John Doe

My wife had loved the colour yellow. Just adored it. She used to say she could find yellow in everything–in the sun that split the sky into a million other colours at dawn, in the washed-out light of crescent moons, even in the flaxen hair that topped my head, long turned peppery-grey with age. I had little to offer her when we married besides cheery moods and soft smiles, so as a surprise wedding gift I painted the front door of my house bright butter yellow–oh, how she smiled and laughed when I brought her home that first night! That was many years ago now, but I can still see her in my mind’s eye. I find I can no longer remember things the way I used to, just small things. Mundane things. With her, though, they never seemed mundane. I remember the way her shoulders moved when she aired out fresh linens early in the morning, I can remember her in the garden, her hair tied back with a white bandana, tending to sunflower seeds–yellow flowers to match our yellow door. I remember the way her teeth looked when she smiled, all straight and pearly and perfect. I remember all the things about her that she forgot about me. Dementia is an ugly beast, but we never let it bring us down; I delighted in retelling our stories to her, in making new memories by reliving old ones. Forty-eight years of marriage passed blissfully until age finally took her from me. Now, I am left only with a yellow door and a field of sunflowers. The only things left that mark her time, her place, in this world.
It was four loud knocks on that front door that roused me from the dregs of a late-afternoon nap one midsummer night. It was hot, the kind of stifling heat that even a breeze can’t alleviate. Dusk had fallen, the evening star twinkling bright through the kitchen curtains, a hot, hot night that threatened to choke me when I opened the door. On the porch stood a couple, young, bedraggled, dressed in rags that betrayed too-thin frames on both of them. Naturally, I invited them inside for dinner–a remnant of an old habit of picking up broken things to fix them, bringing home strays to show them what love is. How my parents had rued me for such a drive in my early days. But I was excited to have company for a meal. It had been so very long.
Under the dirt and grim, they could not have been older than their late 20’s. Bright blue eyes shone out of the woman’s gaunt face, analyzing me from underneath shaggy black hair. The man’s hair too was black. but his eyes were so dark a brown they glittered a similar colour. I could see my reflection in them, clear as day. Looking at them made something click inside me, something protective, something attached, as if they automatically assumed the representation of a future that could have been for me, but never was; as if in their faces I could recognize the faces of the children my wife and I never managed to have. In that moment I wanted to offer them everything they so clearly needed, and then everything they wanted, and it both delighted and terrified me, because they were really just strangers, and what can strangers be to an old man living alone in a field full of sunflowers, really? Dangerous, is the answer to that question, but I lended them my trust the moment I laid eyes on them. I suppose it was pity.
While I cooked, I tried to speak with them, ask them questions, but they were so withdrawn from me that I wondered what kinds of terrible things had forced them into nomadic living. Names they would not give, and when I asked if they were hungry (a silly question, I know, but you know how it is sometimes trying to make conversation), the woman only smiled wanly at me. The man simply stared, as if he couldn’t hear me. They were strange, queer folk from the start, staying so quiet while they sat with perfect posture at my kitchen table while I bustled around them, busy as a bumblebee with dinner. Very strange, very queer, to think they would receive my hospitality like that, now that I look back on it. I remember that they both sat with their hands folded on their laps, their gazes never leaving me. Now, it is unnerving, but at the time I only remember feeling somewhat awkward under their stares, failing so miserably to make conversation. I must have appeared such a foolish old man to them, although it hardly matters now.
I served them a meal I remember having been one of the wife’s favourites, but for the life of me now I cannot recall what it was. I just know that they never touched it. They sat across my table from me and never so much as looked at the food I had served them. They just stared, silently, at me, watching every bite I took. I think I only managed half my meal before I couldn’t do it anymore, I was so self-conscious, so I packed everything up into my wife’s Tupperwares and stored them in the fridge for later. I was never keen on leftovers, but she had hated to waste food. They watched me do this with some interest, but never moved. I could feel the weight of their scrutiny, and I wished they would leave then, but I could see even in the corner of my eye that they stayed perfectly still. I felt rather than heard myself speak.
“I usually turn the television on after dinner. I…I hope that’s alright by you.”
They made no response. It felt like it took years for the television to turn on. The screen came to life in slow motion, turning from black to gray to unearthly blue. It gave me time to feel every pinprick of those two unmoving stares along my spine. Everything felt dreamlike around me–the shining of the stars outside, the movement of the curtains in the hot, heavy air around the open windows, the low buzzing of the lightbulbs humming in the kitchen behind me–until the television snapped me out of my reverie with it’s harsh, cacophonous voices. As usual, it was the news programme.
