Lord Death

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Lord Death is the overarching protagonist of the anime and manga series Soul Eater.

He is voiced by Rikiya Koyama, who also voiced Yamato and Jin Kirigiri, in the Japanese version of the anime, and John Swasey, who also voiced Van Hohenheim, in the English version.

History[]

Beginning of the New World[]

Death came into existence when Shinra Kusakabe recreated his world into one where life is less valued than death. Death was made to be the god of this new world and his first act was to confiscate the pyrokinetic powers, deeming it to be far too powerful for mankind to have. He would go on to expand upon the creation of this new world and created a kid that bore a resemblance to his creator.

Grim Times[]

At an unknown time, Shinigami had visited the Lost Island, an area that Witches had used as a construction site and facility for Demon Tools. As it turns out, Shinigami was lured to the island by witch Arachne. After she had obtained Eibon's blueprints, she planned to blow up the facility along with everything related to Brew and presumably kill Shinigami. Somehow, Shinigami survived/escaped the explosion.800 years prior to the start of the series, the Shinigami wore a normal skull mask, black claws, with his signature written on one, and had a deep, menacing voice.

Later, Shinigami fought and hunted Arachne after she had killed a member of her kind and used the soul to join a human and weapon together to create the first Demon Weapon. Arachne escaped by separating herself into small spiders and spread across the lands.

Later in the story, it's revealed that, 800 years ago, Shinigami removed "fear" from his soul to create another shinigami with the purpose of ruling alongside him. Asura was born from the "fear" of his soul. Before the start of the series, Shinigami lead a group of 8 Meisters and Weapon partners, known as the Eight Powerful Warriors, to hunt down witches and prevent Kishin from being born. Among the group was his son, Asura. He had created him from the fear within his soul in an effort to become a more "perfect" Shinigami. He was regarded as the strongest, as well as the most feared and suspicious, of the group. Overwhelmed by fear, Asura became addicted to power and followed the path of the Kishin, leading him to consume his own weapon and numerous pure souls without regard. This ultimately led to Shinigami ripping all of his skin off and sealing Asura away inside a bag made of it. The process of sealing Asura forced Shinigami to root his own Soul to the ground ultimately preventing him from leaving the general radius of the spot. Afterward, he built what is now known as Death City and Shibusen to prevent the birth of another Kishin.

Post Kishin's Sealing[]

Under his rule, there are currently 8 active Death Scythes in the world. 7 of 8 are normally stationed in different parts of the world, as Shinigami's eyes, ears, and if need be, on call support Weapon for himself or a highly trained Meister. The strongest Death scythe (ironically the only one that is an actual scythe other than Soul) stays with him at Shibusen. That Death Scythe being Spirit, Maka's Father.

Personality[]

“

If you don't shut up I'm going to use my Reaper Chop to split your head open!

„

The founder of the DWMA academy and the father of Death the Kid, in most cases, Shinigami comes off as a bit of a joker with a cheerful demeanor. He also prefers to be optimistic and treats every situation as such. He also has a great sense of humor.

Azusa once mention that Death was also stubborn, a trait which is seen also in his son. In the anime during the Battle between Death City's mech and Baby Yaga's Spider Mech , Kid's comments suggest that he is also somewhat reckless. Shinigami also seems to be a understanding & lenient individual, contrasting to the the general people thinking of him as a strict person who is bound by rules. Many people are surprised at his reactions to serious matters and anticipate him to be more strict. During the discussion on how to deal with Angela, he was surprisingly okay with proposals on how to deal with her potential Sway of Magic and seem to have no problem helping her out, to the surprise of Kim, Tsubaki, and Jackie. In another instance, he only demanded a apology after Stein and Marie confessed to "breaking regulation" and Spirit being a accomplice, and then letting it go. However, he does have a limit. He wasn't above punishing Maka for using a Level 4 book and after Crona killed the Deathscythe and his Meister stationed in Russia, he put him on his list of those to can be executed, despite Maka's pleas. He has a special move called a "Direct Noggin Shinigami Chop" (which is normally shown when Shinigami shows his large flat four-fingered hand appearing from his robe; often called Shinigami Chop for short). This move is normally administered on Spirit whenever Shinigami refuses to put up with the Death Scythe's antics when it comes to Maka or her progress. He has a habit of giving warnings to people about to be punished with it after the punishment was carried out. He also seems to take on a more playful attitude when talking with his son (he says the stripes in his son's hair are cute), but at the same time thinks he can be quite the handful and is glad that Patti and Liz look after him. As the headmaster of Shibusen, he is highly respected by teachers as well as students, not only because of his great power, but for his desire for peace in the world. It is for this reason, that Shibusen was created. Despite his past and his powerful position in the school, he tends to be kiddish and joyful as to not scare the children.

