I first watched and loved Soul Eater, my first shonen anime, as a teen, and have been coming back at it out of pure nostalgia. Here's my impression as an adult:
In a universe in which some persons can transform to weapons, Death himself has created an Academy where Meisters and Weapons team up to learn to fight evil and madness. This is the setting for a wild ride full of electric action scenes, creepy enemies and slapstick comedy.
The teenage cast fulfills the clichés of the shonen genre: there's the ambitious, hard-working girl, the pretentious idiot, the too cool for school-kid, etc. In a sense they are all very caricatural and over the top, but so unashamedly and stubbornly so that I quickly grew fond of everyone. There's also a whole set of secondary adult characters that I really like, and even the villains hold a special place in my heart. All characters have very strong personalities, which are reinforced by the stellar voice acting (of the Japanese version) and by the great character designs.
The animation is colorful and vibrant (although gloomy and gore at times), with very interesting hallucinatory sequences when Madness strikes, and a lot of signature notes that just scream "Soul Eater!". The music has a very cool flair, never pushing itself to the foreground but always adding the special touch.
This show is clearly aimed at a (presumably male) teenage audience, and the humor is often way too childish for my taste. But it also sometimes indulges in totally absurd humor I found uproariously funny (especially the Excalibur "troll episodes"), but then that's my personal taste. There's also a lot of clichés in the narration. But you can overlook this flaws in part thanks to darker themes like madness v.s. order, progress v.s stability, and in part because of the compelling character dynamics.
Because it's the intensity of the relationships between the main pairings of the cast (usually Meister and Weapon) that make me go fan-girl over it. There's no romance, but deep friendship and such amounts of mutual trust and loyalty that it makes for deeply human and relatable relationships.
So if you can generously overlook the pubescent humor and the clichés in the storyline, and can warm up to energetic and goofy teenagers fighting Demons with cool weapons, give Soul Eater a try. It most certainly has a lot of feelings and joy to share with its audience.
