Maka Albarn

Maka Albarn is the main female protagonist of the manga/anime series ''Soul Eater. ''She is a student at the Death Weapon Meister Academy (DWMA) and a Scythe Meister. Her weapon partner is Soul Eater Evans and she wants to become a better meister just like her mother and strives to make Soul into a Death Scythe.

She is voiced by Chiaki Omigawa in the Japanese version of the anime and Laura Bailey in the English version.

Background
Around the same time Black☆Star was born, which was thirteen years prior to the beginning of Soul Eater, Maka was born to her father Spirit Albarn (at the age of eighteen) and his wife. Throughout her childhood, she became displeased with her father's behavior as he cheated on his wife, which led to a strain between the two. She follows in her mother's footsteps and aspires to be one of Shibusen's top students and to collect 99 Evil human souls (Kishin eggs in the anime) and one witch soul to create a Death Scythe, which she hopes will be more powerful then her own father.

Appearance
Maka is fairly petite, being twelve to thirteen years of age in the first part, according to Spirit's statement to little Maka and Sid's flashback that she was born on the same day infant Black☆Star was taken in by, and fourteen to fifteen years of age in the second part, and according to Giriko. Her primary outfit is a typical schoolgirl outfit and a trench coat with a cloak-like end (that constantly alters its shape in various parts of both the manga and anime), a white blouse with a yellow sweater vest, a green striped tie, a red plaid skirt, and black boots with white buckles. When using Soul, she usually wears white gloves. She has large forest green eyes and has ash blonde hair which she keeps in pigtails, although there are certain times at her home where she will wear them in buns or straight down or sometimes styled on formal occasions.

Her soul, when viewed by Stein, has an orange-like color and has her signature pigtails. Some comments from Ragnarok and Maka herself seems to suggest that Maka's soul is quite small, especially when compared to someone else's, for example, like Black☆Star's (although her soul grows in size considerably after she grows more powerful). When Resonating with Soul, these 'ponytails' turn into wings. Her Soul Wavelength takes on the form of feathers. Unlike Soul, Maka does not have exaggerated facial expressions unless a situation calls for it or if she is under the influence of Black Blood. When in the Black Room with Soul, she wears a black dress with black gloves, black ribbons in her pigtails, and black lacey heels.

At some point between first partnering with Soul and meeting Tsugumi Harudori, Maka had dressed in a Shibusen uniform similar to Tsugumi, which she has worn in other original artwork featured in the manga. When not in class, such as when at her apartment, Maka frequently wears a hoodie sweater and pants. When she began playing basketball, she wore a sweatpants and a hoodie sweater; she also inherited a baseball cap from Patty Thompson, which she gave to Maka to wear as captain of their basketball team with Black Star for the bet that they lost.

When Maka joins Spartoi, her outfit changes, though it still shows similarities to her previous attire. Maka's Spartoi uniform is very similar to that of a Japanese schoolgirl's sailor uniform with the coloring of the classic Spartoi uniform: a white blouse attached with a blue sailor-style collar with a red necktie that has a pink coiled tip and a short, blue, pleated skirt. Alongside this uniform, Maka wears black tights and the classic white Spartoi shoes, but stops wearing tights a few chapters later. Like her previous outfit, Maka wears a long trench coat, though it is white instead of black and has the Spartoi logo on the left shoulder as well as the fact that the cloak end splits in two. Her pigtails are fashioned using skull hairbands similar to Shinigami's mask. She also still wears white gloves.

In the Lust Chapter in the Book of Eibon, Maka is transformed into a boy, having switched genders like the other members of Spartoi. Out of all the characters, apart from Pot of Fire and Pot of Thunder, she changes the least in appearance. She has shorter hair and wears a suit, complete with the usual gloves she wears. However, after leaving the Chapter, she starts to slowly change back into a female. Her pigtails start to reappear, although they are still quite short, and she is wearing her Spartoi uniform again, except she is still wearing trousers instead of her usual skirt. She then changes back completely.

Near the end of the manga, Maka changes from her Spartoi outfit back to her original black coat, red skirt, and black boots. She decides to change back into her old clothes to show she is no longer a member of Spartoi.

