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Liveblogging Soul Eater Episode 30
Some people liveblog important things like presidential debates and political conferences. Pshaw. I save my liveblogging for Japanese kiddie cartoons. Brilliant Japanese kiddie cartoons.
So, Soul Eater episode 30: Just about as pitch-perfect as twenty-five minutes of television can be.
You can tell what to expect from any given Soul Eater episode based solely on what characters are featured in the preview. With a Maka/Soul episode, we'll get lots of pseudo-romantic emotional angst. With Black Star/Tsubaki, it's always lots of RAH! RAH! hotblooded NINJA ACTION. And with Kid/Liz/Patti, we can reliably look forward to lots and lots of explosive property damage.
So as soon as Kid mentions the word "train" in the first few seconds this episode, we know that the train is toast.
That sun gives me nightmares every time.
Anywhoo. The start of the episode immediately deviates from the manga in that, instead of Shinigami interrupting Kid's own house party to send him on a mission, we begin with The Troika already in the desert. Apparently the party is going to be saved for next week's episode, in order to make what happens to Crona afterward that much more stab-you-in-the-heart emotionally wrenching.
They're so perfect for each other. Mostly because they're both kinda-sorta self-absorbed assholes.
This is his nerdgasm face.
Okay, so, plot: There's a runaway train in the Sahara desert that's been flying around nonstop for over one hundred years. Normally nobody would care enough to try to stop it, but apparently it's running on the power of one of Eibon's magitech artifacts, and now all of a sudden Arachnaphobia wants to steal that artifact, so of course Shibusen has to send someone to take the artifact first. Even if they have no idea what it is or how it works. Pshaw, details. And apparently Kid's team is the only team qualified for this mission, because they have Beezlebub.
Beezlebub roxxors. Oh yeah, and this train is supposedly going really, really fast.
There is somebody already at the train station.
Patti's in a bad mood. That poor train is toast.
At first I was like, why the hell doesn't Kid recognize Mizune from her voice alone? Then I remembered that Blair is the only "good guy" who's actually met Mizune at this point in the story. Which means that Mizune is still an unknown entity to Maka and Company. But still...
A little girl, all alone in the middle of the desert, waiting at the only train stop for a magic-powered runaway train, who happens to speak only in unintelligible "chi chi chi chi chi" gibberish? Liz is the only one of the three of them who finds this at all suspicious.
Adrian Monk, he clearly is not.
That watch is thirty-two flavors of fabulous.
HOLY SHITSANDWORM TRAAAAIIIIIINNNNNNN!!!!
MONSTER!!!!
WITCH!!!!
BOMB!!!!
AMAZINGLY RESILIENT TO BEING BLOWN UP!!!!
BEEZLEBUB!!!
And the chase is on.
Thirty straight seconds of innuendo and OH MY GOD MUST NOT THINK TOO HARD ABOUT THE COLOR AND TEXTURE OF... THAT... UH...
Patti's in a REALLY bad mood.
That train is so totally toast.
This is his Tony Hawk face.
This is his Batman face. It is not unlike his Tony Hawk face.
There's making an entrance, and then there's making an entrance.
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
(Deep down inside, we're all a little bit Patti.)
Toast.
....Aaaaaaand Kid immediately gets himself pinned by the Fisher King's... whatever. Disturbingly sexualized projectile weapon thingy. Yeah, that. Anyway, WAY TO GO, IDIOT. Seriously though, that was pathetic. Somebody needs to work on his quick-draw skillz.
Thankfully Mizune is there to save his ass.
IT'S HAMMER TIME!
Okay, there's no way to convey this in screenshots, because the following sequence was done entirely in that specific "hey watch us blow the animation budget for the next five episodes on these thirty seconds" style that Bones occassionally likes to employ. But, to recap: Kid runs right up to Fisher King, punches him in the face with his gun, leaps up, kicks him so hard that he flies into the engine room, then grabs him by the hips, hoists him over his head, holds him there for a moment, then shoots him in the stomach.
Kid is hardcore.
And thus, they win the day. (Also, it is suddenly sunset tiem. Don't ask.)
