Asura Quotes
2 quotes from Soul Eater, each with commentary on what it means and why it stuck.
The first Kishin: one of Lord Death's own warriors, who grew so afraid that he ate his weapon partner and was buried alive beneath the academy. Argues his case calmly, and gets the last logical move in his own defeat.
“It's not necessarily the uncertainty that makes us fearful. It's more than that. The answers that we imagine are what really frighten us.”
The nearest neighbor is Kyubey in Madoka Magica, another antagonist whose villainy is a theory delivered calmly to people who would rather he shouted. The comparison shows what Soul Eater is doing differently. Kyubey has no fear at all and explains a system; Asura is made of fear and explains himself. The show gives him an origin to match: he was one of Lord Death's own warriors who grew so afraid that he ate his weapon partner, and Death skinned him alive and buried him under the academy. So the line is not a philosophy of terror from outside. It is what terror sounds like once it has had eight hundred years underground to think.
Read Asura's story from the start
Every line above is a fragment. The manga is where the fragments come from, and the print edition is the one this site checks its quotes against.
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A villain who could hear the hero's answer and reply to it was the thing the finale had to build, and this is the reply. Asura has spent the series arguing that madness is universal and therefore true; Maka has just argued that courage is universal and therefore enough. His last sentence points out that her proof is his proof. The anime's writers, working past the manga, gave the kishin the final logical move in his own defeat, and it is a better move than the punch that follows. It also explains why Asura loses: he is not wrong that the two things are alike, he is wrong about which one people reach for first, and the episode's title, The Word Is Bravery, is the show's vote.