(Insert Lame "Witch-Mass" Joke Here)

[skjam]

Back at the "Gossip Girl" post, one of the comments indicated a preference for the Yen Press version of "Soul Eater." So, let's take a look at this fun manga series.

On a severely alternate earth, there's a school for Meisters (weapon users) and their Weapons (shapeshifting humanoids who can transform into weapons.) They take down evil humans, witches (who are humanoids with natural magical ability), and kishin (demons/evil gods.) By consuming the souls of these beings, the Weapons can become more powerful, eventually being eligible to be used by the Grim Reaper himself.

But this post will concentrate on their nominal enemies, the witches, and especially master villain Medusa. Scans are from Chapter 9, 13 pages of 41.










At this point, Medusa indeed returns to her day job of infiltrating the protagonists' school as the school nurse. Under her real name, no less. She putters about with some experiments she's got cooking, and the heroes advance their subplots.

But eventually, the work day is over...







Cut a page here of the heroes reacting to their witch sense going off.




And we'll cut off here, conveniently just before the double-page spread of Mizune being ripped apart from the inside out. Turns out that Medusa controlling snakes she's already summoned doesn't count as "magic" for purposes of Soul Detect...

Maka and Dr. Stein show up, and Medusa claims to have gotten there only moments ahead of them, only to find the witches already fled. Maka buys it, Stein is less fooled (though we won't know that for sure for a few chapters.)

Later, Medusa tracks down Eruka (thanks to the tracer snake she'd planted earlier) and offers not to kill the frog witch...if Eruka uses the stolen key to free a prisoner for the next step in Medusa's master plan.



Your thoughts, comments, Witch-mass jokes?

Comments

[ex_mugiwara814]

I wish there were more badass female villains in shônen manga.

[skjam]

Indeed. One of my favorite things about Medusa is that she doesn't slide down the threat scale as the manga progresses. She may not always be the most urgent problem, but at no time does Medusa slide below master villain level.

[janegray]

So much motto.

[lamashtar]

Thats some wierd art.

[arilou_skiff]

Yeah, but it's kind of appealing too.

Incidentally, Soul Eater has probably my third favourite Death (after Pratchett and Gaiman)

He HAS NERF HANDS! NERF HANDS PEOPLE!

[skjam]

I think it works well with the twisted world presented here.