Tfw I gotta treat the anime as more canon than the manga due to the mental gymnastics I gotta pull to respect half the shit in there. (Also any literature with a gender bend in the canon for one part but never talked about again by the supposedly close group is automatically *disgusted noises* yuck)
personally i have a weird amalgam of stuff from the anime and stuff from the manga that i treat as the true canon of the series, in part because there’s some junk in both that i just don’t care for and in part because towards the end of the manga ohkubo was replaced by a pod person and the writing just absolutely tanked.
generally i consider the events of the anime canon through the outside of the castle in baba yaga arc ( especially the part where mifune lives and is not dead THANK YOU VERY MUCH ), but look at the events of the manga within the castle as the canon conclusion to that segment of things — in my opinion, kid’s fight against mosquito is on a character level very significant, as it was deeply humbling for him and the lowest he’s ever been brought by a fight. it’s also the impetus for salvage arc to be any manner of a thing, and salvage arc is, outside the aforementioned r63 nonsense, absolutely essential as a piece of core canon. there is no way to preserve the narrative arc of black☆star’s character development OR death the kid’s without salvage, and regardless of its flaws, i still consider it one of the best arcs in terms of character writing, if not the best overall ( though okay, clown arc is also really good character study )
actually, here, let’s make things a little easier to understand and just use this list of arcs from the wiki for reference. going off this, here’s the arcs that i consider to be core canon and place more stock in when i’m discussing meta, along with the caveats and disclaimers i apply:
anniversary celebration arc
internal investigation arc
arachnophobia vs dwma / operation baba yaga’s castle arc**
the second / final war on the moon arc + ( the anime’s final battle isn’t named, but like. that )****
* = i don’t really consider maka or kid’s prologue to be important ( outside of what kid’s arc demonstrates about necromancy within the universe of soul eater ) and really only view black☆star’s prologue as core canon. i am a biased fuck though, so.
** = like i said, there’s some things in each version of the attack on baba yaga’s castle that i consider narratively significant enough to be canon. overall i place more stock in the manga’s depiction of this arc, since it sets up salvage and includes some things that are Important to me, while the manga version of this arc is the final battle and leads directly to the end of the story.
*** = this one’s not really important, but i include it in my personal core canon anyway since we get to see kilik take center stage and fight holy shit i love him
**** = my internal canon for the endgame of the series is... complicated. the best way i can explain this is that i don’t consider any of the characters who were only introduced in the final arc to be canon, both on the enemy and on the ally side, and i additionally subscribe to the anime’s presentation of things ultimately coming down to a one-on-one battle between maka and asura’s wills. the stuff we see kid and black☆star do in the manga’s version of things is VERY important to the conclusion of their two arcs, but it does shaft maka a little ( a lot ) in a way that the anime doesn’t. someday i’ll have to write out a detailed version of how i mentally perceive the conclusion to soul eater because this is... very messy? i also consider justin law’s battle/defeat against stein canon, and do not consider crona being stuck in the pear wiggler on the moon to be canon because come on
also: the epilogue isn’t canon, fight me. i do not care for it on whit outside of that panel of black☆star levitating.
this got REALLY long and kind of rambling so ask me if there’s any details not mentioned here that you want my take on or just like, a clearer explanation in general.
