I’d be more sympathetic to Soul Eater if I had the time and energy to watch everything that’s airing – but I don’t.

The way I see it is that most shounen anime is the product of franchise building, which is why a lot of it treads water in these dull ways. Soul Eater was exciting because it appeared free of the overt cash-in intention of most Jump adapted shows. Yet, seemingly it’s abiding by the crippling flaws of its peers.

Accusing my opinions of being ‘easy’ when it’s just reasoned criticism (note that I judge it on its own terms, not some heightened intellectual perspective) itself feels like a lazy counter-argument. I’m not out to get Soul Eater because it isn’t the usual pretentious crap I favour – I’m just not going to let its obvious faults slide because ‘that’s how these things are’. Most shounen anime provokes these criticisms. Soul Eater sticks out because, at least initially, it seemed to rise above the lazy tropes and finally do shounen in the badass, flab-free way it should always be done.

May be a point that separates my opinion from yours is that I watched episodes 2 to 6 in a batch, one after the other, on Sunday afternoon? To that end, I didn’t note that the pace had slowed simply because I knew I had the next few episodes lined-up anyway.

I can understand not watching Soul Eater on the basis of it not being your thing (for example, I used to enjoy Dragonball Z, so that’s where I’m coming from here), but something about the complaints you’ve posted above strike me as a tad bit petty, almost as if you’re looking for an excuse. I mean, let’s face it, “protracted banal talking, half-arsed action, overuse of flashbacks” has always been a defining feature of shonen fighting anime and those qualities are kind of what I like about it too. I guess it just disappoints me that someone, who has already made it to the fourth episode, would consider dropping (or indeed, has dropped) Soul Eater for those reasons, just because it seems so… easy. Next thing you’ll be telling me is that you don’t like Jean Claude Van Damme movies…

@qwertypoiuy/Jagd

Good to hear, and qwertypoiuy: I promise, Hunter X Hunter is climbing my list to things to ‘properly watch’

@Jayme

O-Parts Hunter sounds like my kind of thing. I might just go ahead and read the manga, seeing as it’s finished and all. I do love me some epic shonen, especially with the added bonus of a actual end! Also, since some anime company found the money to animate the likes of Buso Renkin, they’ve got to do this too. Fingers crossed on that.

@Xerox

You’re awesome! Enough said, I think

That is what, probably, what I love most about shonen. I shan’t say anything too spoiler-ish, but I’m looking forward to episode 8. Shonen is a genre that has it hard around here, judging from a glimpse of the comments. But, if Naruto and Bleach and One Piece weren’t so tediously long, I’d be as crazy and zealous as the next Narutard.

As for the manga itself, Its really rather enjoyable. It resembles Masashi’s Naruto a fair bit but toys with that, I still think its fairly easy to separate the two series’ apart, though. I like most of the themes within it (I’ve been following, and picking up VIZ’ release of it, when I can) and the characters and settings are actually very good. They all have their shonen dreams and ambitions that they want to achieve at some point, which of course is very cliché but.. There is something about that that jumps out about it, and separates it from the rest..

I can’t say I know much about the time-skip, Haven’t read that far. I know it happens earlier than Naruto, though.

I think Square’s Shonen Gangan might be something special offering the likes of FMA and Soul Eater, along with 666 Satan. ;p