretch out the pain for very long. And that it spawned a spin-off that completely obliterates this one, which is Nurse Witch Komugi-chan. Than anime is just pure awesome, and since it was very loosely based on this anime (uses the same characters) it saves Soultaker from receiving an overall score of 1 and gets a 3 instead.

So, ending notes:
A complete rip-off of more decent anime, filled with bad visuals and shallow easily forgotten characters. The only remarkable thing about it is it's spin-off and the thought of why on earth they made this anime and launched it.

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