“…under no circumstances should you answer the door tonight,” the anchor was saying, “they are not what they seem.”
My eyes were fixated on the screen, on the anchor’s face. He always does the evening news, that chap, but I can’t remember his name. He’s young, but that night his face was full of worry lines, and I suddenly had the impression he was much older than he had always looked onscreen.
“Whatever you do,” he cautioned me, “don’t let them inside.”
I looked away the, catching my own reflection in the glass of the window. Outside, sunflowers danced in the dark, and little spherical lights my wife has wound around the porch railing glowed yellow. I looked comical superimposed on that quiet scene, television remote clutched in calloused, blue-veined hands and a checked shirt tucked tightly into my trousers. I was floating there, watching the sunflowers wave in and out and in and out of my transparent chest. And then, behind me, I could see my guests, standing now, still staring, their mouths both gaping open. The reflection made it look like their mouths kept growing longer, almost to an inhuman size, like the way snakes unhinge their jaws to eat bird’s eggs.
I turned, slowly, my stomach knotting itself over and over again so tightly I could feel it making its way up into my throat. I thought then it might choke me.
They were already upon me when I faced them, moving with deadly silence. My face was mere inches from hers, her eye sockets all empty and black and hollow, her mouth a cavernous one lined with tiny clear teeth shaped like ice cream cones. The only noise she made was a quiet hissing, constant, as if she were taking one long inhale. I thought she might scream, but she just kept hissing. I couldn’t make a sound, I couldn’t even scream, and I felt my jaw go slack as my shoulders tensed and the remote fell from my hands to the floor.
She put a grimy hand on my face, thumb on my chin and fingers on my temple. Her mouth met my other temple, sinking tiny sharp points into my cranium. I felt the blood trickle sticky down my face, blurring in my eyes, as she pulled something smoothe out of my head. It felt like she was unfolding all the gyri of my brain and sucking them out of the hole in my head. I know all about the brain, you know, from when my wife was sick. Her mouth felt wet, and I could only think that it was my grey matter dripping down her chin and onto my carpet. The pain was unbearable. Stars exploded behind my eyes, excruciating bright light that dizzied me, and after that I could only see blackness. I would have collapsed if she hadn’t been holding me up. How she had so much strength in one arm, I will never know. She was so small, so slight…so fragile a thing.
I did lose consciousness. The shock, it must have been. I woke up with my face in the carpet, breathing in my own coagulating blood. I can’t remember what colour the carpet used to be, but it was rusty when I woke up. Everything I looked at bent around me as if I was looking at it all through the bottom of a bottle–all shaky and almost circular. I was so dazed, I couldn’t remember my name or where I was or how old I am–all things I used to ask my wife every morning when she woke up. I was afraid. I thought I was losing myself like she did. I could see the front door open, could see the little yellow lights paving the way down the stairs to the road, and I moved towards that, the yellow, crawling, until I was outside. I had to use the stairs and the railing to stand up. After that, I lost time. It was pitch black and I walked out into the sunflowers. I didn’t know what time it was. I still don’t know where I was trying to go. I was just…going. And then I was on the highway, walking, I don’t know how long I walked for, but I didn’t think of a single thing. It was as if I didn’t have a thing left in this head of mine.
You know, they call them “hospitals,” but there’s not much hospitable about them. I understand now. You keep us all here like animals, locked up with no freedom to do anything. You’re not helping us, you’re studying us. You’re trying to understand them. Those things that came for us and ate us and left us like this. Hollow shells. You make me tell you this story every godforsaken day and you never think about what it does to me, because it’s the only thing I remember anymore and it’s the only thing you care to know about. You never even tell me who I am. I’ll bet you don’t even know. I’m just another nameless face in this crowd to you. You treat us like your lab rats, damn you! Let me put your experiment to rest; I’ll tell you what I know to be true. Those things were here to hunt us, and they will come back for you. You people who remember them and remember me and remember what it’s like to feel sunshine on your face and hear your loved one’s voices and have hopes and dreams for the future. And then the next batch of up and comers will lock you up like me and you’ll know what it’s like to be treated like refuse. You won’t even let me sleep, you’re so afraid of losing the rest of me. You think I’ll let the rest of myself slip away and I’ll lose my value to you. Well, I’ll tell you what: maybe it’s not such a bad idea. So maybe I will let myself go.
Maybe this is the night where I say goodbye, and remember that I said it in the morning.