In the past, Shinigami was noted to be considerably more violent and dark, although he always had good intentions, as he formed the Eight Shinigami Warlords and showed no mercy to those who opposed him. Additionally, his voice was far scarier and hinted at his darker nature. However, Asura's fall and the experiences of likely eons afterwards has clearly transitioned him into the much more easy-going and kind headmaster of Shibusen. He clearly regretted his past demeanor and actions, even expressing some level of remorse of failing as a father to Asura and for forcing on him the burden of fear, going as far as to say that he didn't had the right to be disgusted by Medusa's treatment of Crona, as he too had treated his son in a similar manner.

Extreme Power[]

Death is a tremendously powerful god, being perhaps the most powerful character within the Soul Eater universe and undoubtedly the strongest member of the DWMA, far surpassing even Franken Stein. As a Great Old One and True Death God, especially as the most powerful of both species, his Soul Wavelength is at a god level and possess a god level Madness Wavelength, with his very existence drives men into insanity and him having the power to not only counter Asura's Madness of Fear with his Madness of Order, but also spreading it across the entire world. His entire soul encompasses Death City and is the largest seen in the series and his powered is revered at a high status, evoking fear to even extremely powerful, overconfident and courageous individuals such as Shaula Gorgon, who was left paralyzed when Death casually threatened her to the point where she was unable to defend herself, or genuine nervousness to other powerful individuals like Medusa Gorgon, who was casually willing to admit Death's power far surpassed that of hers. While little capabilities of Death's raw power has been show, Kid using his own father's wavelength proved sufficient to destroying both the Horror Dragon & Noah (Greed) (decimating the other both body and soul) whereas all of Spartoi were unable to damage the Dragon. Also, in the Anime, with taking a portion of his power, his son Death the Kid was able to destroy Asura's giant form in the anime and just a clash of his Soul Wavelength with Asura caused strong winds to occur, which shocked Death the Kid and the Thompson Sisters. Due to his raw power, he is also the only one able to power the Kishin Hunt enough to kill the extremely powerful immortal Kishin Asura.

In combat, Death ranks as undoubtedly the most powerful and skilled fighter in the series, with him being easily more than mighty enough to utterly defeat and almost kill the most powerful of the Gorgon Witches, Arachne Gorgon and claims to be able to effortlessly kill Blair in an instant with a single swing of his scythe or even a single Shinigami Chop. He is also the only individual to ever exceed Asura in battle, with him thus managing to defeat and skin him alive in their first altercation. During his second fight with Asura, Death is able to have the upper hand throughout the fight despite holding back to not devastate Death City but couldn't kill him without Death Scythe. Asura himself also fears Death and openly admits to having been much better off not fighting his father. Spirit claims that Death could have stopped and possibly even killed the immortal Kishin had he been able to brandish his weapon form against Asura. In the Anime, this is proven as Death was able to decisively maintain the upper hand against Asura, with him only losing after Asura cheated and leveraged the lives of his son and allies and their battle causing large shockwaves and craters from his physical strength.

