Soul Eater mouse pads for the desk

Padrift's Soul Eater mouse pads and desk mats carry original art inspired by Atsushi Ōkubo's gothic school story, printed edge to edge on a 3 mm neoprene pad with a fabric top, a non-slip base and stitched edges. Eight desk sizes are available, the smallest 11.8″ × 15.7″ (30 × 40 cm) for the mouse alone and the largest 23.6″ × 47.2″ (60 × 120 cm) for a desk-wide spread, and printing starts only after the order is placed.

The page covers the whole series: the meisters and their weapons, the academy and its headmaster, the witches, the madness and the sky above Death City.

Death City in a few lines

Atsushi Ōkubo's manga appeared in Monthly Shōnen Gangan, a Square Enix magazine, between 2004 and 2013, and Bones turned it into a 51-episode anime, directed by Takuya Igarashi, that aired from 2008 to 2009. It is set at the Death Weapon Meister Academy, a school in Death City, Nevada, run by Lord Death himself. Every student is half of a team: the meister wields, and the weapon is a person who can turn into a blade, a gun or a scythe.

A weapon becomes a Death Scythe, a weapon fit for Lord Death, by taking in the souls of 99 evil humans and one witch. Maka Albarn and her scythe partner, Soul Evans, are close to that goal when the series opens, and losing all of their progress early on sets the tone: stylish, funny and much darker than its cartoon look suggests. The anime's later episodes take a different road from the manga, so the two endings differ.

Ōkubo's line on a desk

Soul Eater looks like nothing else in shōnen. Ōkubo draws in jagged, spiky shapes, crooked buildings and grinning faces, mostly in black, white and red with a few sharp accents of yellow and blue. The result reads more like a Halloween picture book than a typical action anime, and it is unusually graphic: strong silhouettes, flat color, lots of empty black.

That style suits a desk well. A black keyboard disappears into the dark areas, a red keycap or two echoes the accents, and the hard outlines stay legible even when half the mat is under your hands. If your setup is black with one warm accent color, Soul Eater art fits it with almost no adjustment.

Where the moon goes

In Death City the sun laughs and the moon grins, a wide crescent mouth full of teeth that drips blood on some nights. It is the series' most recognizable image, and on a desk mat the question is simply where to put it. Placed in the upper corner on the side away from your mouse, it stays fully visible while you work; placed in the center, it ends up behind your keyboard.

On an XL, 15.7″ × 35.4″ (40 × 90 cm), a night sky with the moon high at one end and the spiked rooftops of the city along the bottom edge gives the keyboard a skyline to sit on. On the small 11.8″ × 15.7″ (30 × 40 cm) pad, the grin alone, cropped tight, is enough.

Meister and weapon

Every partnership in Soul Eater is a pair, and pairs translate naturally into two-sided designs. Maka, with her pigtails, plaid skirt and long black coat, fights alongside Soul, a white-haired, red-eyed boy with a grin full of shark teeth who turns into a scythe. Their whole relationship is about trust: a meister and weapon fight well only when their souls resonate.

A Maka-and-Soul design suits a long mat with one of them at each end, Maka on one side, Soul or his scythe form on the other, and the keyboard in between. That layout keeps both faces clear of your wrists, and it gives the desk a balanced look that a single centered portrait can't.

A scythe on a long pad

Soul's scythe form, a long staff with a curved red-and-black blade, is the shape of the series in a single object, and a long shape needs a long pad. The M size, 11.8″ × 27.6″ (30 × 70 cm), and the L, 11.8″ × 31.5″ (30 × 80 cm), let the shaft run along the bottom edge with the blade curving up at one end, framing the keyboard from below. On a narrow desk, that strip is all the art you need.

Death the Kid and a symmetrical desk

Death the Kid, Lord Death's son, is obsessed with symmetry. He fights with twin pistols, the Thompson sisters Liz and Patty, and he can be reduced to despair by a crooked picture frame or by the three white stripes on just one side of his own hair. Some of the series' funniest scenes are Kid collapsing over something slightly off-center.

Kid is the patron saint of the tidy desk. Center the keyboard on the mat, set matching speakers or monitors at equal distances, run cables to both sides evenly, and a symmetrical Kid design sits right in the middle of it. The mouse, of course, ruins the balance, which Kid would find unbearable and which you may find funny every time you look down.