Okay, wait. Where the hell is Mizune? Why didn't she take the artifact while Kid and the Fisher King were busy dueling? In fact, was there anything to stop her from swooping directly into the engine room and taking the key at any point in the entire past fifteen minutes? No. No, there wasn't. But for some reason, instead of taking the key for herself, she made a poor show of attempting to bomb Kid (with all of the aiming accuracy of a blind mouse, I may add), and then happened to swoop in at just the right moment in order to slice apart the Fisher King's weapon and give Kid an opening to finish him off.
Hmm. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
So instead of taking the key for herself (which she could have done at any time), Mizune just hung around the train doing nothing... until she swooped into save Kid's life... and then she hung back again, and let him take the key without lifting a single whisker to interfere.
Remember, Medusa already has the book about Eibon at this point.
If you ask me, this is the point in the story where Medusa's elaborate double-triple-quadruple-cross involving the Brew, Eibon, and Shibusen really began.
Also, Kid is super super super super dumb for not even once stopping to ask, "Gee, I wonder what happened to that witch who was flying around and bombing me?" He seems to have completely forgotten that she was there in the first place.
Eibon suxxors. This is his "Eibon suxxors" face.
NO EIBON DOES NOT SUXXORS IT'S SHOCKING PLOT TWIST TIEM also LOL NOT DEAD YET
What's this about Eibon not suxxors? EXPLAIN YOURSELF!
Eibon is your mother! Oops, Jossed!
Eibon is your father! No wait that makes no sense...
Eibon is DEATH, and Death is YOUR FATHER, but Death is also YOU!
So basically we're all stuck inside a Chuck Palahniuk novel, and the ultimate Shocking Plot Twist is that Kid turns out to be a) his own grandpa, b) from an alternative future timeline, and c) just a figment of Black Star's imagination in the first place.
This was the moment in the manga that sent a thousand Epileptic Trees rustling suspiciously. That, and when Asura's face was revealed for the first time. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Tell me more, tell me more!Was it love at first sight? Oh tell me more, tell me more, did he put up a fight?
KNIFE-DED! But who threw the knife?
OH SHI--
One of the things that I love about the second story arc of the manga is the way that Ohkubo gradually - but ruthlessly - ratchets up the tension, trapping the characters in what is literally a slow-burn Apocalypse, making their world grow increasingly narrow, darker, and scarier. In ways this reminds me very strongly of the structure of the Harry Potter series: First, the plucky kid heroes FAIL to prevent the world-threatening evil from being revived. Check. Then, now that the world-threatening evil has been unleashed, the world itself slowly - and relentlessly - loses its fantastic innocence, morphing gradually into a cruel and terrifying place. Double-check. This is the point in the story where that transformation really, truly begins. And, as in Harry Potter, one of the symptoms of this growing sense of dread is the way that certain adults, who were previously infallible, reassuring authority figures, can suddenly become sinister and untrustworthy.
Or if not outright sinister, then at least the adults are revealed as deeply flawed.
At least he learned his lesson from the first season. Daddy is not exactly forthcoming with vital information. Time to play Plucky Boy Detective.
My brain is slowly going crazy trying to keep track of all of the repetitions of the 3-motif in this series.
Loser student only has one star. What kind of a pathetic OCD Goth Cowboy Jesus Future Overlord are you?
This does bring to mind the interesting question of how many souls Kid has actually managed to collect by now. Presumably the reason why he has so few is because Daddy keeps confiscating them. Because, you know, tendency toward massive property damage and all that.
FAIL at Plucky Boy Detectiving. The book that he wants has been checked out.
By Medusa. On the day that the Kishin was revived.
Man, Medusa really had her fingers in half a dozen pies at once, didn't she? She had Crona/Ragnarok, and the Maka/Soul infection, and the plan to revive the original Kishin, and now it turns out she had her sights set on Eibon as well...
So basically, Shibusen is slowly transforming into a terrifying vortex of insanity and suck.
Next week: Ragnarok licks people. Good times. Good times.
So, Soul Eater episode 30: Just about as pitch-perfect as twenty-five minutes of television can be.
You can tell what to expect from any given Soul Eater episode based solely on what characters are featured in the preview. With a Maka/Soul episode, we'll get lots of pseudo-romantic emotional angst. With Black Star/Tsubaki, it's always lots of RAH! RAH! hotblooded NINJA ACTION. And with Kid/Liz/Patti, we can reliably look forward to lots and lots of explosive property damage.
