What I Wish Happened in the Anime: Joe Buttataki

Let’s talk about Joe Buttataki-because I wish so much of Chapters 37 to 40 were adapted into the anime. (But hey, with this week’s news about Soul Eater NOT, who knows whether Meister-hood could still happen?)

Having had this post waiting to publish for a few weeks, along with some separate but related posts, rather than publish them separately, I’ll include them in one lengthy part. Tonight the Toonami episodes take a marked turn from the manga, and the variations made in the anime to Joe’s story is one change that affects the characterization of some main characters, as well as significant plot developments. In the Soul Eater manga, so much of what Joe does—and what happens to him—is in service towards developing other characters. While my argument makes it sound like Joe is only a vessel for the sake of other characters rather than becoming a character in himself, the development he allows for characters such as Marie, Stein, and even Spirit outweighs how little he himself as a character got to develop.

Part of this success in the manga owes to Joe’s powers, and how those abilities help to develop other characters. For example, he has strong aptitude at soul perception, which in turn clarifies the importance of not just strength but spiritual power among Kid, Maka, and their parents. Despite looking like a hunky, muscular guy, Joe’s power is not just physical strength but spiritual strength—something that could become lost in a fight-focused genre like shonen, and again emphasizes what makes Soul Eater so often work: the focus on a spiritual relationship between people and the power of that teamwork, not just punch-punch, kick-kick action scenes. (Not that seeing Black Star vomit back a laser beam isn’t awesome.)

And again, it seems that it is teamwork that allows certain characters to survive, whereas those characters who remain isolated tend to have sad endings. As with other isolated characters such as Crona, Justin, Asura, and to an extent Soul, Joe’s self-imposed isolation leads to his particular conclusion in the manga. Ohkubo seems to play with the theme of contrasting isolation with community, and Joe’s relationship with Marie is part of this ongoing theme: when Joe re-ignites his relationship with her, there is hope, but when he isolates himself, his chance of survival lowers. It’s kind of like a horror film: the first to die are the ones who have the fear of others and a lot of trust issues.

In contrast, in the anime, I’m hard-pressed to find any comparable relationship that Joe has with any other character that could have emphasized this powerful theme of teamwork, that “fear of touching others,” as Soul puts it.

GIF by byakugo

As I talked about last month, the anime could have developed a similar partnership (not necessarily shippable, just platonic) with Blair, but that was a missed opportunity.

There are aspects to Joe in the anime that I enjoyed—the anime took a one-off joke about coffee in the manga and made it into a unique obsession of the character that paid off with some pretty good running jokes. Whereas he added humor to the anime, however, he added that as well as surprising darkness to the manga. In contrast, Joe in the anime struck me as a bland addition who contributed little to the series.

(Spoilers and a very long post below)

For example, Joe toys with Kid, making him doubt his father, which continues a trend from previous moments in the anime regarding Asrua’s presence under Death City, Lord Death’s inability to escape that city, and his father’s complicated relationship with Eibon. But in the end, Kid’s relationship with Lord Death is stagnant. By the anime’s last episode, their relationship is not that much more intimate, not for lack of trying (the father almost dies trying to protect his son) but because Kid and his father get to share little screen time as the anime reaches its last episode, focusing instead on other relationships—and it’s not like those relationships aren’t appealing and didn’t make for good focus: Maka and Crona, Marie and Stein, Tsubaki and Black Star, even Angela and Mifune and, to an extent, Liz and Kid. It’s just too bad that Kid and Lord Death didn’t get a post-credit reunion to show how their relationship is stronger despite the father keeping his son in the dark for so long. I guess Joe’s presence as a troll helps to make Kid suspicious of his father, but by the end of the story, what did that accomplish? It created a problem that motivated Kid’s actions to learn about Eibon, but then when he confronts Lord Death, his dad just shrugs, says, “Sure, I’ll tell you!” and creates anticlimactic (but again, hilarious) closure. The anime does really good at these comedic moments, yet I thought the manga also accentuated drama much better.

As well, Joe makes Sid suspicious, which seems inconsistent as Sid himself was hiding Lord Death’s actions from his own partner Nygus and his boss’s own son Kid, even as he himself was ignorant of what Lord Death was planning.

In comparison, look at what Joe does accomplish in the manga:

When Joe learns that Marie Mjolnir, his previous weapon partner and his former girlfriend, is now teaching at the DWMA, he is a bit like Marie was when she arrived at the school: focused on a relationship more than himself and his own career goals.

