“I'll admit Black Star makes some dumb calls from time to time, but the important thing is I'm here to back him up no matter how big a fool he is. If we're fools we're fools together, that's the kind of team we are.”
Tsubaki Nakatsukasa Quotes
2 quotes from Soul Eater, each with commentary on what it means and why it stuck.
Read the character analysis and its source limits
Tsubaki Nakatsukasa’s support for Black Star includes the unwelcome work of recognizing when a shared decision is becoming dangerous. Wikiquote’s English transcription of Soul Eater episode 33 records Maka asking him to hit her in repayment for an earlier blow. Tsubaki questions Maka’s request and then Black Star’s agreement before he announces that he will not hold back. The recorded strike sends Maka into a dumpster; Tsubaki and Liz are shocked, and Kid and Soul object afterward. Tsubaki’s caution neither prevents the blow nor becomes pointless because the other participants agreed. It identifies a limit that their exchange failed to supply. That is a less comfortable form of partnership than cheering his confidence. Being his weapon does not require treating every performance as worth completing, and his willingness to act cannot substitute for the judgment that she attempts to bring into the room.
“I have a friend who has helped me realize something. He's helped me see that a Camellia does have a fragrance!”
Tsubaki is the Japanese for camellia. The dub keeps the botany and loses the name, so an English viewer hears a girl talking about a flower and a Japanese viewer hears a girl talking about herself. The friend is Black Star, the loudest person in the series, and the show's argument is that a flower without scent needs someone who cannot stop shouting to be noticed at all. Whether that is a compliment to him or to her is left to the viewer.
About Tsubaki Nakatsukasa
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
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Call it a doormat's creed, because that is the strongest objection, and the series does not entirely rebut it. Tsubaki absorbs Black Star's mistakes for fifty episodes, carries him out of fights he picked, and gets to be the protagonist of exactly one arc, the one about her brother Masamune, fought inside the Enchanted Sword, which she wins once Black Star's voice reaches her. So the objection stands as far as screen time goes. Where it fails is the word team: the weapon-meister system runs on resonance, two souls matching wavelengths. Tsubaki's loyalty is the mechanism, and she describes it accurately. The cost of it is that her own story had to be told in two episodes.