The SoulTaker: Tamashii-gari

Kyousuke Date comes home one night and finds his mother dying in a pool of her own blood. In her final moments, she stabs him in the chest. After a swift recovery, Kyousuke searches for answers regarding his mother's motives, but finds more than he bargained for when he is attacked by two rival organizations: the Hospital and the Kirihara Group.

Kyousuke is surprised to discover that he has a twin sister named Runa, and both groups try to coerce information out of him about her despite his ignorance to her existence. As their assault continues, Kyousuke soon makes another discovery—he has the ability to transform into a terrifying mutant called SoulTaker. With these newfound powers, Kyousuke resolves to crush both organizations, uncover the truth behind his mother's actions, and protect Runa.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Nakahara, Komugi Main

Momoi, Haruko Japanese

Date, Kyousuke Main

Saiga, Mitsuki Japanese

Misaki, Maya Supporting

Ootani, Ikue Japanese

Mibu, Shirou Supporting

Onosaka, Masaya Japanese

Tokisaka, Runa Supporting

Neya, Michiko Japanese

Akiba, Megumi Supporting

Enomoto, Atsuko Japanese

Kirihara, Yui Supporting

Hiramatsu, Akiko Japanese

Kawase, Kouhei Producer

Yoshida, Shouichi Producer

Ogura, Mitsutoshi Assistant Producer

Shinbou, Akiyuki Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Reviews

Oct 7, 2007

Mouser888

Recommended

I loved this anime. At the beginning you might have a bad view of the anime as just an all killing, no story anime. As the story moves on it becomes much deeper, so don't be too influenced by the first few eps. I recommend that you should watch this anime in segments, don't watch it all at once or you won't enjoy it. There are some that will like this style of art, it is a different, somewhat darker, little gothic style that keeps things interesting. Music's pretty good, I epecially like the opening. I really loved the characters too, each person had ... their story and it played out. Some people might feel that the story is a waste of time, watch and see why, but it still has a point. I'm not going to guarantee that everyone will feel the same, but if you want to watch a powerful anime you should really try SoulTaker. Remember that you shouldn't watch this anime in one day, or you won't be able to fully enjoy it, just trust me.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Jan 1, 2009

ladyxzeus

Mixed Feelings

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)

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Mar 9, 2009

Undertow

Not Recommended

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.

If you didn't think my review was helpful, please leave a message on my profile and explain why you thought my review wasn't helpful. That way I can improve my reviews to make them better in the future.
Thank you in advance.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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Akiyuki Shinbou Directed Anime Watchlist Part 1

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	Similar animes ? Morningstar991 - Aug 17	2 replies	by ricejelly »» Aug 18, 6:26 PM
	Poll: SoulTaker Episode 7 Discussion Stark700 - Sep 30, 2012	3 replies	by AshRayKay »» Aug 15, 7:58 PM
	Poll: SoulTaker Episode 13 Discussion HawthorneKitty - Aug 4, 2011	10 replies	by Ronninn »» Jun 8, 3:19 AM
	Have ya'll watched this beyond 480p anywhere? Ronninn - May 31	3 replies	by Ronninn »» Jun 4, 10:02 PM
	Poll: SoulTaker Episode 4 Discussion HawthorneKitty - Jul 17, 2011	5 replies	by Ronninn »» Jun 1, 8:52 PM

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