Soul Eater

Soul Eater is a typical Shounen (made for boys) anime series and suffers somewhat from being overly formulaic. Despite a unique design and exposition there are your typical school girls with short skirts, the seductresses with large breasts, the monsters that must be fought in a certain order with various levels of difficulty in order for the characters to reach their goals. The humor in the series is typically juvenile with some slapstick and overly exaggerated emotions.

The series was produced by Square Enix which is more famous in the U.S. as a producer of role playing video games and in some ways the series is reminiscent of a video game where characters must level up by completing certain tasks and levels. Since it is a foregone conclusion that Maka and Soul will reach their goal, which happens fairly early, the evil kinshin (demons) that the students must defeat feel like dull exercises since we know that no matter what the danger, the characters will recover. This leaves only the characters themselves as well as their interactions to provide any interest in the series. Maka (Laura Bailey) and Soul (Micah Solusod) aren't particularly interesting, however, the cast of supporting characters, such as Death the Kid (Todd Haberkorn) with his OCD tendencies for symmetry and Blackstar (Brittany Karbowski) and his ego, make the series worth a look.