A Guide to Souls & Soul Consumption

As the series name itself implies, Soul Eater is a world where a key feature is the consumption of souls. This, regardless of the who or what, is done as a means of power advancement, but not every soul will cause the same effects, when eaten. As such, this guide has been made to better explain what happens when different souls are consumed.

The short of most of this is simply that consuming souls grants a power boost, as well as has the chance of absorbing some of the powers of the person whose soul has been eaten. Things such as Black Blood, as it is physical, cannot be absorbed through the soul. However, things like self-resonance techniques, themes (or hints of them), madness, and other abilities can. This extends to hints of the victim’s weapon form, as such is an extension, in many ways, of their soul. For the most part, things absorbed from a weapon form will be purely aesthetic. An additional, and rather particular note, is also that eating the soul of a soul-consumer does NOT grant the consumer the victim’s soul count, or even a portion of it. It is also worth noting that souls are not supposed to taste good; Soul Eater Evans is unusual in his enjoyment of eating souls.

For visuals and basic descriptions of souls, please read the Classifications of Souls

Soul Physics
First and foremost, Souls are metaphysical entities. As such, they can be touched and interacted with by things that have souls, or are under the control of something in direct contact with a soul (i.e. a meister bagging a soul for their weapon or the DWMA), but not with anything physical (like a crane). Because of this, anything inanimate, or a clown (since they don't have souls) cannot interact with a soul. From a visual standpoint, there are very specific conditions for the seeing (or general sensing/perceiving) of a soul. There's the typical Soul Perception, which is limited to only some meisters (and can be any of the five sense). Once the soul is "free," however, where it no longer has a body (usually because the being was destroyed), the soul remains visible until it "moves on," however, it will start to fade over time. If not consumed or preserved, a soul will exist for a year after the body has perished. After this point, it will have "moved on" to wherever Death sends them; this is not something speculated about for SERP.

The Process of Soul Consumption
The anime and manga both showcase the eating of souls fairly clearly and simply. Specifically, since the process of "eating" is engrained in people's brains as working with their natural digestive tract, soul consumers typically do so as they would with food, shoving the soul in their mouth. Instead of the soul following the rest of the digestive tract, however, the soul is absorbed into the consumer's own soul upon swallowing. Though the specifics for the various soul consumption side effects differ by soul, as detailed below, there are also some things that are different based on the consumer, as well. For example, a basic weapon could, in theory, eat any kind of soul (with side effects), but what about something that would not typically eat souls? Well, most humans (and other beings that cannot consume souls for whatever reasons) simply cannot consume souls unless/until they are corrupted. If someone who could not consume souls mistakenly swallowed one, they would go into a spontaneous coughing/vomiting fit. Unless they were forced by an outside source to keep it down, the soul would be expunged before it could be "absorbed" by their own soul, thus leaving most people uncorrupted.

By technicality, there is very little difference between a meister and an average human. However, it’s the difference between them that makes them relevant, in this instance. Meisters have stronger souls than the average human, and are thus able to utilize them. This allows them, always, to be able to wield; other abilities that can be available to a meister, due to their soul include: Soul Perception and Soul Menace. While wielding and Soul Perception cannot be gained from consuming a meister’s soul, hints of their Soul Menace techniques and any other abilities can. Such things must be approved by a staff member, however, preferably, the one that approved the initial abilities in the first place. The bodies of these victims would decay as normal.


Abilities are the among most obvious things to be gained from the consumption of a weapon. To be specific, the abilities the weapon initially gained by consuming other souls; these are not their Soul Resonance abilities. It’s possible, sometimes, for hints of the weapon form to appear on the consumer, but these would be almost exclusively for other weapons, as well as being purely aesthetic. Elemental capabilities can be gained from a weapon form, if the consumer can handle it. Demon Weapon bodies would decay; Dark Weapon bodies would ribbon.


Death Scythes & Demon Blades, being higher tiers than basic weapons, are more likely not only to provide powers upon consumption, but stronger ones. There are, however, exceptions to the possible abilities gained. Eating a Death Scythe or Demon Blade soul will not allow the consumer to gain the no-sacrifice, multiple, or Grigori-wing abilities. If the victim has a strong enough madness, the consumer also runs the risk of gaining madness, especially their strand, upon consumption; this could prove to be overwhelming to the consumer. As per the usual trend, Death Scythes, being innocent, would decay; Demon Blades would ribbon.


Eating a Hunter’s Axe soul is every bit as risky as eating a monster’s… with none of the reward. The soul of an Axe has no additional perks than the soul of a any other first-tier weapon, but has the same effects eating a monster’s soul does (without the requirement of continuing to eat only that soul type). Every single Axe soul consumed has the potential of being deadly, and will almost always leave the consumer writhing in pain. As far as eating a Grimoire goes, the consumption, or attempted consumption, of a Grimoire’s soul will automatically kill the consumer, every time. None of an Axe’s mutations can be gained from eating their soul, only their base abilities and weapon form aesthetics. Like a standard monster, the bodies of these would actually pop or explode, leaving only the soul in their wake.


