Did you ever want a series that shows you good action without any of the Shonen cliches interfering? Well look no further than Soul Eater.

Soul Eater is a Tim Burton-esque anime about trainee weapon meisters and their living Deathscythe weapons fighting against the likes of Kishin Demons and Witches all in the name of the Grim Reaper himself.
We join lead protagonist Maka Albarn and her partner Soul Eater as she hunts for the witches soul to make Soul Eater into a proper Deathscythe fit for the reaper. The same goes for Black Star and his partner Tsubaki along with Death the Kid and the Thompson Sisters.
But their lessons at the Deathmeister academy get disrupted by the Witch Medusa as she plots to revive the Kishin Asura, so it's up to the Academy students to stop her while also fighting off other Witches, a Werewolf, a Swordsman and Crona the ambiguously gendered emo kid with black blood and a scary weapon named Ragnarok.
Now this does sound like a plot of any Shonen series but the execution of the show is well done; this is mainly helped by the very stylish art style, awesome music and well choreographed fight scenes. With all this you kind of forget that the majority of the cast are all rejects from other anime. Allow me to expand.
Watching these characters it becomes immediately obvious where they take their inspirations from. Maka reminds me of Witch Hunter Robin, Black Star reminds me of Naruto, Death the Kid is the spitting image of XXXHolic's Kimihiro Watanuki, Soul Eater looks like the forbidden love child of Dead Leaves and the Gorillaz while the Thompson Sisters could easily walk into Burst Angel no problem. Only Tsubaki seems to escape the comparisons. The supporting cast does slightly better with original designs at least but they aren't nearly as strong as the main cast.
Quite early on we meet the unoriginally named teacher Dr Stein, and while at first he seems awesome through his battles and eccentric personality but after a while he just gets annoying, this is true for a lot of the supporting cast as they seem to fade into one dimensional characters rather quick and this is where the show starts showing it's cracks as well.
For a series with enough source material for a long runner, it tends to rush things an awful lot come part two. New characters are introduced out of the blue both enemy and ally with nothing much to work from other than names. The end result is a taped together mess which ends in quite a let down come last episode.
Final Verdict: It's definitely worth picking up but random pacing in part two really messes with the story far too much. Nevertheless its art style and action really save it from being generic.