So as soon as Kid mentions the word "train" in the first few seconds this episode, we know that the train is toast.
That sun gives me nightmares every time.
Anywhoo. The start of the episode immediately deviates from the manga in that, instead of Shinigami interrupting Kid's own house party to send him on a mission, we begin with The Troika already in the desert. Apparently the party is going to be saved for next week's episode, in order to make what happens to Crona afterward that much more stab-you-in-the-heart emotionally wrenching.
They're so perfect for each other. Mostly because they're both kinda-sorta self-absorbed assholes.
This is his nerdgasm face.
Okay, so, plot: There's a runaway train in the Sahara desert that's been flying around nonstop for over one hundred years. Normally nobody would care enough to try to stop it, but apparently it's running on the power of one of Eibon's magitech artifacts, and now all of a sudden Arachnaphobia wants to steal that artifact, so of course Shibusen has to send someone to take the artifact first. Even if they have no idea what it is or how it works. Pshaw, details. And apparently Kid's team is the only team qualified for this mission, because they have Beezlebub.
Beezlebub roxxors. Oh yeah, and this train is supposedly going really, really fast.
There is somebody already at the train station.
Patti's in a bad mood. That poor train is toast.
At first I was like, why the hell doesn't Kid recognize Mizune from her voice alone? Then I remembered that Blair is the only "good guy" who's actually met Mizune at this point in the story. Which means that Mizune is still an unknown entity to Maka and Company. But still...
A little girl, all alone in the middle of the desert, waiting at the only train stop for a magic-powered runaway train, who happens to speak only in unintelligible "chi chi chi chi chi" gibberish? Liz is the only one of the three of them who finds this at all suspicious.
Adrian Monk, he clearly is not.
That watch is thirty-two flavors of fabulous.
HOLY SHIT
MONSTER!!!!
WITCH!!!!
BOMB!!!!
AMAZINGLY RESILIENT TO BEING BLOWN UP!!!!
BEEZLEBUB!!!
And the chase is on.
Thirty straight seconds of innuendo and OH MY GOD MUST NOT THINK TOO HARD ABOUT THE COLOR AND TEXTURE OF... THAT... UH...
Patti's in a REALLY bad mood.
That train is so totally toast.
This is his Tony Hawk face.
This is his Batman face. It is not unlike his Tony Hawk face.
There's making an entrance, and then there's making an entrance.
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
(Deep down inside, we're all a little bit Patti.)
Toast.
....Aaaaaaand Kid immediately gets himself pinned by the Fisher King's... whatever. Disturbingly sexualized projectile weapon thingy. Yeah, that. Anyway, WAY TO GO, IDIOT. Seriously though, that was pathetic. Somebody needs to work on his quick-draw skillz.
Thankfully Mizune is there to save his ass.
IT'S HAMMER TIME!
Okay, there's no way to convey this in screenshots, because the following sequence was done entirely in that specific "hey watch us blow the animation budget for the next five episodes on these thirty seconds" style that Bones occassionally likes to employ. But, to recap: Kid runs right up to Fisher King, punches him in the face with his gun, leaps up, kicks him so hard that he flies into the engine room, then grabs him by the hips, hoists him over his head, holds him there for a moment, then shoots him in the stomach.
Kid is hardcore.
And thus, they win the day. (Also, it is suddenly sunset tiem. Don't ask.)
Okay, wait. Where the hell is Mizune? Why didn't she take the artifact while Kid and the Fisher King were busy dueling? In fact, was there anything to stop her from swooping directly into the engine room and taking the key at any point in the entire past fifteen minutes? No. No, there wasn't. But for some reason, instead of taking the key for herself, she made a poor show of attempting to bomb Kid (with all of the aiming accuracy of a blind mouse, I may add), and then happened to swoop in at just the right moment in order to slice apart the Fisher King's weapon and give Kid an opening to finish him off.
Hmm. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
So instead of taking the key for herself (which she could have done at any time), Mizune just hung around the train doing nothing... until she swooped into save Kid's life... and then she hung back again, and let him take the key without lifting a single whisker to interfere.
