Plucked From The Pile: Emma, House of Five Leaves and Soul Eater

Emma Vol. 1 & 2 by Kaoru Mori: After reading A Bride’s Story and being blown away with Kaoru Mori’s artwork, several fellow bloggers made references to  her previous work, Emma. It is published under the now defunct DC Comics imprint CMX, but happily I was able to find some of the series at the library. Mori’s artwork is as meticulous as ever as she brings to life Victorian England.

Emma is a story about a young girl who grew-up on the streets and now works as a maid. She meets the son of a wealthy family, William, and as all these type of stories go, the relationship is forbidden due to their differences in class. It's a simple and common plot line but the characters are interesting and by the end of Vol. 2 it’s uncertain where the story will go. I would love to get into this series but as it’s out of print I’m afraid of never being able to find out how it ends.

Emma by Kaoru Mori was published by CMX but is now out of print. There are ten volumes in all.

House of Five Leaves Vol. 3 by Natsume Ono:  I found myself a little confused in the beginning of this book, perhaps because too much time passed since I read the previous volume, or maybe because I have been watching the anime version, which is similar but not quite the same as the books.

When fellow Leaves member, Matsu, is kidnapped, Masa goes undercover to help free him. Masa finds himself to be an integral member of the House of Five Leaves, whether he wanted to or not.  It also appears that his new acquaintance, Yagi, is a police officer and he must operate carefully to protect the other members. Masa’s sister also pays a an unexpected visit.

House of Five Leaves by Natsume Ono is published by Viz Signature under IKKI Comix. Vol. 4 is set to be released later this month.

Soul Eater Vol. 6 by Atsushi Ohkubo: This volume is all action as the story reaches its pinnacle with a showdown between Medusa and the DWMA, as she tries to execute her nefarious plan to use the black blood to revive the Kishin that lies beneath the DWMA. Each DWMA team has an adversary to defeat as they race through the underground maze that lead to the Kishin’s Shrine. What will happen now that the madness has been released? Interesting scenarios, likable characters and lots of humour make this series work.

Soul Eater by Atushi Ohkubo is published by Yen Press. Next volume released in October.

That’s last week’s pile. What did you read this week?

Anime: Soul Eater

     First I want to say sorry for not writing in a while. Okay Soul Eater is a action comedy with a creepy undertone, its about Death and his academy of students of weapons and weapon masters. There are main Student characters; Master Characters: Maka, Black Star, And Kid son of death. Weapon Characters: Soul Eater, Tsubaki, Liz and Patty Thompson. There are other students but these are the main 6 you see throughout the series. The main plot is a weapon student must collect 99 Keishen souls(or nearly evil souls) and 1 witch soul to become a strong official Death scythe.

Through out the series they all deal with emotional and physical barriers some of which is defeating evil witches, defeating a full fledged Keishen, Soul Eater being consumed by a evil demon, Black Star not dealing with a lose, and Kid hating un-symmetry. This is a great action packed anime in a creepy Halloween type setting, which is why I love it, if I were you I'd go watch this asap.

Soul Eater by Atsushi Ohkubo

Soul Eater Volumes 1-5

I admit I may have misjudged this series.  A while back when I picked up volume 1 of Soul Eater, I was unimpressed and in fact it angered me. It seemed that it was all just an attempt at gaining an audience through the use of gratuitous ‘fan service’ that was totally unnecessary, and masked what could have been an interesting storyline. So I left the series alone. After some time passed and new volumes kept coming out, and there was a lot of merchandise themed on the series in the stores, I figured I must of missed something. I decided to give it another shot.

I was glad to discover that the next volumes had really toned down the panty shots and concentrated on interesting story lines.
Quick Summary:  The two main characters are Soul and Maka, students at the Death Weapon Academy (DWMA), where students work, mostly in pairs. One of the pair trains to be a Meister, who wields the weapon in battle, and the other becomes the weapon (through some sort of shapeshifting). The duos are tasked with taking the soul of those on a list, who are usually evil. The more souls the duos consume, the stronger the meisters become and the higher in rank they are. 

What makes this series work is that it’s full of interesting and amusing characters that are based on fairly routine supernatural beings such as zombies, Frankenstein, medusa, witches, and cats and so on, but characters are given interesting flaws and quirks that keeps it interesting. For instance, one of my favorite characters is Death the Kid, who is the son of the Shinigami (death reaper) in charge of the academy. Kid has an obsession symmetry which leads to all kinds of difficulty for him: even his weapons had to be symmetrical. In a cruel irony, Kid’s hair has a white streak on one side that makes him asymmetrical.  

The most unique aspect of this series is the artwork. It is very different form the manga I have come across so far. The characters have a distinct look but what stands out the most is the environment. The Academy is a castle of skulls, and the sky has either a sun or a moon that laughs mockingly.

Skipping volume 1, I would recommend this series for older teens; it is entertaining and full of humour.

Soul Eater is by Atsushi Ohkubo and is published by Yen Press. Volume 7 is to be released in October. The anime series is also available through Funimation.

New Soul Eater manga to premiere on January 2011

The January issue of Square Enix's Monthly Shonen Gangan magazine is announcing on Saturday that Atsushi Ohkubo is launching a new Soul Eater manga series named Soul Eater Not! in the next issue. The new series will run alongside the main Soul Eater series on January 12, 2011.

This manga, as the title indicates, is a spinoff from the original, yet the argument still has to be revealed.

(Source: Anime News Network, Kyō mo Yarareyaku)

This week's featured AMV! (8)

This amv is dedicated to the always awesome fights between Mifune and Black Star of Soul Eater.

Mifune is probably one of the most badass characters ever with his serious stance and samurai code.



Video done by Starwindz85 of Youtube.

Enjoy!

Mas informacion de la edicion española de Soul Eater por la editorial Norma

El primer número de Soul Eater estará a la venta a finales de septiembre, y vendrá con un pequeño regalo: un cofre para contener los diez primeros volúmenes de esta serie, un pequeño aliciente para los primeros compradores. Pero atentos: como ya hemos hecho en otras promociones similares, el cofre solo acompañará a la primera edición del manga, por lo que os sugerimos que, si os queréis hacer con él, no esperéis demasiado para comprarlo.

Mientras que el segundo volumen saldra a la venta en octubre, coincidiendo con las fechas en las que se va a realizar el Salon del Manga 2010 en Barcelona, desde el 29 de octubre hasta el 1 de noviembre.

Después de esto, Soul Eater saldrá bimestralmente a partir del 2011.