And that potential to be one-track-minded helps to show how far along Marie has come since her arrival to the Academy, illustrated when Azusa talks with her colleague about where she stands in her potential romantic relationships with her old boyfriends Joe and Stein, in the same setting the last time these two characters discussed Marie’s love life: the DWMA restroom.

I don’t like limiting a character to just a joke, in this case Marie as an old maid. But Marie is a character built on the basis of already being a strong character, such that her flaws are so over-the-top that they come off as comical rather than as reinforcing negative gender stereotypes. She lacks direction (in her life, as a Death Scythe, and literally finding her way through the DWMA or to Medusa’s lair), but she is a smart, capable fighter who can smash Medusa or Justin Law to bits. She desperately wants to marry (even a toilet!), but she is loyal to her students and the most trustworthy DWMA meisters.

Her bathroom interaction in Chapter 38 with Azusa, regarding her break-up with Joe, is nearly a beat-for-beat reenactment of their introduction to manga readers (and anime watchers). But rather than being a weak attempt to play up the same old tired joke as happens with other running gags in this series (cf. Blair dressed provocatively, Soul has a nosebleed, Maka chops Soul), the joke here in Chapter 38 feels like a bookend to Marie’s introduction, to show how far along she has developed as a character (as a teacher, a parental figure to Crona and others), and what awaits her. The joke here becomes a light moment before the plot gets really dark-before Joe dies, before Kid is kidnapped, before Crona is lost-and Marie, along with Joe, Stein, and others, learn just how wicked Medusa is, and how important it is that this witch be defeated.

Whereas the anime has Joe as a technical expert of magic artifacts—an interesting idea to have a wacky inventor in the series, but one that seemed lackluster, especially when Stein seems more like the traditional mad scientist/gadgeteer than the buff and brawny Joe—in the manga big, strong Joe is actually very spiritual, able to use his soul perception to recognize the snake in Marie’s body. It is his expertise that fascinated me when he interacts with Spirit: it sounds like old work buddies catching up.

And it leads to a hilarious comedy routine that plays with Marie’s sexual appeal without falling into cliché fan service again—and even adds some depth to the otherwise pervy Spirit.

Seriously, look at Spirit—he is going as insane as Stein is!

I do not want to reduce Marie as a joke, which is what can happen with her outfit and Spirit’s derision. But as I said before, I do not see her as only a joke, and even in this moment interacting with Spirit and BJ, she exerts control. For all the talk of her being an old maid who needs to rush to marriage, she is a capable Death Scythe, and as Azusa points out repeatedly, she does not have to be limited by her relationship status.

And it seems Marie in some way accepts that advice. Since her arrival at the DWMA, her focus has been as much on her job as Death Scythe and teacher as it is on potential wife. While she adheres to some traditional gender norms—almost a mother to students like Crona and others, and “Ms. Marie,” the schoolteacher rather than “Professor Marie,” an equal to Stein, Sid, or any other teacher—she is not just a joke. And even dressed as she is, seemingly to impress BJ, when interrogated by her, she answers not to impress him, but to say honestly how happy she is as a teacher to her students, and to be the Death Scythe to a meister:

(Her sigh may be out of relief that the interrogation at least is starting, or perhaps that she is obfuscating how much she loves her students to make Joe jealous; I prefer to interpret her sigh as the former.)

As well, the joke could be that Spirit, despite being the biggest hornball in this series, is not lusting after Marie but laughing at her. Is this a joke that even Spirit does not find Marie to be attractive, hence identifying her again as an old maid? I doubt that joke is emphasized in this moment, and it actually adds some depth to Spirit. Rather than repeating the same tired gag that Spirit lusts after any woman he encounters, he interacts with his fellow Death Scythe, sees her vulnerability—and laughs.

More than that, he tries to help Marie! Yes, Spirit Albarn, the most pathetic lover and unfaithful husband in this manga, is trying to help Marie make BJ jealous! This moment can be as much a joke against Spirit if you want it to be, as he tells Marie what he should be saying—and at what moment should Marie take the advice of this man, whose immaturity prevents him from having the kind of relationships that he wants with his wife and daughter?

This moment is then followed with him, still in a jokey mood, remarking about the Medusa snake he helps dislodge out of Marie’s body. I would love for this moment to show some more variety to Spirit, as someone who can joke around with other Death Scythes.

(“Spirit […] being the biggest hornball”…Hmm…If Spirit ended up in the Lust Chapter, how many months before he turned back into a man?)

Towards developing Marie and Stein, however, Joe ends up dying. I consider his death analogous to the Stuffed in the Fridge problem for many comics—and yet I’m not as troubled by Joe’s death as I am by the deaths of, say, Alexandra DeWitt, Sue Digby, or pretty much any woman in the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Marie is motivated by the death of a romantic partner, and it’s cliché, yet I am impressed that Ohkubo assigns Marie to that role usually reserve for male characters in fictional works, to be the character taking on a call of vengeance. (Barring Calhoun in Wreck-It Ralph.)

