#Soul eater manga spoilers | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

where-i-overanalyze · 2 years ago

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the significant lack of parents in Soul Eater and how the DWMA combats that

obviously, there are some parents present throughout the entirety of Soul Eater, but they truly are not amongst the greatest: Medusa, Spirit, Lord Death (he's okay in comparison to everyone else, but still not dad of the year). i started this just wanting to talk about how there are almost no parents and then ended up realizing some sorta nice things about the DWMA by the end of it. manga spoilers, so beware.

characters who have living parents

let's start with Maka since she's the only one who has one parent present and one parent mentioned in somewhat detail. Spirit certainly is quite the character; he has almost no redeemable qualities except for the fact that he does actually love and support his child. that's all good, and yet he cannot correct his behavior to actually make himself a person that his daughter will respect. he cares so much and yet he does nothing to try and be a better father for her and what she actually needs from a parent.

but then we have Maka's "wonderful" unnamed mother. great mom, great meister, never given an example as to what this woman could really be like. i haven't been into Soul Eater for super long and i'm sure there are definitely people who have been shitting on Maka's mom, but it's interesting to me purely because even though there aren't many parents in Soul Eater to begin with, there is an even more extreme lack of mothers. i'm going to get nebulous with the definition throughout this post, but it really just seems like the "idea" of a good mother is all the characters get. Maka only gets memories of how great her mother was, maybe because she truly wasn't that great in the first place. a meister who made a death scythe is never to be seen throughout the greatest threat of all time within the past 800 years, not even to check on her one daughter? maybe she's busy? sure. idc what she's doing, but that's a strike out for me.

moving away from Maka's dubious parents, let's look at Kid and Lord Death. in truth, he's not nearly as bad as the other parents in terms of actual parenting, but he is clearly much different in relation to the other parents. he's not human, he's in charge of seemingly their entire world, and Kid is essentially just a chunk of Lord Death that was given sentience. with that, we have to think of exactly what is it that death gods even need in order to be raised. since Asura was a failed attempt, Kid was specifically "born with a childish nature so he [could] learn fear, much like humans" (DTK Soul Eater Wiki page). am i really citing a source in my Tumblr post, is this who i am. SO, thinking about what death gods are meant to do with their power and the fact that they are meant to keep balance in the world, i'd say that Lord Death did a pretty good job of getting Kid to become the best death god he could be. when it comes to actual "normal" parenting standards, idek if we can hold Lord Death up to those since they both are very much not normal. keeping Kid in the dark about some insanely important details about the academy (the Kishin in the basement) and letting Kid know that Lord Death would die when he awoke his true powers, maybe not the best choice, but i'll admit that i'm an extremist when it comes to people keeping important secrets that could have saved everyone a lot of time and trouble.

actually, i take some of my positive statements back when thinking about how Lord Death handled Asura. i know Asura was all powerful and just sort of super insane, but given the fact that Asura was a failed attempt of a fragment and Kid was Lord Death's way of trying again, it feels kind of wrong to give him a title of Decent Dad when his first attempt at making a young death god ended up so so so messed up. also, making a second one just in the hopes of solving your first mess up, kinda fucked up.

anyways, Tsubaki! she's honestly very interesting because we know that both of her parents are alive, but we see almost NOTHING about them. the only time we actually see her dad is in chapter 49 and that's basically it. her mom is mentioned, but we never even get to see her or get her name, so once again there is just no mother present at all and just the "idea" of her. given the fact that they pretty much neglected their other child to the point that he became a serial killer because he wasn't treated the same as Tsubaki, i can't give them much credit for good parenting. maybe Tsubaki came out okay and mild-mannered, but Masamune straight up just got neglected and went bonkers because of it.

and now we reach the grand finale of horrible present parents, Crona and Medusa. debated about putting her in the "dead parents" category, but Medusa is alive for the majority of Soul Eater, so she can stay here. obviously, Medusa's the absolute worst. she literally never has any good intentions for anything she does with Crona, she's extremely manipulative, blatantly abusive, etc. she literally dangles the concept of being a good mother in front of Crona to get them to obey her and in the end that gets her killed (and yet that STILL was part of her plan. she's literally insane). she also tricks other people into helping her by pretending she's worried about Crona. she contributes the mother "idea" again, though this time she is very present, just not as a good mother. i won't go into all the shit that Medusa did, we all know she was horrible. i go into more of Medusa's manipulation in this post.

characters who have dead parents

Black☆Star, i think, is the only character of the main cast that has confirmed dead parents. he never knew any of his clan and sort of renounces them (maybe renounce isn't the right word, but his whole character arc about choosing his own path and defeating Mifune makes it somewhat clear that he doesn't want to end up like his parents). we know about his father, White☆Star, but once again, the mother is never mentioned. from what we're shown . . . yeah, the Star clan sucked and were obsessed with power and whatnot. it's an interesting contrast with Tsubaki: they both come from very well known family lines with very different connotations surrounding them. to an outsider who knows about both of their families, it probably seems a bit sacrilegious for Black☆Star to be partnered with her in the first place.