To begin with, let me reiterate that the consumer does not gain their victim’s soul count, or even a portion of it, upon consumption. If a KE has a strong enough madness, however, that can be gained, even its strand, through consumption. Eating the soul of a full Kishin runs the automatic, and almost guaranteed risk of falling full victim to the Kishin’s madness; if the Kishin has a separate madness from the consumer, they will most likely become cripplingly overwhelmed; if it is the same, this chance still remains, albeit smaller. Elsewise, the consumer, as usual, can gain the usual hints of, or full on abilities or themes. The bodies of these will always ribbon, but higher level ones are likely to burst as well; Kishins will burst while ribboning.


To clarify in advance, all weapon-variant classes can only consume one witch soul. They will be rendered incapable of consuming anymore after it, and can even risk purging their entire soul count even once they’ve levelled. Other classes consuming witch/sorcerer souls will have varying effects depending on their base class. For most, eating a witch or sorcerer’s soul will result in immense pain. Depending on the strength of the consumer, they will experience anything from a full mental breakdown or will gain the knowledge of how to use one basic ability or spell their victim possessed, but only one. This requires staff approval. Witch/Sorcerer souls pop, creating a more volatile burst (or explosion) the more powerful the person was in life.


Seeing as Clowns do not have souls (specifically for this reason), they cannot be consumed. That is the end of the discussion. If someone were to try to eat a clown’s Madness Orb, they would immediately go into a vomiting fit, even after the orb has been regurgitated. They are also likely to fall into a temporary psychotic break brought on by the particular type of madness the clown was made out of, even if they share madness strands with it. Eating one too soon after eating other souls can cause one to reject or vomit up the most recently consumed soul(s). The body of the clown would crumble into their components or simply disappear.


Monster soul consumption is fairly cut and dry. Eating a monster soul has two main effects: the user becomes locked into the soul type; the second effect is that monster soul consumption causes mutations to the consumer's own DNA. Because of these two things, eating any other type of soul will purge the consumer's soul count and runs an extremely high likelihood of killing them. Weapons that have eaten only monster souls become Hunter's Axes and subsequently Eibon's Grimoires. Due to the volatile nature of monster souls, it is unknown if anything but a weapon can consume them. Monster bodies pop, burst, or explode, depending on how powerful the monster was; if it was corrupted, it also ribbons.


Characters that fall into the "other" category, unless they're a base human, will more than likely have too unstable of souls to be consumed by anything without causing adverse effects and likely being expunged, assuming the soul itself doesn't immediately shatter upon its host body's death. If the soul victim is a patchwork soul, the exact effects depend on what the patches are, as they would be a combination of every single effect of each piece. So, if there were a witch/innocent patch, a weapon could not eat the soul without purging their count (and corrupting themself, if they haven't already) because the soul counts as both. If it is a combination of only innocent/corrupted souls, and the consumer is of the KE line then this will change nothing for them, though the instability still runs the risk of a rejection or becoming violently ill.

One of the biggest and most important distinguishing factors of souls, especially in regards to the consumption of such, is based on whether or not the soul being consumed is considered corrupted. A soul is considered Corrupted if, and only if, the user has eaten at least one innocent soul. This corruption is irrelevant for the consumption of Monster souls, as they are treated as "neutral" on the corruption scale regardless.

The purity of a soul relies simply on moral standards. For example, someone who commits a heinous crime like intentional murder would permanently have an evil sway to their soul, but they are only considered corrupted if they eat an innocent soul.

Madness is a thing that exists inside of everyone, in varying degrees and levels. In each person, it expresses itself differently, and while the Kishin Asura held the Madness of Fear, inspiring such in others during his time, it is not necessarily the most prevalent madness in every person. Madness is increased by the consumption of innocent souls, especially pure ones, and can be gained (or minutely effect) the consumer of a maddened soul.

Strong Souls are souls that are naturally so powerful that instead of being worth the usual one soul value, are instead worth a total of ninety-nine. As such, successfully killing one of these powerful beings would mean that a weapon could feasibly only be in two hunts, a Strong Soul hunt and a Witch/Sorcerer one, and then reached its leveled states. Strong Souls can be corrupted just as easily as regular souls, meaning that one could feasibly be used for either a Death Scythe or a Demon Blade; however, they can only be possessed by humans, so a Strong Monster, Witch, or Other Soul is not possible.

As shown in canon, it is possible to purge a character of their soul count. For the most part, this purging has simple effects, overall. The soul count of the purged individual drops to zero. They then lose all of their previous abilities, especially ones adapted from previously consumed souls, and have to start over from the beginning, if they choose to do so. In addition, this purging can act as a "cleansing" ritual as well. This can remove the corruption of an individual if they allow it to happen. Effectively, they'd only have to will the cleansing to take effect to do so, though such has never happened. While the effect of madness cannot be wholly eliminated, and in fact, a purged individual would be more susceptible to the effects of such until they readjusted, this does weaken the hold their madness has on them. A cleansed weapon could go from previously being a Dark Weapon/Demon Blade to taking the path towards a Death Scythe. Purging an Eibon's Grimoire, however, would kill them, and runs a high risk against Hunters' Axes, as well.