Marie still assumes some roles traditionally associated with women in many works of fiction, in this case the civilizer or the nurturer, as she will be Stein’s salvation. Anonymous clarified this role of Marie, especially as it is similar to Maka’s role to Soul (more so in the anime than the manga, I would argue, since in the manga Maka never really brings Soul back from madness so much as Soul does it for himself, but that’s a comparison for another time).

But I was interested with Joe’s story, as it allows Marie to occupy so many roles that disrupt traditional gender binaries. She wants to flirt with Joe by dressing provocatively, but her dialogue and direct reactions to him show a slower pace to a potential relationship with her ex-boyfriend, as she has matured in her year at the Academy and is not going to be troubled, as Azusa warned her, by a drive just to get marry because of some socially imposed shame she should feel for being an “old maid.”

She will be Stein’s nurturing presence.

But she also can kick Medusa’s ass,

Justin’s ass,

And even the Kishin’s skin-suit-wearing ass.

And whereas Joe’s presence in the anime seemed to lead that story on a wild goose chase with little payoff—Kid doubts his dad, learns his dad was alright, and that’s it—in the manga the wild goose chase becomes an archetypal plot (“who killed so-and-so”) but goes a long way to adding depth to Stein. I think the anime did a better job with Stein: the man is going to snap, so you might as well see how far he is willing (or unwilling) to become a villain. In the manga, I find it unlikely that Stein, suffering so much from Medusa and Asura’s madness, would not have snapped as his peers suspect him, when they find Joe dead and Stein’s trademark cigarettes at the death scene.

But I did like how the manga used Joe’s death to reaffirm Stein’s relationship with Spirit—and in the process clarified why the latter would have stuck with someone like Stein, if he really was that fearful of his vivisection experiments. I don’t ship Spirit and Stein—but I can start shipping it based on how far along the two have come by this point in the manga. Spirit left Stein because his life was in danger, and because he found love with the woman who would become his daughter’s mother. He was forced to be Stein’s partner again by his boss, and by the larger motivating factor that people such as Crona and Medusa were threats to his daughter and her partner. Because Spirit is the kind of man who may not like Soul, but regardless will defend him, especially as he will not let an awful parent such as Medusa harm any child.

By this point in the manga, Spirit is not afraid of Stein: he may not know whether the mad scientist actually killed Joe, but he would rather give his former partner the benefit of the doubt to hunt down the real killer, then just assume the worse in a man whom he once trusted as his partner. That Spirit, someone who has the scars to prove that Stein cannot be trusted, is now trusting this man, says a lot about both of them and their relationship. It may not be something good that it reveals—seriously, it’s kind of dumb for Spirit along with Sid and Nygus to just let Stein leave when they should have arrested him—but then again, as Lord Death does not seemed concerned, it seems that even their near-omnipotent boss knew Stein was being set up and was just going through the legal procedures for the lulz.

While Joe dies an ignoble death shortly after his premiere appearance, through his death there is a sense of danger added to the manga—compared with the anime, which has a comparatively and surprisingly low body count among its main character. Aside from Arachne, one Mizune sister, Sid, maybe Asura, and some no-name bystanders and Arachnophobia mooks, no one in the anime dies. (Heck, Medusa dies twice, and she still returns as a snake in the end credits.) Joe’s death anticipates future demises to major characters—Medusa, Mifune, Justin, Lord Death. With Joe’s death and the people responsible for it—actively such as Justin and Medusa, and passively such as Maka for not notifying the Academy about Crona’s treachery—the manga takes a darker turn and hence increases audiences’ fears that any other character can die next. Readers then are left with good reasons to worry when they see Black Star bruised by Mifune and Asura; Maka getting open-heart surgery courtesy of Asura; and Spirit and the others consumed by the Black Blood cloud.

So I like what Joe brought in the manga more than the anime. I just wish that both the manga and the anime could have shown more of him. Like, I don’t know, a Brotherhood-styled remake where, I don’t know, maybe, perhaps, Joe happens to show up in a prologue set of episodes visiting the Academy, long before Kid enrolls as a student, runs into Maka, happens to mention their shared soul perception skills (even discuss the merits of fear-something Maka confronts, whereas Joe thinks, with his re-union with Marie, he can remove from himself-and fails), then returns to his post in the Australian outback?

I guess that’s what fan fic is for.

Anime screen capture by Random C