The Story (2/10) (Prepare for a butt-ton)
So before some of you start trying to point fingers at me, I will say right now that the story for this anime was most unexpected. What I expected from this anime was a sorta action, shounen thing going on except from the perspective of the main characters being female teens, I mean after all, the genre does say action and shounen right, to my surprise the first episode actually made me believe that was going to be true as well however, episode 2 is where it all went downhill. Now I am not a fan of slice of life anime such as K-on or Lucky Star at all, I think they are dreadfully boring and nothing but girls screwing around doing random crap amongst themselves, having real life random conversations. I do believe the point of anime is to escape reality, so when I see an anime taking place in an unrealistically awesome place such as Death Weapon Meister Academy, the last thing you'd expect to see is the main action of the anime being the main characters planting pumpkins, going shopping and getting jobs as being maids at Death Bucks Cafe, a lot of this anime is just of them doing regular girl teenage stuff given the environment around them isn't normal at all, the things they do are just too normal for the setting.
Now unlike Lucky Star and other SOL animes, there is an actual plot in Soul Eater Not however, I wouldn't necessarily call it "Good" in any way due to the fact that the pacing behind this so called "Plot" is god awful, here's my brief summary of the plot pacing: Main girl almost gets killed by witch, goes to get a maid job. Main girl gets attacked by mind controlled man, Fanservicey Physical Exams and Pool Cleaning time! Girl slices her fucking neck open right in front of the main girl, plants pumpkins! I don't think shit like this mixes together at all in my opinion, even when the serious stuff like that does happen, its very brief and barely lasts before going back to the screwing around style, barely any of the story is really explained. It's like just when you think the story is actually about to pick up it slaps a big NOPE in your face.
The last few episodes didn't have much screwing around as it finally started to fully pick up on the background story that the first 9 episodes barely had but there was one problem here, it wasn't the main characters that were involved in the main pick up of the story, it was two side characters that got into the action as the main characters had their own little personal troubles to deal with like Meme being possessed, Anya being escorted back to her home and Tsugumi hurting her leg. Alright so why is the whole show based around these characters then? I know I failed to mention why all them ran into these problems but honestly I don't even care enough to explain. What I will mention though is that near the end, finally Tsugumi and Anya fixed their problems (with the shounen ways of friendship) and now wanna get Meme back from the clutches of the evil antagonist. Oh Yeah! By the way, there's an evil person behind the story, almost forgot. Haha must of not been important enough, maybe if they explained who she was a little better or why she is trying to kill everyone or just something, anything that would make me care to remember at all. The show ends in the most bs and predictable way possible however I won't spoil that much, you'll probably see it coming though.
That was a lot of typing so I'm hoping you got the main reason of why I think this story sounds like it was made by some 12 year old writing a bad Soul Eater fan-fic.
The Art (6/10)
I'm not gonna say the art is necessarily bad or anything but I'm not gonna say that I liked it. Personally I didn't like it because it made all the soul eater original series characters look like tools but I'll be lying if I said it didn't look polished and clean. Some awkward animation quirks here and there, action scenes really aren't the best either but I wouldn't write it off as "bad"
The sound (8/10)
The first time I heard that damn opening I just couldn't stop listening to it xD I found it very catchy. The ending theme wasn't my cup of tea but overall the soundtracks in the actual show were nice and fit the moods of the situations. The JP voice actors were also very good at portraying the voices of the characters, especially Anya, they got the snobby rich girl voice right.
The Characters (1/10)
Two words, One dimensional. One dimensional characters can be described as characters that have a set personality trait and right from episode 1 you can see that they set up these personality traits like they stamped it on their fucking foreheads. You got your nice but insecure girl Tsugumi. You got your busty air headed girl Meme and you got your snobby tsundere rich girl Anya. Character development is near non-existent, these personality traits stick throughout the entire show. Hell a side character named Kim got more character development then any of the main characters and even that was scarce. I can maybe see some people enjoying the personalities they have but I am not one of those people.
Enjoyment (2/10)
Did I enjoy Soul Eater Not? Yes I did! I enjoyed the parts that didn't include the main characters. I enjoyed the parts that included these two guy side characters and the soul eater main series characters. However since the amount of screen time these characters got ranged around 15 minutes in this entire 12 episodes series, that is not a good thing. To sum it up, I barely enjoyed Soul Eater Not. I didn't like the main characters at all and I didn't like the way they portrayed the show. It was boring. I found myself drifting off while watching it very often.
Overall (3/10)
You could say I rated this show based on personal preference of anime. If you prefer the kind of anime where there are girls screwing and around doing shit all then by all means I recommend it. If you're like me and don't wanna watch a show that includes girls fooling around, doing barely anything in a place called Death Weapon Meister Acedemy, which by the way I don't think I saw in any point of this anime of them actually training as weapons and meisters but correct me if I'm wrong, then I do not recommend this show as it will just make you love and miss the original Soul Eater series even more (that is if you watched it). Remember though, this is just my opinion and if you disagree that's perfectly okay. Sorta. I mean seriously in any aspect I look at this show I can't call it good. I can't call it good for being a slice of life anime but then again I never liked Slice of Life animes in this style however all I do know about a lot of Slice of Life fans is that they like it for its cute style, well frankly I didn't find it all that cute so I'm gonna throw that out there. I can't call it good for being a action/shounen/supernatural anime because it barely had any of that, maybe the shounen part. For the comedy part well, I didn't find it that funny, only part that made me giggle were the flat chested jokes they were throwing at Tsugumi. Overall 3/10 and I still think I'm being generous about giving it this score.
Sitting down every Tuesday to watch this felt like a chore, I thought about dropping this anime numerous times but as I did with K-on, I kept pushing through. Bored out of my mind, I finished. This will most likely be the last Slice of Life anime I watch (In the K-on style at least). Huh, funny. I keep calling it a Slice of Life yet it's not even listed as it's genre. Something must be wrong. Whelp that's my first review done, this was probably written poorly so hopefully I won't have to come across something like this show that I'll have the urge to review.
