However looking back on it, its story was as generic as it can get. I mean, the world and the means through the characters are designed both visually and in the narrative was indeed interesting, but the story boils down to children hunting monsters with superpowers, in a school setting and its ending pretty much encompasses that courage and determination trumps all. There are some interesting character arcs in there, which aren't exactly something unique, but are certainly noteworthy.
You see, one of the things that I found interesting about Soul Eater that its introductory episodes each featured a different group of characters in order to introduce their personality, powers and relationship. And it does a good job in doing so, since it helps you understand how each characters have a different view on the world and a different dynamic between each other. It is yet another way it used to differentiate itself from others at the time for me, since most examples that I had in mind at the time only had one protagonist that was the main focus, but this series took its time to present that all the characters were important. In terms of personality they weren't exactly unique however, with 6/7 of them pretty much boiling down to "hardworking student, cool dude, egotistic kid, kind and adaptable girl, one serious and one goofy twin". The one 7th character was noteworthy due to the fact he had a personality quirk that was pretty much like OCD, a concept that was new to me at the time, and admired and wanted everything to be symmetrical, as well as this quirk being a metaphor to him wanting order and balance in the world.
What's interesting in the series is the relationship dynamics created by these teams, since in order for the teams to have their powers working, each member has to have compatible personalities with one another, and trust each other. This creates a focus on character relationships that I didn't really see essential at the time, this further making things more interesting. The prospect of characters getting more powerful the better they understand each other, and that also being a focus point was very interesting at the time. But I don't think there was a lot done with it outside of a few characters. One group got an "edgy" powerup (I'll get to edginess later) where they kinda had to get along with eachother to kinda control it, but they didn't really have any noteworthy personality traits to make this significant, the other group of the OCD kid didn't really have too much conflict on their hands. The last group, of the egotistic kid is what was entertaining, as this kid needed to learn how to temper his egocentric nature and also had a nice effect on his partner, giving her more confidence in herself since one of the reason she was she cooperative because she didn't want to be in conflict with other people. Their storylines were executed well and found quite a bit of enjoyment there. Again, I don't think any of this is unique, but there's certainly some good things in the execution of the characters.
If you were to ask me however what's more memorable, the design of the characters or the events they go through, I'd say in most cases of the characters that weren't a focus point, that while they do overlap, is that the design shines a lot more than the personality of the characters. I'd even go as far as to say that some characters have more of a personality due to their design, with the details put into them signifying exactly what you'd expect by stereotyping the characters. I do think the overall designs are really good though, since the characters of whose personality you know you'd understand why they'd choose to dress a certain way. So this is a two way street.
In terms of action, it has some good moments, and some interestingly built powers. A lot of it depends on the presentation of the powers, featuring interesting ideas for how the powers of the characters work. There also are some moments where you can admire how the characters strategized and how their powers evolve based on their character arcs, but remember the "edgy" I said before. There's this plot thread, of madness, where characters may get a powerup, once they get mad. You see, some characters get more powerful, once they go insane. In those moments the action is kinda dulled, and while it is an important plot thread, there are some things that are dulled by it. And there also are some fights that are merely there to look good.
In terms of comedy, it's fairly slapstick and generic, while having some character based comedy in it. There's also plenty of comedy that comes from ecchi, tag which is missing from Soul Eater. I'd argue the series is ecchi, since in the first episode, there's a naked cat girl taking a bath and trying to seduce a guy, the second a character tries to peep on naked girls, the third a guy grabs the tits of some girls and etc. A lot more examples exist.
The series had some good aesthetics, with the designs being memorable and really telling of the personality of the characters, while also looking fairly simplistic, which makes the series more palletable. I also quite enjoyed its OST, having a lot of good sounding songs influenced by hip-hop, and quite a memorable style to it.
Soul Eater is a series that I will remember fondly due to how different it was at the time, but I will always consider average, due to the fact it didn't really do anything with its strong suits and told a fairly generic message and had a lot of elements that I still find detrimental to a series all in all. I think it's an interesting choice if you want to look at how it differentiates from the big anime formulas at the time, but I can mostly recommend it for research purposes only. I mean, it's a fanservicey show set in a school with some fairly tropey characters and a plot that boils down to a generic message. It is a simple show, maybe you might like it for that factor, that has good execution in a bunch of different areas, but has a pretty overused formula which makes all the things that make it differentiate itself from other shows, on the exact same level.