Powers and Abilities[]

Power of a God: Due to his extraordinary god-like powers, Death is unapproachable by almost all opponents and even other godly beings are inferior to him.
- Lines of Sanzu: Death possesses all the third lines of Sanzu connected, which gives him the powers and status of a True Death God. From this, he has incredibly powerful, latent divine powers.
  - Materalization: Death is capable of materializing objects spontaneously such as a mandolin and is often used in his humor and to comedic effect and once Crona's contract.
  - Mirror Interaction: He can also interact with mirrors and magical-like mirror mediums like the Shinigami's Mirror, able to talk to others like that of a phone or spectate like that of a Crystal Ball. He can also reside within the Mirrors occasionally.
  - Sealing: Death is highly capable at sealing other individuals, as he was able to seal away even a being as powerful as Asura by using the Kishin's skin as a sealing bag and binding his soul to prevent Asura from being able to move freely at the expense of his own freedom. However, while he can keep active seals for centuries, a setback is that it grows weaker after a certain amount of time if he does not reinforce it. A newly resurrected Asura after eight hundred years was shown to bypass his contingency seals by tearing them off like paper.
  - Death Claw: Death calls out four shadowy claws from his body, with black skulls at the end of them. The nature of this attack is mostly unknown, though it can be assumed that the attack slashes or grabs an opponent as well as being capable of ripping the skin off of it's target.
  - Death Room: Death was capable of creating a supernatural room where he resides in on DWMA. He is capable of surrounding it with a powerful barrier capable of trapping Kishin Asura. Arachne Gorgon stated that her power could do nothing to dispel it. He can also bury souls inside it. According to his own admission, the room in which he resides in can reflect the order of the world and is sensitive to the "Onset of Madness".
  - Shapeshift: Death is capable of changing the properties of his own body. These capabilities includes altering his body to appear less menacing. He can also change his hands into that of catpaws as well as maintain a form of a giant skull during the depiction of the battle between himself and Asura that resulted in his sealing. At times, it seems that Death also possess some ability to alter the size of his body, reaching the height of the long Death Room Mirror (in which varies in size). It's unknown, however, exactly how large he can make himself, though has been seen to be far larger then Spirit Albarn, Marie Mjolnir, and Franken Stein.
  - Teleportation: Death has shown the capability of teleportation from a position to inside a Pyramid within Lost Island.
  - Dolls: Death is able to create animated beings called the Dolls. Resembling himself in appearance, these dolls are often used as training dummies in Death Weapon Meister Academy. Their abilities, depending on the type of doll, are seemingly derived from some of Death's own capabilities, such as the usage of large gloves and the ability to create and utilize Poison Needles.
- Supreme Soul Wavelength: Death possesses the largest and strongest Soul Wavelength, being capable of eclipsing Death City in whole. A mere portion of this wavelength proved capable of granting Death the Kid a sufficiently powerful technique to have utterly killed the likes of the Horror Dragon and Noah (Greed) Death's Wavelength is also capable of taking on the properties of the highly unique Anti-Demon Wavelength that enables him the capability of performing the Kishin-Hunt technique, a more advanced version of Demon-Hunt that also requires such a wavelength to perform, which managed to damage Asura regardless of his immoral but not truly evil nature unlike that of Maka's own, implying that he is somehow able to bend the rules, likely as he understood that Asura truly is sinister unlike Maka.
- Madness Wavelength: As a Great Old One and True Death God, Death has an godly level Madness Wavelength that is equal to Asura's own. His existence is capable of turning men to Madness and can even spread his Madness through the whole world to affect it at a global scale like that of his fellow Great Old Ones.
  - Madness of Order: This madness in particular, according to Death the Kid, is so intense it has the ability to eclipse all human emotion and leave only a mechanical cycle of birth and death. This is known as a Death God's "true power" and is connected to the Lines of Sanzu. According Asura's comments, the Madness of Order has the ability to effectively counteract even his Madness of Fear at the expense of taking away humanity's emotions.
