Happy Halloween everybody! For this special day I have chosen not one but two appropriate anime, the first being Soul Eater. Soul Eater is a very weird anime to be sure, it really doesn't make very much sense at all until about maybe halfway through, and yet, it is still very enjoyable, you just have to be patient and stick with it. The main premise of the story centers around living weapons and their wielders, or meisters. Living weapon is no some mere metaphor, every weapon is a person who can transform into an inanimate object that can be used as a weapon. Of course, weapons can wield themselves, so they are paired with a meister, a person who does not have the ability to transform but does practice wielding the weapon until their souls resonate and become even mre powerful together than either could ever be alone. The premise comes from a concept that comes up a lot in anime and Japanese folklore, the idea that a warrior's soul resides in their weapon, or that the weapon has a soul of it's own, and that a true warrior must learn to be at one with this weapon. Soul Eater simply takes it a step further by claiming that the weapon actually is a person entirely unto himself. In the first episode all we get to know about this is that weapon/meister teams work together to fight kishin so the weapons can consume their souls and after consuming ninety-nine kishin souls, they pursue a witch for an even hundred souls and then the weapon becomes a Death Scythe, a weapon worthy of Lord Death himself, capable of actually operating solo with partial transformations so that they can serve their master who is unfortunately anchored in one place and can not travel to fight kishin and witches abroad. The Title character is an actual scythe who is teamed with Maka Albarn, the daughter of the currently reigning Death Scythe, Spirit Albarn. They are good friends with Black Star and Tsubaki, a ninja and his versatile weapon who is uniquely capable of taking multiple forms including a chained pair of sickles, a knife, a shuriken, and eventually the legendary katana Masamune. They also become friends with Death the Kid, the son of Lord Death, and his weapons Liz and Patty Thompson who are a pair of identical guns, an important detail for Kid who is obsessive compulsive and chose these weapons because of symmetry. Kid is potentially the most powerful character, but he is held back by his own neurosis which plays off as hilarious. Similarly, Black Star is funny because, as a ninja, he is supposed to be a master of stealth, and yet his pride causes him to constantly announce his presence with so much flare that he loses his element of surprise. By comparison, Soul and Maka are the most efficient team out of the three, simply because they never let anything get in the way of their objectives. The story eventually reveals why weapons exist, 800 years ago a witch named Arachne bound souls of other witches to weapons, forcing the weapons to come alive as magiacal weapons. The sacrifice of witches that she made to create these weapons made her an enemy of witches and she was made an outcast among her own kind, making her easy pickings for Lord Death who elected to ue her own weapons against her, preferring a scythe. Arachne shattered her soul into a swarm of spiders and dispersed around the world waiting for a time when she would have the upper hand. Meanwhile, one of Lord Death's underlings, Asura, went mad and swallowed his weapon partner so they could forever be one, and thus Asura became a kishin, a human so corrupt they feed on the sous of others and become inhuman monsters. The only way for Lord Death to defeat Asura was to seal him underground and bnd him with his own soul, building a city around the site where he was stuck and never able to leave because he must constantly attend to the prison lest Asura escape. The weapons eventually had children with mortals producing offspring that inherited the ability to transform into weapons who were in turn paired with meisters for generation after generation leading to the current situation. Several subplots and minor characters come up, but the most worthy of mention are Crona and Excalibur. Crona is the androgynous child of Medusa, the younger sister of Arachne, and she has used Crona as an experiment in black blood to create a demon sword, a weapon that is one with its meister, literally. Crona is interesting because he starts out as a villain,but is redeemed thanks to Maka. Exaclibur on the other hand is just plain ridiculous and stupid, but manages to make a strong enough impression that even though he is largely irrelevant ot the plot, he still demands attention. Excalibur is the legendary sowrd of King Arthur, though unlike other living weapons, he does not have a human form, but rather takes on the odd shape of...well I don't know what, a walking banana in a tuxedo and tophat I guess. "Fool!" is his catchphrase, as he calls out anyone and everyone he considers lesser, which is everybody. Excalibur is supposed to be the most powerful weapon of all, but because he is so annoyingly arrogant, nobody can stand to be partnered with him so shortly after being discovered he is promptly placed back in the fairy cave for the next unfortunate soul to dare to accquire him. In the series, there is exactly one time someone other than King Arthur is able to partner with Excalibur, but he ends up displeased with a minor quirk in spite of everything and puts him back like everybody else. As for the rest of the series, obviously it comes down to an epic showdown between the protagonists and Arachne, Asura and Medusa, but what makes the showdown intersting is who pairs off for the final matches and exactly what the aftermath entails. Check out the series at Funimation to see how it all unfolds.
Now for the bonus anime, Kakurenbo. This one shot short film was significant in airing on Halloween night one year, and although I did not watch it then because I mistakenly thought it was a series and didn't want to get involved in another one at the time, I did get to se it eventually on YouTube, and let me tell you it seriously one of the most creepy things you'll ever watch. Kakurenbo follows a game of "otokoyo", hide and seek played between a group of children who for no apparent reason are playing in an otherwise abandoned town and are all wearing disintctive kitsune masks. One of the children is Hikora who is looking for his sister Sorincha who has been missing since the last game of Otokoyo. The kids all seem to think it's just a game, but very soon, four demons appear and capture the children one by one, removing them from the game until Hikora is deemed the winner as the last one standing. He finds his sister and the shockign truth behind Otokoyo. I know that's a short synopsis that doesn't seem to tell much, but it's only a half-hour and much of it is simply a visually impressive detailing of the story leading up to a conclusion that will keep you up all night.
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