Soul Eater

Soul Eater is set at Death Weapon Meister Academy (死神武器職人専門学校, Shinigami Buki Shokunin Senmon Gakkō)—"DWMA" (死武専, Shibusen) for short—located in the fictional Death City in Nevada, United States. The school is run by Shinigami, also known as Death, as a training facility for humans with the ability to transform into weapons, as well as the wielders of those weapons, called meisters (職人, shokunin). Attending this school are Maka Albarn and her scythe partner, Soul Eater; assassin Black Star and his partner, Tsubaki Nakatsukasa, who turns into various ninja weapons; and Shinigami's son, Death the Kid, and his pistol partners, Liz and Patty Thompson. The meister students' goal is to have their weapons absorb the souls of 99 evil humans and one witch, which dramatically increases the weapon's power and turns them into "Death Scythes" used by Shinigami.

Maka and Soul battle the witch Medusa, who forces Crona, her child and meister of the demon sword Ragnarok, to collect non-evil human souls and eventually transform into a kishin (鬼神), an evil god. Medusa and her cohorts attack DWMA to revive Asura, the first kishin who nearly plunged the entire world into madness before being sealed beneath DWMA by Shinigami. Despite the combined efforts of Maka, Black Star, and Death the Kid, Medusa's group successfully revives Asura, who leaves to spread chaos around the world after a brief battle with Shinigami. Medusa is seemingly killed by meister and DWMA teacher Franken Stein, while Crona surrenders to DWMA and enrolls there.

After the end of his first manga series, B.Ichi, Atsushi Ohkubo created a one-shot story called "Soul Eater" published in June 2003 by Gangan Powered. Japanese readers were so fascinated by it that Ohkubo created two other one-shots called "Black Star" and "Death the Kid", published in September and November 2003, respectively. Since the results were high, the editor of Gangan Comics asked Ohkubo to create a series from his one-shots which became the introductory chapters to Soul Eater.

In an interview, Ohkubo said that the series was greatly inspired by ideas from Tim Burton's animations, and by concepts from J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter. Ohkubo also stated he decided to make the main protagonist of the series, Maka Albarn, a female to differ from the traditional male hero found in most shōnen manga, and paired her and the other main characters with those of the opposite sex to demonstrate an equal representation of gender.

Soul Eater was the seventh best-selling manga in 2008, with 3,076,351 copies sold. By October 2012, the manga had over 13 million copies in circulation; by April 2018, the manga had sold 18.2 million copies worldwide. By July 2019, it had 19.6 million copies in circulation, and by February 2022, it had over 20.4 million copies in circulation.

Danielle Leigh of Comic Book Resources praised the first volume's stylish visuals, comparing Ohkubo's art to Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas and The Corpse Bride, noting its effective pairing with references to Jack the Ripper and Frankenstein. However, she criticized its excessive fanservice and "pattern-oriented, shallow" art style. Penny Kenny of Manga Life awarded it a "B+", commending its dynamic action sequences and varied art styles ranging from Blade of the Immortal to Yu-Gi-Oh! and Burton-esque aesthetics. Julian Gnam of Otaku USA appreciated its weapon-meister dynamics, but found the plot conventional and the fanservice excessive, though noted its accessibility for casual readers.