Remember, Medusa already has the book about Eibon at this point.
If you ask me, this is the point in the story where Medusa's elaborate double-triple-quadruple-cross involving the Brew, Eibon, and Shibusen really began.
Also, Kid is super super super super dumb for not even once stopping to ask, "Gee, I wonder what happened to that witch who was flying around and bombing me?" He seems to have completely forgotten that she was there in the first place.
Eibon suxxors. This is his "Eibon suxxors" face.
NO EIBON DOES NOT SUXXORS IT'S SHOCKING PLOT TWIST TIEM also LOL NOT DEAD YET
What's this about Eibon not suxxors? EXPLAIN YOURSELF!
Eibon is DEATH, and Death is YOUR FATHER, but Death is also YOU!
So basically we're all stuck inside a Chuck Palahniuk novel, and the ultimate Shocking Plot Twist is that Kid turns out to be a) his own grandpa, b) from an alternative future timeline, and c) just a figment of Black Star's imagination in the first place.
This was the moment in the manga that sent a thousand Epileptic Trees rustling suspiciously. That, and when Asura's face was revealed for the first time. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Tell me more, tell me more!
KNIFE-DED! But who threw the knife?
OH SHI--
One of the things that I love about the second story arc of the manga is the way that Ohkubo gradually - but ruthlessly - ratchets up the tension, trapping the characters in what is literally a slow-burn Apocalypse, making their world grow increasingly narrow, darker, and scarier. In ways this reminds me very strongly of the structure of the Harry Potter series: First, the plucky kid heroes FAIL to prevent the world-threatening evil from being revived. Check. Then, now that the world-threatening evil has been unleashed, the world itself slowly - and relentlessly - loses its fantastic innocence, morphing gradually into a cruel and terrifying place. Double-check. This is the point in the story where that transformation really, truly begins. And, as in Harry Potter, one of the symptoms of this growing sense of dread is the way that certain adults, who were previously infallible, reassuring authority figures, can suddenly become sinister and untrustworthy.
Or if not outright sinister, then at least the adults are revealed as deeply flawed.
At least he learned his lesson from the first season. Daddy is not exactly forthcoming with vital information. Time to play Plucky Boy Detective.
My brain is slowly going crazy trying to keep track of all of the repetitions of the 3-motif in this series.
Loser student only has one star. What kind of a pathetic OCD Goth Cowboy Jesus Future Overlord are you?
This does bring to mind the interesting question of how many souls Kid has actually managed to collect by now. Presumably the reason why he has so few is because Daddy keeps confiscating them. Because, you know, tendency toward massive property damage and all that.
FAIL at Plucky Boy Detectiving. The book that he wants has been checked out.
By Medusa. On the day that the Kishin was revived.
Man, Medusa really had her fingers in half a dozen pies at once, didn't she? She had Crona/Ragnarok, and the Maka/Soul infection, and the plan to revive the original Kishin, and now it turns out she had her sights set on Eibon as well...
So basically, Shibusen is slowly transforming into a terrifying vortex of insanity and suck.
Next week: Ragnarok licks people. Good times. Good times.
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Also, I love Death the Kid episodes.
Also, YAY FOR MIZUNE!
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The website I get mine from hasn't got any subs up yet (idk if they've been done already). jkdkjf Kiddd, this episode looks so freaking awesome.
Really nice screenshots too! :3
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lol. I'm still impressed how good this show is at selling stuff to me. I'd read "flying skateboard" and think it'd be really lame and cheesy but I squee every single time Kid uses Beelzebub!
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Everytime I see a preview centered around Black Star, I know I'm pretty much guarunteed a huge duel between him and the enemy as the climax of the episode.
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I still find it kind of disconcerting that people actually like my snarky sense of humor.
Then again I do come up with things like the best thing about following Krishna is being able to check out his ass. Even Mom loved that one.
BTW, I was scrolling through the entry quickly, and glimpsed the word "Beelzebub", which my brain immediately turned into "Beer?!?!" Such a college kid moment.
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love it. I'm excited to see the episode. ♥
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Also I think the Sun and the Moon are FANTASTIC. The same old boring sun and moon are... well... boring. P: