“If you forget your fear you become reckless.”
Soul Eater Evans Quotes
3 quotes from Soul Eater, each with commentary on what it means and why it stuck.
Read the character analysis and its source limits
Soul Eater Evans is Maka's partner and her scythe, moving between a human body and the weapon she uses in combat. In Yen Press's first prologue, he insists that a soul matters more than an opponent's appearance, and the pair collect their ninety-ninth human soul together. His next performance of confidence is less reliable. Soul describes a frontal approach to Blair's house as the manly choice, despite Maka's warning that this fight needs a different approach, then walks into her bath. His claim to be accustomed to naked women is accompanied by a nosebleed. The joke gives the reader evidence against his own account of himself. It also leaves Maka doing the work of managing an encounter he has made harder. Soul can be an effective weapon and an unreliable spokesman for his own maturity in the same opening. The free preview ends during the fight, before either partner can claim its result.
“As far as I know, music isn't picky about when it gets played.”
The reason he can say this is a scene the anime keeps in the black room: Soul at the piano. He is an Evans, from a house of musicians, and he left because his brother was the prodigy and the piano was a thing he was measured by. The series makes his soul resonance literally a performance, a tune played to synchronize the team, so the joke in this line is that the boy who fled music has made it his weapon technique. Nothing about it is said out loud; the show trusts the audience to have noticed which instrument is in the black room and why.
Spoiler — from the ending. Tap to reveal.
“You did it, Maka. You really are amazing. Coolest partner ever.”
What it commits the anime to is a Soul who never becomes a Death Scythe. In the manga he does, by eating Arachne's witch soul, which is the goal the pair have been chasing since the first episode, when they lose their ninety-ninth soul's worth of progress to Blair the cat. The anime skips the promotion, has Maka win with her hands, and gives Soul this instead: praise for a partner who did not need him for the final blow. It is a generous line and a strange place to leave a weapon. The manga's Soul gets the title; the anime's gets to be happy about not being the one who mattered, and the show ends before anyone asks him whether that was enough.
About Soul Eater Evans
Guides
- Soul Eater Ending Explained: the Punch, and What the Manga Did Instead
- The Best Soul Eater Quotes, Every Line Checked
- Soul Eater Watch Order: The Anime, Soul Eater Not! and the Manga
- Soul Eater Manga Buying Guide: Paperbacks or Perfect Edition
- Soul Eater: Sub or Dub?
- Maka: Trust Cannot Be Trained Alone
Around Soul Eater
More from Soul Eater
Read Soul Eater Evans's story from the start
Explore Soul Eater in book form. Check the listing for the edition, language and volumes included. The source beside each quote records where its wording was checked; it may differ from the wording in this edition.
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Maka's line that people need fear to grow stronger sits next to this one, and the two partners turn out to be saying different things. Hers is about growth. His is about survival, and it is the more experienced claim, because Soul is the one who has already had the black blood in him and knows what happens when the thing inside stops being afraid. The manga makes this explicit through the little demon in the black room, who offers Soul exactly that trade: forget the fear and take the power. He keeps fighting it off. The weapon's version of the lesson is more cautious than the meister's, which fits a character who spends the series as the one being swung.