I wrote a post a while back saying how I really enjoyed watching the Soul Eater anime and that I was starting to read the manga and now I've read the manga too and started reading Soul Eater NOT.
I would like to say that so far I'm really liking Soul Eater NOT, a lot of people seem unsure or reluctant to read because of how much the liked Soul Eater it's self but I think NOT is worth reading too.
Soul Eater was more focused on wicthes, kishins and death scythes whilst NOT is more focused on the DWMA it's self, it's like if J.K Rowling were to write a Harry Potter book about another student , Harry Potter would be relevant to the story but there would be less Voldemort, Marauders and horcruxes and more Snape, potions classes and homework.
The DWMA (demon weapon and miesters academy) is split into two classes and only 10% of the students are in Maka and Souls class they are EAT (especially advantaged talent) and they are the kids who go out collecting kishin eggs and making death scythes whilst the other 90% fall into the NOT class (normally overcome target) and they aim to either control their abilities to fit into society or are trying to work their way into EAT.
And Soul Eater NOT is about a 3 girls in the NOT class, I don't want to ruin anything and the story isn't very far in at the moment but if you love the Soul Eater universe you will want to read this, it takes place a bit before Soul Eater (I would say Soul Eater takes place late October or November as they have a Christmas party a number of chapters/episodes in so I would put NOT around the late August or September mark as they mention they are starting a new year) it's not as action packed and it's slightly more girly than Soul Eater but characters from Soul Eater make frequent appearances which is cool but I recommend you read it.
Now for manga VS anime, I have finally finished reading the manga I can now compare the two.
(The following contains spoilers, I'm trying to explain what happened with out going into great detail or ruining the plot too much but it will still spoil the story so I suggest you don't read the next bit unless you've read and watched Soul Eater first.)
Up until a certain point the episodes and chapters were pretty much the same give or take, things change around a chapter called body guard and at the point both the anime and manga go their separate ways.
The biggest Difference is the length, the manga goes on for much longer than the anime so the endings are completely different (the anime wraps things up pretty quickly and misses an awful lot).
2 big differences are that in the manga Soul became a deathscythe but in anime he didn't and in the manga Death died in the end and Kid became the new grim reaper, I was kind of disappointed that these events didn't make it into the anime because wasn't the DWMA created to teach the students how to work together, protect the world from evil and make demon scythes when the ending of the anime had Maka beat the Kishin on her own without the physical back up of her friends.
I stand on the fence about Maka being part Miester part weapon, I thought it was cool but slightly pointless as it wasn't the thing that beat the Kishin in the end but it was cool none the less but then someone on a forum mentioned how her being a weapon (and beating the Kishin on her own) made everyone else obsolete and all that training and the team work they did was for nothing if Maka could do it all alone any way and now thinking about it I'm not too keen on the idea any more.
I understand that they wanted to wrap thing up quickly in the anime and it would be pointless to have both anime and manga exactly the same but the ending of the manga was so much better.
Another thing that I noticed that disappointed me was that the manga explained the pairings of the 3 main characters and their weapons and so did the anime to some extent but not quite as well and what they didn't explain why Soul paired up with Maka.
Both the anime and manga explained that Death the Kid and Thompson sisters teamed up because Kid wanted identical weapons for the sake of symmetry and the sisters teamed up with him for a better life.
Tsunbaki and Black Star teamed up because Black Star is hyper active and hard to get on with and Tsunbaki is laid back enough to both get on with him and stop him doing anything too dangerous and they compliment each other.
The anime also explained that Maka choose Soul because she specifically wanted a demon scythe like her dad and because she wanted to out do him (I guess she wanted to use a scythe because if she used any other weapon and made it a deathscythe she may feel as though she cheated and didn't beat her dad.)
The reason why Soul agreed to work with Maka wasn't explained in the anime, this really confused me because I watched the anime first and there wasn't an obvious reason why he'd want to work with her, they have nothing in common, they bicker a lot and Maka had slightly selfish reasons for working with him and it made me wonder what's in it for him then I read the manga and it was made clear in the book or Eibon arc.
Soul felt insecure that his piano playing wasn't as good as his brother violin playing and he thought he would never be able to reach his level so when he found out he was a demon weapon he left for the DWMA, he even went to the trouble of changing his name when he got there.
Soul only played piano because everyone in his family played instruments so he wasn't to bothered about giving up, at the DWMA he met Maka who wanted to work with him became he was a scythe so he decided to play her a song that represented himself, possibly in an attempt to either scare her away or warn her of his personality but instated of being put off Maka said she thought the song was interesting and admitted she didn't really understand music and this is the reason he worked with her.
He agreed to work with her because she didn't know anything about music and he could forget about music and she wouldn't judge him on his talent, I was disappointed this wasn't mentioned in the anime because this back story pretty much explains his personality, through out the whole story he was lazy and had no real passion but secretly tired hard and wanted to do well to stay in school or/and help Maka and as the story progressed he became more hard working and passionate and in the end he changed his name back and accepted himself.
2 more things that didn't happen in the anime but happen in the manga are how Crona and Medusa died, in the anime it was unclear whether or not Medusa had died and Crona didn't die in the anime at all and in the end the DWMA formed an alliance with the witches.
I wonder if there will be a season two, I know lots of people are wondering and it doesn't sound like they will any time soon but maybe the reason the missed out things like Soul becoming a death scythe, lord death dying, the DWMA and witches alliance ect was so they could put them into a second season if they wanted to, I would definitely pay to watch a season two but it seems unlikely they ever will make season 2 unfortunatley.