In the second ending to the anime, Style, Maka wears a very different outfit. She is shown wearing red shoes, long socks that go up to her skirt (one of the socks having stripes and the other having stars), a darker red skirt with a white stripe across the top, a yellow jacket with stripes, and a white t-shirt.

Personality
Studious, efficient, stubborn, only some of the words that can describe Maka Albarn. To be Maka is to be one without fear. Though she may spend much of her time studying and being a bookworm in general, Maka is the kind of person that one can truly depend on in a time of need, and is strong enough to defend those she cares about. She has a firm sense of right and wrong, and will truly fight for what she believes in. She is somewhat easy to anger, but is nonetheless a kind and compassionate soul.

As the daughter of the current Death Scythe and his former Meister, she has high expectations of herself. She idolizes her mother, and as a result dislikes her disloyal father, as shown in the anime when she was speaking with Crona. Strangely enough, Maka has said that her favorite memory of her mother was when she asked Spirit for a divorce, the reason being that she admired her mother's strong will.

She likes reading books and doing puzzles. She frequently studies to remain a model student. She is often seen with a book, and seems to always have one on hand so that she can use her Maka Chop at any time. She relies a lot on books to help her understand things, and is sometimes teased by Soul, who calls her a bookworm. She seems to prefer to stay in her house and read or study, emphasized by her lack of ability to play games such as basketball (despite her athleticism), as she does not know the rules. She states that she also writes poetry when she feels troubled.

Soul also considers her stubborn, foolhardy, gloomy-natured, and quick to resort to violence. However, these traits only apply to Maka when she is upset at Soul for not acting serious enough in battle or for not following her lead. She is actually very brave, smart, confident and responsible. In Chapter 70, Soul also calls her an otaku, and this might very well be true, since Maka, as if in response, coins a traditional phrase from an RPG when she sees Black Star and Tsubaki ('Black Star and Tsubaki appeared') and calls her notebook the "Maka Note", perhaps a reference to the Death Note.

Despite her mature and serious demeanor, she sometimes shows some child-like girlish traits (she is secretly fond of a song called "The Pon Pon Dance," in the anime.)

Maka is bright, cheerful, direct and confident, smart, and hard working- in stark contrast to Soul, who is very laid-back, impulsive, and impatient. She can also be very thoughtful, kind and compassionate, particularly towards Crona because she empathizes with Crona's loneliness. She is enthusiastic, but sometimes takes her enthusiasm too far and can be bossy at times. However, over time, she can admit to her mistakes and is not too proud to apologize. One example is when she had a hard time creating Soul Resonance with Black☆Star because she couldn't connect with his arrogant and self-centered personality. In the end, she recognized she was the one actually at fault for not simply accepting him for the way he is. She thus tells Black☆Star to punch her since she punched him some time ago out of anger towards his negative remarks towards her. Before that, she confessed to being selfish for wanting to grow stronger without Soul so she could better protect him because she blamed herself for his recent injuries.

She is kind and caring to her friends. Her willingness to help is not limited to her friends, as she will stop to help out or encourage even strangers that she finds are having a hard time. She will not hesitate to do anything to help her friends, although she also will also not hesitate to put them in line if they do something inappropriate. Maka has shown to value her friends' safety deeply, often putting their safety above her own. She was unwilling to use Soul as a shield to protect herself from Crona's attacks even though she could have died had she not. Soul had to purposely put himself in front of her in order to protect her, and she still feels guilt and blame towards herself over his injuries.

Another example of her value of her friends' safety over her own includes that she willingly gave herself to the black blood, risking her own sanity and life just so she could understand Crona better and help Crona through their depression, loneliness, and isolation. Furthermore, Maka is even willing to show help towards her enemies, as long as they haven't crossed the line and turned into evil souls yet. This is shown in Italy, when she urges that she and Soul help out the thugs who attacked them earlier because she sensed they were being attacked by another meister, Crona. Although Soul urged that the thugs deserved it and that he and Maka should head back to Shibusen, Maka was shown fully committed to help any humans in danger regardless of who they are, stating she has a duty to protect them from evil because she's a representative of Shibusen.

