Mental Illness in Soul Eater

This post will include spoilers for the anime Soul Eater. The opinions expressed in this post are opinions, not facts. I do not own Soul Eater. Also, the character Crona has been stated to have an ambiguous gender, although they are referenced as a girl in the manga and a boy in the anime, so I will avoid assigning one to them. All video clips are dubbed. 

Soul Eater is an anime about a school run by Death that trains people that can turn into weapons, or demon weapons, and their wielders, or meisters, to hunt kishin eggs. Kishin eggs are the souls of humans who have turned to the dark side and committed multiple crimes, such as murder, against humanity. Each weapon-meister pairing is responsible for collecting 99 kishin eggs and one witch soul, and when that is completed, the weapon will turn into a death scythe, or a personal weapon of Death himself. 

This anime is very dark and has underlying psychological themes, particularly about madness, which is similar to a disease in that it is something that can be caught by anyone, although some are easier to infect than others. Madness manifests itself differently in individuals, and there are multiple types of it. There is one character in particular that struggles with madness, and that is Professor Stein. Stein had always struggled with madness, but after the kishin Asura is revived, his madness accelerates to the point where he goes completely insane, causing him to want to dissect everything, join Medusa, and evil witch, and attempt to hurt his students and weapon partner, Marie. 

Stein's struggle is reminiscent of an individual affected by antisocial personality disorder, though not fully. Antisocial personality disorder is a personality disorder where the affected individual feels no empathy for others, cannot distinguish right from wrong, and may have delusions and hallucinations. Stein has always had a desire to dissect anyone and everything, may it be himself, others, endangered animals, or his own child. In this sense, he exhibits traits of antisocial personality disorder. These actions separate him from society and hurt others, but Stein doesn't feel remorse. In fact, he enjoys it. But, when he is able to keep his madness at bay, he is an intelligent, accomplished meister, and a father figure to his students. He obviously cares about his students, although he claims he doesn't, and that is what separates him from antisocial personality disorder. If he were to truly have it, he wouldn't care about his students.

The video is from episode 41 of Soul Eater, "Twirl 'Round and 'Round – A New World in Which the Doc Dances?", and 0:00-2:05 and 3:21-4:16 is one of Stein's hallucinations after he has gone insane. 

The video used is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxvUIJSJHR4 

 Crona is a character that isn't as strongly affected by madness, but still exhibits traits of mental illness, particularly the anxiety disorders. The child of Medusa, Crona was neglected and mistreated as a child leading them to be extremely socially inept. This character has very low self-esteem and is afraid of almost everything, especially failure, betrayal, and social situations. Crona is timid and shy and has difficulty meeting friends. Crona also acts depressed. Where the difference occurs in this interpretation of Crona is that anxiety disorders are not caused by a poor upbringing, whereas Crona's problems were caused by being reared by Medusa.

The video is from episode 21 of Soul Eater, "May My Soul Reach You – A Dry Heart inside Unbearable Isolation?" and is a flashback inside Crona's soul. 

The video used is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeUFAE8Zums  

Another character that isn't directly affected by madness but still shows symptoms of a disorder is Black Star. He has very strong symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder, which show in his belief that he is superior and will surpass God. He is extremely arrogant, vain, and cocky, but yet, doesn't handle losses well. When he does lose, he tries his best to get back at the victor and belittle them, often by fighting them until he wins. The one area of narcissistic personality disorder he doesn't show as much is the 'lack of empathy' symptom. Despite his violent and vain personality, Black Star does care about his friends really deeply, as evident in episode 11 when he withstands beating by a village to help support his weapon partner Tsubaki. 

The video is from episode 2 of Soul Eater,"I Am the Star! The Big Man Is Showing Up Here?". There are mic sounds in this video, so don't turn up the volume too loud.

The video used is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-fvlG5dzHw#t=291

Finally, Death the Kid has a crippling case of obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD. This is partially cased by him inheriting the madness of order, but Kid has taken it to extreme lengths with his obsession over symmetry, This obsession over symmetry, and all of the compulsive actions that come with it, leads him to stop midway in a battle just to check and see if a painting is even, or fold the ends of all of the toilet paper rolls into triangles. His OCD usually works against him- whenever an enemy is perfectly symmetrical he is unable to fight it, but in other cases, it works for him- whenever the enemy is unbearably asymmetrical, he becomes enraged and beats it up. In fact, the only issue with this theory is that Death the Kid is over-the-top and unrealistic when it comes to the lengths of his OCD. Nobody, not even those with the most chronic cases of OCD, will risk their life just to fold toilet paper. 

The video is from episode 43 of Soul Eater, "The Last Magic Tool – Mission Impossible for Unarmed Kid?".   

The video used is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrxIfKn3kns