Phantasma

There is a phantom that makes his home in the dust and cobwebs of my bedroom, a poltergeist flitting in and out of sunbeams and bumping in the dark. I can hear him sigh my name in the back of my mind every day at noon; I can feel him ease down onto the arm of my chair to read over my shoulder the newspaper, and I know the door opens just a little too quickly every evening when I come home. When the pages of my book refuse to stay open, when all my houseplants begin to wither and die, or the cat goes galloping down the hallway in a random panic, I know that he is restless. His presence lingers around me, heavy like an uninvited guest, but he always welcomes me home with the open arms of an old friend.

He keeps me awake at night when he cries, terrible, awful, heaving cries, coming from the darkest corners of my bedroom. Some nights, I can feel his salt tears on my cheeks, leaving cool colourless trails down my hot heartbeat skin, whispering like autumn winds past, or his fingers trailing across the bony bumps of my hips, turning once-rosy skin blue and rotting, deadening under his airy gray touch. He sings sweet nothings of a time long ago to me in the dark hours of the morning, his voice soft as cold September rains. When I close my eyes I dream of him, his face flush with colour and the sun dancing through his eyelashes, his smile a night terror I can no longer start at. I awake, and there too is his face, grinning out of the darkness and relishing the circles of purple he puts beneath my eyes. On hot midsummer nights, he slips a knife between my shoulder blades, a sharp sliver of cold biting between my vertebrae, popping them apart and relaxing all my muscles, stinging and burning where his poison fingers probe my wounds for my bloody essence that he seeks to make his own. I wake with bruised flesh, hues of purples and blues and browns, where his hungry hands have grabbed and pulled at my limbs in an attempt to make me his.

He lives in dismal grayscale, and I in ghastly technicolour. He cannot find his place within my watercolour world. He begs me to recall his name when his hands gently caress my shoulders while I make breakfast, three syllables that tumble across the tongue in shades of red and orange. He queries after the colour of his hair while I brush my teeth in the bathroom mirror, toying with once-black tousled curls now white and streaked a grey translucence. He asks me desperately to remind him what colour was his favourite when he still lived as I change out burnt lamp lightbulbs, staring at me with empty eye sockets where once eyes so dark a brown they glittered black resided, deeper than the deepest outer space. I remember falling into those eyes for the first time, drowning in them, feeling that I could both know everything about him and yet leave him a sparkling enigma all at once if I just let them wash over me like a gentle deep-ocean wave. I floated content in the great voiding depth of those eyes, never once suspecting that they hid a raging riptide, a famished black hole, that they had trapped me as a pitcher plant traps a beetle, feeding off it for days.

On my bad days, I ignore him, and he screams at me, a terrifyingly loud and angry bass, like an upset child with the voice of a man, and he opens floodgates that force me to remember everything I push down deep inside. Our play at contented coexistence comes to a screaming halt, giving out a dying gasp of sad summer air that ushers in the cold of autumn with it. On those days, my hair turns white and falls out in clumps, more fine lines around my eyes crease, and I become older and slower and quieter while he stays young and powerful and angry. Later, the colour returns to me cheeks and lips, but I feel a little more tired inside, and in the bathroom mirror I mark the growing transparency of my own skin, knowing I will join him soon and render him content. He cannot give up his living past, and I cannot reconcile what he once was with the thing he has become. It will be the death of me.

The saturated colour of my eyes, the eyes he always loved so dear, dulls every time his fingertips trail my face, never to return. What he touches, he ruins, just as I once ruined him. And I want to leave, I want to, I want to, I want to run away and never look back and never be found and never relive his horrors again—but he is forever bound to me, holding on to that pre-summer bliss of our childhood, when we were two imperfect souls finding perfect solace in one another, reveling in what we were, what we could have been, what we planned to be.

I can bury his skeleton in my closet, but I can never outrun his ghost.

