Details and Symbols: Soul Eater’s Sun and Moon

Soul Eater is Ookubo Atsushi‘s labor of love, and he’s packed it full of fun little details, references, and symbols. Among those details are the stylized, demonic sun and moon that can be seen almost constantly throughout the manga.

 

First panel on page 1, and most common appearance of the moon.

 

The sun and moon play spectator to the manga’s action, and will react both to what’s going on in the scene and the environment where it takes place. The latter aspect is seen mostly with the sun: in the image below, it’s annoyed at the foggy scenery.

And in this one, it’s turning its engines on full blast over a scorching desert (evidently enjoying itself.)

When the action or insanity of a scenario escalates, the sun or moon starts dripping blood from its mouth. The moon’s almost always in this state, but the sun gets there in rare instances.

When things get really insane, so does the moon. In the first chapter, after Soul and Maka lose all the souls they’ve collected, the moon is impaled on a bunch of spires and has been spray-painted with insults.

The moon even takes center stage on this page, wherein it’s still used to convey the insanity of a situation, but as a cut-away from the situation itself.

On the very next page, it’s shown more normal than ever, clearly intended to punctuate the scene transition.

The sun sometimes takes a direct interest in what’s going on.

Admiring Kid's sweet moves.

Wondering what the hell just happened.

It even seems to enjoy its job of waking up the world.

These guys are always fun to look out for. Look out for posts on other cool details from Soul Eater in the future. These are just some of the reasons that Soul Eater is among my favorite manga.

(Soul Eater is licensed in my region by Yen Press, and the releases are quite nice.)

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