After a while, I was enjoying Soul Eater Not more than I was Soul Eater. It's pretty simple to see why, Soul Eater got caught up in its own seriousness and forgot to be fun.

The other downside was that a number of characters were only introduced after things got serious, so this will allow us to see a little bit of the other Meisters (Ox, Kim, Kilik) in a more relaxed setting that they didn't get in the parent story. The best parts of Soul Eater were always the less heavy portions of the story: BlackStar being a dumbass, Excalibur, Kid being a neurotic mess, and Maka and Soul bickering with her father or Blair.

Soul Eater Not even dives right away into ruining Tsugumi's dream of being fought over by meisters...so she gets two girls instead. Or the fact that the other weapon is real proud of himself at his transformation ability, but has to be grabbed by the back of his still human head.

Even the characters are fun. Tsugumi is supernaturally average, Anya is obsessed with getting into contact with commoners, and Meme is the airhead moron who is stupid enough to forget her own name. I suspect that Anya is quite a bit more weak willed that she appears from her backfired nonchalance tsundere tears, and Meme is probably not nearly as incapable as she seems. Tsugumi, being supernaturally average, is likely the moderating force, dragged into others' idiotic adventures.

Sure, the art is more doughy, but the stakes are pretty low here, that much is obvious.