Although she was always kind-hearted, mature, and level-headed, Maka begins the series with noticeable temper problems. She shows quick irritation at other characters when they do things that annoy her, usually punishing them with her signature "Maka Chop" technique. This noticeably begins changing after Soul gets injured by Crona, and she realizes she took her mistakes too seriously, to the point that it almost broke apart her friendship with Soul. She thus begins becoming more patient and relaxed afterwards. Since she is generally mature and focused, unlike Kid and Black Star (Kid, whose obsessions get in the way, and Black Star, whose great arrogance gets in the way), she is the most reliable of the trio despite not being as strong as they are in combat. As such, she was assigned as the leader of their group by Stein. Being the leader of their trio, Maka is also very responsible and feels dedicated to keeping her friends safe. This is shown by how she often feels anger or guilt towards herself when she messes something up or lets someone down.

Although Maka is usually confident in herself, she can be extremely sensitive and emotional when someone scorns her abilities. She began crying and ran away from the others temporarily when Black Star insulted her strength as being the reason he couldn't complete Soul Resonance with her. She gets ahold of herself after Tsubaki talks to her. She admits Black Star and Death the Kid are stronger than her in combat. This may be the reason she will not give up in fights even when facing enemies stronger than her, as she wants to prove to herself and the others that she can be as strong as they are. Despite not being very strong in combat, Maka is still greatly admired and respected by most of her fellow meisters and professors at Shibusen for her polite, smart, kind, responsible, and humble personality, and her ability to recognize her faults but grow and learn from them.

With that said, Maka is somewhat of a self-depreciative hero. She achieves many great accomplishments throughout the series, and she always wants to help others and do the right things, thus she is well respected. But she is not prideful or arrogant about her achievements whatsoever; in fact, she is the opposite. Deep down, she still has insecurities and doubts about herself on how strong she is and how good of a meister she actually is because she does still tend to be somewhat weak, even though she is regarded highly by her fellow professors and meisters. The main example of this was when the young girl following her in the Salvage chapter lectures her as being an unworthy and horrible meister to Soul. The girl tells Maka the only reason she was able to make Soul into a Death Scythe was because of him, basically saying she was useless and weak, and it was all Soul's effort. She also alludes to the fact Maka is jealous of Liz because Liz understands music while she can't and jealous of Patty because she's a better fighter then her and is a Demon Weapon. This causes Maka to completely break down, refusing to work with Soul anymore because she now feels unworthy and useless, until she eventually comes to her senses and helps him fight Giriko. Other times her insecurities about her strength have been shown include when she felt a lot of guilt and shame for being unable to defeat Crona the first time she and Soul fought him/her, which caused Soul to be greatly injured, when she realized she wasn't strong enough to defeat the Golem, and when she was accused by Black Star of her weakness being the reason they couldn't complete Chain Resonance.

In the anime, although Maka is the one who defeats Asura, she is unwilling to accept credit for her own strength and abilities as the reason she was able to do so. She claims that her friends and fellow professors who have supported her are the reason she was able to be courageous enough to fight and defeat Asura. Then, at the end, when Kid claims Maka is the only reason they were able to save the world from Asura and fears what may happen if another Kishin arises without Maka being there, Maka states everyone has the ability to be brave and courageous enough to battle against evil, not just her. These actions showed further that she does not credit herself very much for her achievements and is not prideful or arrogant whatsoever, and that her friends credit her much more than she herself does.

Maka is very brave, and willing to throw herself at any enemy no matter how strong they are. She is very determined in battle, never giving up fighting, even when the chances of her victory look grim. She also displays an almost frightening ferocity and drive in battle, not afraid of punching her opponents directly in the face (which she does quite often). In her fight with Free, she even headbutts her Weapon in order to push the blade into the werewolf, and rushes at an enemy when she does not have a Weapon. She sometimes has a tendency to lose control of her usual stable emotions more in battle, particularly when upset at Soul for not following her plans. She usually prefers the logical approach to fights, wanting to have a proper plan of what to do in a battle. However, as the series progresses, she sometimes becomes more reckless and starts diving into battles without any plan, preferring to simply give it her all in the situation. This mainly occurs when battling Medusa, because she is extremely hateful towards Medusa for how much she tormented Crona.