***

PLAYLIST:

The Best Idea I Ever Had—Sew Intricate
Heaven in Hiding—Halsey
I Knew You Were Trouble—Taylor Swift
Somewhere Else—Artist VS. Poet
Million Dreams—The Greatest Showman soundtrack
Unbreakable—Artist VS Poet
Summertime Sadness (cover)—Megan Davies
Edge of Seventeen
I’m Not Dead—P!nk
Saviour—Rise Against
Devil’s Backbone—The Civil Wars
Everybody’s Fool–Evanescence
Apologize—One Republic
Dancing with a Wolf—All Time Low
This Means War—Marianas Trench
Ordinary World—Joy Williams
Man Overboard—Blink-182
Erase This—Evanescence
Ghost—Ingrid Michaelson
Outlines—All Time Low
Oceans—Evanescence
Dearly Departed—Marianas Trench
B-Team—Marianas Trench
Young and Menace—Fall Out Boy
Eyes Like Yours–Shakira
Amnesia—5 Seconds of Summer
Nina—Ed Sheeran
Down—Blink-182
Grand Theft Autumn/Where is your Boy Tonight—FOB
One More Night—Maroon 5
Outer Space/Carry On—5 Seconds of Summer
Dark Side of your Room—All Time Low
Rhythm of your Heart—Marianas Trench
I Miss You—Blink-182
Daddy Lessons—Beyonce
Don’t—Ed Sheeran
A Drop in the Ocean–Elenyi
Nightmares—All Time Low
Call Me When You’re Sober—Evanescence
End of an Era—Marianas Trench
.
(BONUS: The Patron Saint of Liars and Fakes—Fall Out Boy)

Analysis Essay– “Soul Eater” series– “Watch it, or I’ll take your soul!”

I started watching Soul Eater only a few weeks ago–like any good fangirl, it soon took over my life. I finished the anime series and had no idea what to do afterwards, so I figured I’d write about it. I took a challenge from a friend (not a fan of anime) and did my first-ever analysis of a television show. I must apologize for the sorry state of the second body paragraph–I was interrupted while writing and had lost my train of thought by the time I got back.
No, I have not read the manga, in case you’re wondering. But I plan to. And to put the controversy to rest–Crona is male. They refer to him as a “he” and dress him in accordance to that. Just putting that out there, before I get hate mail or something due to the fact I refer to Crona as a boy…
Please enjoy all the stuff I learned from a tv series.

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Any question that is inevitably posed to each individual on the planet can have a multitude of different answers. One of these questions, arguably one of the most important, is this: what is strength? It is easy to see how a question such as this would yield a vast array of answers, each specifically tailored to the individual on a personal basis. Atsushi Ōkubo’s manga and television series Soul Eater explores and justifies many answers one may have to this question. Through intense characterization and evolution seen in his characters, Ōkubo both explicitly and implicitly states messages that his audience can recognize not only as directions in which they can take their answers to this question, but may also identify as life lessons. The Soul Eater series incorporates such lessons that all feed into one overarching idea Ōkubo delves into using rhetorical strategies and expertly administered literary skill specifically utilized to draw his audience in and connect them with his fantastical realm of Death City: that “a sound soul dwells within a sound mind, and a sound body.”

