#hahnji

Soul comes first on my list for a lot of reasons. The most shallow one is because… well… UNF. However, I love Soul for a lot of reasons. He’s one of the most well-developed characters I’ve ever come across, let alone just in Soul Eater itself (which is especially impressive, considering for at least the first 10-15 chapters and possibly longer, Okubo has totally admitted he was pretty much just making shit up as he went along), and I love the contrast between the cool tough guy persona he’d like to project and the complete sweetheart he actually is. Mostly though, I love Soul because Soul reminds me of myself. If I were male and had a less supportive family, I would essentially be Soul, which is sometimes a little scary but also very reassuring.

As for Maka, there’s a reason my tag for her on my blog is ‘actual goddess maka albarn.’ It’s rare enough as it is for a shounen manga/anime to have a female protagonist, but Maka… well, Okubo may have screwed over the main female weapons, but he’s absolutely proven that he can write complex, dynamic, multifaceted female characters, and Maka is Exhibit A. I love that she shares my bookworm habit, I love that she kicks ass while wearing a short skirt and pigtails, I love that she apparently gives absolutely zero fucks what her fellow students think of her, I love that she literally kills shit for a living but she’s also girly and feminine and gets all swoony over the idea of being ‘angelic.’ Where has this character been all my life?  Strictly speaking, she’s in a dead tie with Soul for my favorite character slot, because I find it completely impossible to separate them, as they’re so entangled, both as people and as narrative objects. The only reason I’m listing Soul above her in this is for the simple reason that Soul is the (slightly) more fucked up version of me and I’m just arrogant enough to decide that warrants him being listed first.

Black*Star is a huge surprise for me. I started out the series absolutely loathing him. The only reason I didn’t fast forward through stuff involving Black*Star the first time I watched the anime is because I instantly loved Tsubaki and had too much respect for her to skip stuff related to her. But then I watched the part where Black*Star had his final conflict with Mifune (which, although very well-adapted from the anime, was still done better in the manga in my opinion… but that holds true for a lot of things), and somehow over the course of that I realized that along the way I had completely fallen in love with this character. He’s sneaky like that… a true narrative ninja, really. He just creeps up on you when you’re not expecting it and forces you to love him to bits. And then I read the manga and… well… BLACK*STAR.  It bugs the crap outta me that so few people seem to really know how to write him in fanfic, because he’s fantastic and complex and people reduce him to exclusively a loudmouthed braggart and that’s so unfair to him, because he definitely is that but he’s also so much more than that and I really really really love Black*Star okay

Liz… well, as I said before, Liz (much like Tsubaki and Patti and the members of the B-Team who aren’t Kim and Ox) got kinda screwed over in canon. I’m so glad that she and Patti got the chance to have spotlight for awhile in NOT! because it was really necessary. So, since Liz kinda lost out in SE canon, some of my love for her is based on headcanon, but that’s okay. There are so many reasons I love Liz. SO many. There’s a reason that my next big Soul Eater fanfic project is going to feature Liz as the central protagonist. I love Liz so much. But I think the biggest source of my love for her comes from the fact that she’s afraid of stuff. Fears- indeed, almost phobias- like hers don’t just crop up overnight. She didn’t just become “weak” and afraid when Kid took her in. I’d be willing to wager she was always afraid like that. But she never had the luxury of “indulging” in her fear, because she had to look after Patti, right? She had to be strong to make sure her sister got what she needed. That, in and of itself, is amazing. But the fact that she now feels comfortable enough to be afraid and show that she’s afraid… that’s some major character growth right there. She’s not fronting anymore. Just like Soul was by the end of the manga, she’s finally secure enough- she’s finally found her “safe place”- that she’s comfortable admitting to fear. That’s amazing. I love that.

And Death the Kid… I love DTK. That’s not surprising. I aggressively love literally all the Soul Eater characters (with the exceptions of Giriko and Tezca Tlipoca, both of whom can suck my ladydick… not really enthusiastic about Justin either come to think of it, but I don’t dislike him so…), so it shouldn’t be some big shock that I think Kid is great. Once I was driving home from work and I was abruptly overwhelmed with feels to the point that I literally started crying at 6:30 a.m. on the freeway because KID.  To be honest, when I initially watched the anime, I wasn’t too enthusiastic about Kid. He was a cool dude and all, but his character arc… wasn’t so much an arc as it was a straight line? And then I read the manga, and got to read Kid’s full character development, and… WOW. I just. I am not entirely sure I can articulate the full scope of my emotions with regards to Kid’s faith in the witches, his faith in humanity- in his friends- his respect for his weapons, his feelings of inadequacy, his complicated relationship with his father (and ultimately the feels that came with that in the end)… I just love Kid. He’s fantastic. Much like with Black*Star, I hate that all too commonly he’s reduced to an excessively symmetrical parody of himself in fanfic, because he’s so much more than that.

Now anybody who’s read this far should be damn proud of me, because I wrote this while very intoxicated and the fact that it’s coherent at all should be a credit to me. I’m a good typist and a surprisingly clear thinker when I’ve had a touch too much.