Maka also holds deep respect for her superiors like Stein, and usually never hesitates in obeying orders from Shibusen. In fact, she does not even kill Gopher for trying to assassinate her, as he is not on Shinigami's wanted list. She likes to consider herself a model student, as she abides by the rules of Shibusen and display great politeness to her superiors. She sometimes recites Shibusen's rules from memory, surprising even Shinigami himself. However, deep down, she is shown to be torn at times when she is not sure whether to obey Shibusen or do what she believes is right. This is shown more in the anime, when Maka becomes frustrated whether or not to follow Shibusen, or go and help Crona and Marie save Stein. However, after Soul persuades her to do what she feels is the right thing to do, Maka proves herself to be incredibly driven, up until the point she completely ignores rules and regulations, attacking Medusa even though she knows that Shibusen had promised not to harm her. She later admits to Asura that although she tries to obey rules and orders to please others, in the end, she prefers doing what she feels is right, even if it sometimes goes against Shibusen. In the manga, she once breaks school rules by using her father's ID to check out forbidden books from the Library, although she sincerely apologizes for this. Her only reason for doing it was to gather more information on Medusa, so she could better help Kid and Crona.

When her gender changes in the Lust Chapter in the book of Eibon, her personality slightly alters to match more of a masculine character. Although her seriousness remains, she also becomes more critical and somber. One of her great changes in her personality though is her new weakness towards women, similar to Soul's, shown when she starts to have an uncontrollable nosebleed upon meeting the Succubus. However, her original personality returns upon leaving the Chapter, thus not being that lustful.

When being told of her Grigori Soul, she gets a strong desire to become an 'angel-like' figure, and is irritated as Soul does not agree with this. She has a tendency to have zero-tolerance to some of Soul's undesirable behavior, usually hitting him with a Maka Chop if he does something perverted, even if he is not the instigator. (Namely, he often receives Maka Chops if Blair seduces him.) Her father originally gave her a negative outlook on men due to his disloyal and perverted nature towards women. A slightly darker side emerges from her personality when being with her father, leading to her exploiting her father's status as a Death Scythe or by deliberately making him feel uncomfortable or depressed. However, despite her initial negative outlook on men because of her father's actions, she still seems to respect Stein and care for Soul and her other male friends, although she does have her differences with them at times.

Dr. Stein sees her soul and tells her she is 'earnest and strong-willed', in contrast to seeing Soul's soul as being 'careless and arrogant'. Since she is quite serious and mature, she is often dismayed by the others' immature behavior, shown by her quick annoyance at Black☆Star and Soul when they do immature or childish things. Because of this, Black☆Star sometimes purposefully does immature things to wind her up. At first, she was also shown at times to be embarrased by Soul and Black☆Star when they would do foolish things, sometimes referring to them as 'idiots' and trying to stay away from them when around other mature people such as Tsubaki and Stein. She also was at first shown to become very angry and irritated towards Blair's flirtatious personality. This may be because it reminded her of her father's constant cheating and flirtations towards women. However, this all changes as the series progresses and she begins to ignore their behavior and simply accept them for who they are.

Maka's personality is strongly based on her mother's, as it is told to her by various people throughout the series. Dr. Stein has told her much about how she relates to her mother, and that he sees much potential in her. She also inherited some aspects of her father's personality, and they appear to share the same type of soul, though which asects are unknown as they overall have very different personalities.

Because Maka's soul contains an Anti-Demon Wavelength, she is the only character in the series to have relatively no evil or insanity within her. This likely is largely the reason for her noble and heroic personality traits, and her natural desire to do good. It also likely explains why most of her techniques are based around erasing or destroying evil, as it accompanies her heroism.

Trivia

 * Maka is a girl name is written in katakana (the Japanese foreign word writing system), so it has no meaning whatsoever. As a word though, maka means "to scatter, sprinkle, or sow seeds" in Japanese (which has nothing to do with her as far as I know).
 * Maka has a few similarities to Ruby Rose. Both attend a school that trains people to fight monsters (DWMA and Beacon Academy, respectively), both wield scythes that are much bigger than they are and both are the leaders of their respective teams despite being the youngest member.
 * She's also very similar to Tokine Yukimura. First, they share the same English voice actor (Laura Bailey). Both are very intelligent and rely on their brains and skill rather than brute force, both often go between arguing with and showing concern for the male leads (Soul Eater Evans and Yoshimori Sumimura, respectively) and both serve as the voice of reason among the main characters. The main difference is that Maka is the main protagonist of her series while Tokine is the deuteragonist of hers.