Characterization in Soul Eater is given a special focus and is not an aspect of the series that is easily missed. The overarching idea Atsushi Ōkubo presents is that every character (and therefore, every real human) has both sanity and insanity within them, and finding a balance between them is vital to finding one’s true strength. There are forces in life on each side of the spectrum that work to pull the individual to each extreme—and neither is better than the other. Soul Eater focuses a lot on good against evil, presenting the idea that giving into madness is “evil.” However, there is also the idea presented that, when utilized correctly, madness is not always such a bad thing—it can, in fact, help to make one stronger. The characters of Maka Albarn and Soul Eater Evans are prime examples of this; both being infected with black blood, they were each expected to succumb to its evil side effects and spiral out of control and reason. Seemingly against all odds, though, together meister and weapon found a way to tap into the insanity the black blood offered them and utilized it to make themselves stronger as individuals and as a team—the physical and mental strength the black blood gave them served them well in later battles and allowed them to further develop their skills, all while giving them common ground on which they could connect and soul-search on their own. For Maka and Soul, finding the balance between sanity and insanity allowed them to develop on intrapersonal and interpersonal basis’s, which played a large part in Maka’s ability to save Soul and defeat the kishan Asura alone in the final battle of the series. Asura was unable to comprehend how Maka could continue to stand up to him when he perceived her as “weak”—his definition of strength did not match with hers, as these two characters are juxtaposed in their responses to insanity. Asura gave himself over completely to insanity, which resulted in his becoming a kishan—he fully believed that the lack of fear and pain equated to strength. Maka, however, recognized how vital the balance was between madness and stability and also realized how important both fear and pain are to life; this rationale revealed to her what true strength was, and she was able to utilize it to play the hero and save the day. Similarly, Maka and Soul’s strength can be compared to that of Crona and his weapon Ragnarok. While Crona had the invincibility and physical strength he needed to pose as a serious threat to Death City from the black blood naturally running through his veins, he can be described as a boy weak of character—Ragnarok and Medusa ran his life to the point where he suffered from personality disorders and lacked the strength to look after himself. He was forced to give into madness against his will and therefore couldn’t find the balance Soul and Maka had found, making him a powerful adversary for even Death the Kid, but really nothing more than a challenging fight. For Crona, strength was an aspect of life he had to learn to find through experiencing sanity for an extended period of time—opposite to what any other character had to experience to find their strength. Life at the academy introduced Crona to friendship, and it is through this that he found his strength—he remained a soft spoken and gentle character, but was not afraid to defend those whom he considered his friends, which came as a huge shock to Medusa as it was the first strength of character her son had ever exhibited.  The characters in Soul Eater are each defined by their interpretation of strength and the manner in which they pursue or find it—the exploration each character must go through to find their strength offers the idea to the audience that finding it is never an easy task, and that there are many different ways in which to go about it that will speak specifically to one as an individual.

Evolution of character in a series like Soul Eater can be used to illustrate to the audience incredibly important points the creator wishes to make—and while we may be longing for this evolution to take place in such a way that teaches Black Star to be less obnoxious or Kid to get over his obsession with symmetry, the prime character evolutions Ōkubo wants to bring into the light in his series take place in Stein and Crona. Stein’s evolution is by far the more obvious of the two, and works in tangent with Maka and Soul’s pursuit of balance to convey to the audience that those whom we perceive as strong are not always as untouchable as they seem. To begin with, Stein’s character is established as questionable but it is clear to see that he is good at heart. He is in many ways a role model to his students—as the most powerful meister the DWMA has ever seen and the wielder of a Death Scythe, a man held in high esteem in the academy and the holder of extensive knowledge in many subjects, Stein seems to his students (and to the audience) as an invincible force working only for good. However, his quick descent into madness, facilitated by Medusa, brings to the light that he was never as strong as he seemed. He was also incapable of saving himself from insanity—he required help from those who cared for him to pull him from Medusa’s grasp and bring him back to his old self. On the other hand, Crona exhibits the opposite sort of evolution and takes his life from the insane to sane. Notably, he also required help to do so—it is important to realize that both Stein and Crona were unable to defend themselves in certain aspects and had to rely on the strength of others at times. With this in mind, Ōkubo’s purpose behind these main evolutions of characters becomes clear: sometimes strength is not something that can be obtained on one’s own. Both Stein and Crona discover strength and lose strength in their own ways, but finding the balance between the two was something neither could manage on his own.

