What’s a Kishin in ‘Soul Eater?’

The anime Soul Eater is celebrating its 15th anniversary, and though the story came to some sort of a conclusion, many still wonder if we’ll ever see its characters back on our screens again. The series had a very unique art style, even by anime standards, and featured the rather villainous character in the form of Asura, a Kishin. But what actually is a Kishin?

The Soul Eater story revolves around the students of Death Weapon Meister Academy a.k.a DWMA; think Hogwarts but Dumbledore is actually Death (shinigami), and rather than magic, you learn how to wield weapons and hunt down people who are on Death’s list. At DWMA the students are roughly split 50/50, with half the students being labeled ‘meisters’ and the other half ‘demon weapons.’

Despite their crazy abilities, demon weapons are in fact human; they were created using the soul of an evil witch and can transform into a weapon, with some becoming scythes, guns, or swords. They have the ability to consume the souls that they are sent to hunt by Death, and by consuming souls they grow more powerful.

Once in their weapon form, they cannot really control themselves, and therefore need a meister to wield them. In order to become a weapon considered powerful enough to be wielded by death himself would need to consume 99 evil human souls and one Kishin soul, though in the anime it is 99 Kishin eggs (a soul with the potential to become Kishin) and one witch’s soul.

There are very strict rules in place as to who meisters and their demon weapon partners can hunt: they can only go after those on Death’s list, souls that are considered impure and corrupt essentially. If they were to consume the soul of someone pure, that is when they are on the way to becoming a Kishin.

The first Kishin came to be hundreds of years before the events of the main Soul Eater story. Long before Death set up the DWMA and become the more cutesy and daft principal of the school, the Legions of Death were on a mission to bring peace to the world (yes, Death here is the good guy) and would often engage in battles in order to keep said peace.

During one of these battles, a meister came face to face with an opponent they felt they could not defeat, and so, in a desperate attempt to gain more power, they took the life of a good person and secretly fed the soul to their weapon. They continued to do so, gaining more and more power, until they became what is called a Kishin.

Asura was the first Kishin and is the main antagonist of the series. He is the first son of Death and a vessel for his fear so that Death could rule as a “God of Perfect Order” without said fear getting in the way. This fragment of fear inside of him caused Asura to lean quite heavily into madness, appearing calm and collected one minute and then raving mad the next. He grew up shielding himself from the world, quite literally by wrapping himself in many layers of clothing, and it was this fear that caused him to betray his code and take a life outside of Death’s list.

After feeding his weapon partner Varja many pure souls, Asura then consumed Varja, taking into him all those pure souls and granting him the ability to absorb souls himself, without the need for a weapon. After becoming an extremely powerful Kishin, Death intervened and sealed Asura up, stripping him of his skin, draining him of blood, and placing his soul and remains inside his skin. In order to keep Asura contained, Death remained anchored to the spot and from there created Death City and the DWMA.

Of course, within the story, Asura escapes his long imprisonment and it is then down to the students of DWMA to find him and end him for good. Now the anime does diverge away from the manga given that the manga was still being written as the anime was coming out, something which does occasionally happen. Chapter 36 of the anime completely deviates away from the manga.

If you wish to watch Soul Eater you can find it on all good anime sites such as Crunchyroll, Funimation, and in some locations such as Amazon Prime Video.