Extreme Physical Superiority& Hand-to-Hand Combat Prowess: Death possesses tremendous, ultimately unrivaled physical abilities and extreme martial arts prowess that not only allows him to effortlessly and severely beat Arachne, nearly killing her, even makes him more than a match for Asura using only his physical power and skill, capable of defeating him once without needing a weapon when Asura had Vajra and is the only one thus far able to damage him, with solely physical attacks, as he was able to physically chop him away a great distance with enough force to briefly stun him and leave bruises after a relentless pummel, move and fly at tremendous speeds to easily keep up with and outpace Asura in combat, withstand his Vajra shots, and outpace Asura's laser attack to his son and friends. His fighting style is highly fluid, incorporating his elasticity and several martial arts techniques.
Grandmaster Meister: Death is an extraordinarily accomplished and powerful Meister considered to be the greatest Third-Star Meister in DWMA, far exceeding the abilities of even Franken Stein and other expert Meisters.
- Wavelength Control: Death's level of control over his Soul Wavelength is great that only a Death's Weapon can fit being his weapon. His control over his Wavelength can create powerful and graceful blue winds able to clash with Asura's own.
- Soul Resonance: Death is capable of sending his Wavelength to his Demon Weapon for them to amplify and send back to him (and repeat the process over). Additionally, he is advanced enough to perform this process almost instantly with Death Scythe as his weapon.
- Ultility Meister: Death is the most powerful Ultility Meister in DWMA. He has complete knowledge and understanding on how to wield all types of weapons as well as equally full mastery over them, as almost all of the Demon Weapons within the academy aspire to be his Death Scythe and is supposedly able to easily utilize anyone attaining the ranking of Death Scythe with impeccable skill.
- Scythe-Meister: Death is mostly known for sporting a scythe as his main weapon. He is perhaps the most powerful Scythe-Meister in the world. He claims that he could kill Blair with a simple swing of Death Scythe. With the use of his Death Scythe, he was able to not only fight on equal footing against Asura but was even able to overwhelm and nearly defeat him, only prevented from achieving victory by Asura's leveraging of Kid, Azusa, and the Thompson sisters' lives. He is also advanced enough to effectively utilize the most powerful technique of the Great Traditional Techniques of the Scythe-Meister with enough power to kill even Immortal beings.
  - Great Traditional Techniques of the Scythe-Meister: Death has fully mastered the specialized extremely powerful Soul Resonance techniques available to Scythe Meisters, capable of utilizing the most advanced technique of the class, Kishin-Hunt, with enough power to kill even powerful immortals.
    - Kishin-Hunt: Death is capable of using this immensely powerful Soul-Resonance technique with enough power to initiate a transformation capable of killing a Kishin. He was able to both penetrate Asura's defenses and cut off his arm with this technique.
- Gun-Type Meister: Death is an excellent marksman and sniper. With the Bowgun-Type Rifle weapon form, he was skilled enough to snipe the Madness Cannon at a great distance before it was able to fire. His compressed wavelength shots are also so powerful that with a single hit it utterly destroyed the Cannon.
- Lamp Meister: Death is known to be a proficient Lamp Meister, being among the few able to operate with Genie Lamps, the most advanced out of all the Lamp Demon Weapons.
- Soul Perception: Death possess a unique but very keen variant of Soul Perception (even before it's official creation by Humans) that allows him to be able to distinguish a good human soul from a evil one even from the Death Room to others all over the world. His sensitivity level allows him to understand nature of souls themselves, such as a Witch's soul having transformative abilities when combined with other souls and inanimate objects.
High-Level Intellect: Being the oldest and most mature Death God, he has a high amount of knowledge of Souls. He is also the one who is able to judge them before putting evil souls on a list. He normally, along with Stein, is the character who provides the explanations of anything related to the topic. He was able to thoroughly explain how the Demon Weapons were created,, displaying much intelligence in the subject. He is also shown to be knowledgeable in several types of magic, such as Soul Protect and the Spatial Magic used to trap him, able to thoroughly explain how they works, and was even aware of Eibon's Chapters in the Book of Eibon.