Ōkubo’s main rhetorical device in Soul Eater is the use of pathos. His characters are all specifically designed and developed so members of his audience can in some way connect to one, some, or all of them. One may find themselves sympathizing with Crona’s lack of confidence, identifying their inner hard worker with Maka, their inner perfectionist and egotist with Black Star, or sharing in Spirit’s desire to be the perfect parent—whatever the case, the characters of Soul Eater are endearing each in their own way that leaves the audience longing for a happy ending for each. Ōkubo’s characters are written and developed in such a way that, although they reside in an entirely fantastical universe, they seem real enough to the audience, which is largely where the series’ charm is found; the audience is left almost wishing they could be a part of Death City and reside in that charm themselves. Ōkubo uses a notable rhetorical device to drive home his appeal to pathos and make his audience feel this way—symbolism. Half of his characters have the ability to transform themselves into usable weapons, an idea that can represent inner strength if viewed in the right way. Outwardly, characters like Liz and Patty may not appear as the epitome of “strong,” but figuratively speaking their ability to transform into twin pistols speaks to the idea that in every person there resides a force capable of self defense, incredible offense, and of providing one with confidence and peace of mind. Furthermore, each character’s weapon type may speak to their strengths as well. As twin pistols, the Thompson sisters obviously work better as a team, while weapons like Soul and Tsubaki are capable of working alone if necessary. A little research will tell you that the weapon Soul turns into, a scythe, historically was used as a farm tool and was depicted as a weapon normally in the hands of Death himself (which would explain why the elite weapons in the DWMA are dubbed as “Death Scythes”). Besides the obvious interpretation of Soul’s transformation being “the harvester of souls,” he can represent those of a poorer class in a way. Considering scythes were used primarily by peasants, Soul is a representation in himself as the strength of the lower class—while the character himself may not have been a lower class citizen, or outwardly project as such, his transformation into a scythe that is utilized as a dangerous weapon would appeal to the less wealthy as a symbol of hard work and of power that can be found within. Similarly, Tsubaki’s default transformation is representative of the same thing, as she turns into a chain scythe. However it is important to note that Black Star primarily uses her defensively while she is in this form—speaking to the fact that strength can be found not only in the offensive, but the defensive as well. While this speaks largely to Tsubaki’s character, of course it is vital it be noted that she has the ability to be used offensively as well, and dangerously so. Her ability to take on multiple different forms, all of which involve a blade of some description, sends an important message to the audience—that although one may be soft and gentle, there is always an aspect lying within that has the capability of causing damage. Both Soul and Tsubaki have aspects to their transformations that can speak to this idea (Witch and Genie Hunter and the Enchanted Sword mode, respectively). Yet again, Ōkubo offers up the idea of balance within to his audience—this time, that finding balance between the strengths of offense and defence in all people is key to discovering true, overall strength.

As the creator of Soul Eater in general, Ōkubo was able to take the liberty of utilizing literary devices to help establish the life lessons he offers through his series. The strongest literary device he utilizes becomes clear in the anime’s finale—he relates madness to bravery, all the while associating both with strength. Maka’s persistence in fighting the kishan Asura is explicitly stated as her method of finding strength through bravery; as she later tells Asura, “bravery is in all of us.” His retort, “so it’s like madness then,” not only reinforces the idea that occasionally insanity can provide for us strength, but offers up another lesson that can be taken from the series—that all people have both sanity and insanity within. Ōkubo also came up with a vast array of quotes pertaining to fear and pain in the final battle scene that tie into these ideas—a notable one from Asura is as follows: “Sitting there in the dark, I had a chance to think about a lot of things, including the nature of the world itself. And after lengthy consideration, I realized something; when all is said and done, the world is a very unknowable place. On the surface, all appears rational, orderly. But what truly lies beyond that thin veneer of reason? Stability and superiority, or chaos and madness? What are we truly made of in the end? Is there truly any meaning to the lives we lead? Or are we nothing but hollow vessels? These are questions we can never answer, for we cannot see through the world’s fragile layer of skin. So we live our lives filled with uncertainty, never knowing what we truly are or what the future may bring, all we can do is imagine. Life becomes an unsolvable mystery with any number of twists and turns at the end. And that’s enough to fill any soul with terror.” Asura’s commentary is not only directly connected to the idea of finding balance on the spectrum between reason and madness, but also bring into the light the fact that no world, even one of fantasy, is as perfect as one is sometimes lead to believe. Which, in some ways, makes Asura a more relatable character—it is well established that fear and the illusion of inadequacy ran his life when he was human, and somehow still dictates his actions and thoughts as an evil supernatural being; there was no escape for Asura because he couldn’t find the balance between anything in his life. This along with many other literary liberties in the form of strong lines are devices the creator of Soul Eater used to pull in his audience and teach them that finding balance within is vital to finding strength within, which sometimes requires pain and fear to be felt rather than repressed.

Atsushi Ōkubo’s anime series Soul Eater has a lot more to it that just an action-packed joyride through the mystical realm of Death City. Delving deeper into it than just skin deep viewing, it is revealed that finding strength and balance in life come hand in hand—one cannot really have one without the other. Through the journeys each character undertakes throughout the series, Atsushi Ōkubo teaches his audience that every person has both sanity and insanity within, that regardless of this there is always a place for each, and that elements in the world such as fear and pain are not meant to be suppressed—only through acceptance of all this and finding balance and a place for each can one discover their true strength. As Maka so eloquently puts it at the beginning of each episode, spiritually and philosophically speaking: “A sound soul dwells within a sound mind, and a sound body.”

sources and references:-Soul Eater Wiki
-wikipedia (scythe history)
-GOOGLE images