New Soul Eater Manga series coming

Starting next year, there will be two Soul Eater manga series.

A spin-off series by Soul Eater creator Atsushi Ookubo will be heading a new series, Soul Eater Not! to run alongside the original series in Young Gan Gan magazine.

Form J Geeks Review of the manga:

Soul Eater is about kids working on becoming the shinigami and their weapons. They work in pairs, with one kid that transforms into a weapon and a human that wields that weapon.

The reapers in training must collect 99 evil souls and one witch’s soul to turn the weapon half of the team into a death scythe. But if something goes wrong, the pair will have to start over from the beginning.

The new series is expected to begin Jan. 12 of next year.

Tatami reader: Soul Eater

One criticism of shounen manga* is that it tends to follow certain tropes: Either in terms of plot, such as the harem manga, or the young hero manga; or in style, with many modern manga-kas owing influence to Akira Toriyama.

Then there’s Soul Eater. Even the most jaded of otaku would have to admit that Soul Eater, at the very least on a stylistic level, brings something new to the table. Meticulously drawn Japanese cityscapes are eschewed in favor of surrealistic scenes where even the moon has a threatening grimace and alleyways seem to encroach from all sides.

Such is the setting for Atsushi Okubo’s Monthly Shounen GanGan series. The backdrop is perfect for a story about Death; or in this case, Death’s tools.