characters whose parents are MIA

Liz and Patty at least have an "unnamed woman" shown as their mother for a single panel in chapter 78. the "prettiest prostitute in New York" obviously didn't do much to raise them since they were the Brooklyn Devils for a while. no mention of a father and an evidently absent mother, we are once again hit with the "idea" of a mother that isn't there. Liz literally says she hates her mother, thanks her for bringing her and Patty into existence, and nothing else is said about her. it's only after they get sorta "drafted" by Kid that they get to live a pleasant life. there's obviously also some things to say about economic status and being dealt a bad hand in life and whatnot, but i can get into that another time i think.

now, Soul. homie has got NO PARENTS EVER MENTIONED. the closest we get is Wes and unnamed grandma who is never shown. he's literally the only character we don't get shit for who his parents are, where they are, if they're even living and i think that speaks volumes. going off of assumptions, the fact that Soul literally renounced his family name, ran away to go to weapon school, and didn't play the piano for years until he was able to do it, sort of, on his own terms most likely means that his parents were some kind of horrible. also, being forced to play into a family legacy has got to be unhealthy. always feeling overshadowed by your older sibling who, obviously, has more experience is upsetting, but the fact that Soul was seemingly never reassured about his skills is dubious at best. i have strong feelings about forcing children into family legacies, maybe that can be its own post some day as well, and if your kid feels like they actually have to run away to escape it, well then i don't think it works out very well. it's incredibly important that we don't get any parental information from Soul and that we never hear anything about anyone from his family looking for him. maybe he told them he was leaving, but maybe he just slipped away and nobody bothered to look for him.

actual parental figures

while writing this, i realized that everyone in this category is a DWMA professor. DWMA as a whole seems to provide all of the main cast with a place to be that was much better than where they came from. Black☆Star and Maka sort of grew up in and around the DWMA, Soul, Liz, and Patty all came from much worse places before enrolling, Tsubaki and Kid kinda seem like they were chilling tbh, and of course Crona literally experiences positive emotions for the first time during their short time there. schools, ideally, should give their students the opportunity to grow in their skills and find a community with the students and teachers so that they can have an overall positive experience.

Marie is definitely the best example of this and despite the fact that she isn't even a mother (i refuse to acknowledge the unborn baby in chapter 113, most of that chapter is a black stain in my memory that even bleach couldn't remove), she is easily the healthiest mother figure in the entire series. she actually cares about the students even though she was initially reluctant to be a teacher. she worries about their wellbeing, she talks to them about their problems, and overall she is the closest to that "idea" of a mother that keeps showing up. i think part of this is because she sort of realizes that she has this power of being a teacher and a death scythe, but also there are points where she realizes she can't be reckless because she has to be there for the students (thinking specifically about the tempest and how she knows she can't go back in there to save them). she leaves an impression on Crona and she's one of the few people they actually remember Medusa's second wave of experiments she does on them. Crona saw her as a good, supportive person and it continually haunts them that they betrayed her. it's the exact opposite relationship they have with Medusa; Marie is only kind and understanding to Crona when they expect betrayal and hatred, and Medusa is only cruel when all Crona needed was some sort of . . . well, anything healthy.

Stein is interesting to me because he's more of a fun uncle than a "father" in my eyes. he doesn't coddle his students and sometimes he's a bit harsh with them, but this is purely because he knows they can achieve things they don't realize they're capable of. by the end of the manga, he fully acknowledges that, wow, these kids are pretty good at all of this!!! and i taught them this shit!!! go kids!!! now, all of this being said, i do not think he could be a real, healthy father unless someone sucked out all the madness in his brain out with a straw. even with no madness, i doubt he'd want kids because he's got all these spunky students to supervise. this is also why i refuse to acknowledge the chapter 113 unborn baby, i think Stein would know he couldn't be a father and gave himself a vasectomy.

finally, i want to talk a bit about Sid. i wish so badly that the manga went into some more detail about him practically raising Black��Star after the DWMA eliminated the Star clan. they don't treat each other like father and son, but it's clear that Sid at least cared enough to make sure he was raised and trained well. it makes the mission where Sid and Naigus go into the Arachnophobia lab to destroy the machine and Black☆Star shows up kind of more interesting since Sid's like "Whoever that student is, thank god they're here" and then he's like "Wait a damn minute, that's MY student." it's also nice to see when Sid's proud of him and whatnot. i just like this dynamic they have where it's like not fully familial, but they're more than just a mentor and mentee.

in an attempt to come to a final point, i that the DWMA really gives something to all these characters that they needed and lacked in their familial situations. sounds cheesy and it is, but i find it so nice that such a pleasant and supportive school structure is found in a universe in which people turn into weapons and fight horrors and the school is training all these kids to fight horrors. Maka gets to chase after these legendary stories she's heard about her mother, and becomes arguably more successful than her mother. Soul gets the chance to make his own path outside of the family name he's abandoned and also gets to reclaim his music along the way. Black☆Star and Tsubaki get to be this duo that allows them to kind of get out of these super old expectations of their bloodlines and by working together they get to subvert these expectations and prove people wrong about the type of people they want to be. Liz and Patty got to escape the shitty holes they'd been born into and actually be people they were proud of. Kid was able to actually understand other people, to an extent, and it made him capable of becoming the next death god. The actual human kindness that Crona was shown there is eventually what lets them sacrifice themself for everyone else since they know that it will bring good in the end. the students in Soul Eater may have some real shit parents, but the DWMA is apparently there to fill in the void of those parents.

thank you for joining me for another long af Soul Eater post. i think my next endeavor will be tackling how the manga timeline works, b/c it's pretty fucked up imo

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