Black☆Star and Tsubaki

Black☆Star is the loudest person at the academy, a blue-haired assassin with a star mark on his shoulder who announces, often, that he will surpass God. His partner, Tsubaki Nakatsukasa, is his calm opposite, a weapon who can become a chain scythe, a ninja sword, throwing stars or a smoke bomb.

Their look, bright blue spiky hair, the star on his shoulder and Tsubaki's long black ponytail, is the most cheerful in Soul Eater. A Black☆Star design suits a desk with blue lighting or a gamer who likes loud art, and the star itself is a simple, satisfying shape for a small pad.

Lord Death on a small pad

The headmaster of the academy is the Grim Reaper, and he is surprisingly friendly about it. Lord Death wears a cartoon skull mask, speaks in a cheerful sing-song voice and hides his face and body under a flowing black cloak with oversized white hands, which he uses for his painful Reaper Chop on misbehaving staff.

His mask is one of the cleanest symbols in anime: a white skull with a few spikes around it on a black field. On the 11.8″ × 15.7″ (30 × 40 cm) pad, set near the top, it stays recognizable at a glance, and it looks like simple skull art to anyone who hasn't watched the show.

Professor Stein and the rolling chair

Franken Stein, the academy's most brilliant and most unsettling teacher, has a giant screw through his head, stitches across his face and a lab coat sewn together from patches. He also makes his first entrance rolling toward a classroom on an office chair and toppling over at the door frame, a gag the show repeats.

Stein is the right guest for a computer desk. A design built around his stitches and patchwork suits a gray or white setup, and it pairs with our own stitched edges, which run around every pad to keep the fabric from fraying where your arm drags across it. Unlike Stein, we recommend you stay seated.

Crona and the black blood

Crona, a nervous, pink-haired child raised by the witch Medusa, fights with Ragnarok, a weapon made of black blood that lives inside Crona's body. Crona's arc runs through the darkest part of the story: madness, isolation and a slow, fragile attempt at friendship with Maka.

Madness in Soul Eater has its own visual language: warped faces, spiraling backgrounds, black liquid shapes. Designs that lean on it work on an all-black desk with dim red or purple lighting, and they hold up well in a room lit mostly by the monitor, where the darker areas fade into the desk.

Blair and a Halloween desk

Blair is a cat with magic powers who lives in a pumpkin-shaped house, wears a witch's hat and is mistaken for a witch in the very first episode, with disastrous results for Maka and Soul. Her colors, purple, orange and black, are pure Halloween, and they make a cheerful alternative to the series' grim reds.

A Blair or pumpkin-house design suits a desk that celebrates October all year: orange keycaps, a purple LED strip and the odd candle-shaped lamp. On the 14″ × 24″ (35.5 × 61 cm) size, it fits beside a laptop or under a mouse with room to spare.

Souls as small symbols

In Soul Eater, a soul is drawn as a glowing orb with a little tail, like a teardrop, and evil souls collected by weapons are called kishin eggs. Witches can hide theirs with a spell called Soul Protect, and that spell matters to the plot. These orbs make excellent motifs for small pads: a single blue soul in a corner, a scattering of red kishin eggs or a ring of souls around the center.

Soul motifs have no face for your hand to hide, which makes them a good choice for a mouse-only pad or for anyone who wants Soul Eater on the desk without a character portrait.

Excalibur, for the joke

The series' longest-running joke is Excalibur: a legendary holy sword who lives in a cave, has a top hat and a cane, and is so insufferable that no meister can stand him for long. He talks endlessly about his own legend and interrupts with his favorite word, "Fool!" A small Excalibur pad is a joke for people who know, and a strange little white figure for everyone else.

Sizes for a Soul Eater desk

The sizes offered for each design are on that design's product page. Here is how they map to Soul Eater art.

Setup	Size	Good for
Mouse only	S, 11.8″ × 15.7″ (30 × 40 cm)	Lord Death's mask or a single soul
Laptop desk	TCG Mat, 14″ × 24″ (35.5 × 61 cm)	Blair's pumpkin house
Compact keyboard	M, 11.8″ × 27.6″ (30 × 70 cm)	Soul's scythe along the edge
Keyboard and mouse	XL, 15.7″ × 35.4″ (40 × 90 cm)	The grinning moon over Death City
Deep desk	XXL, 23.6″ × 35.4″ (60 × 90 cm)	A symmetrical Death the Kid layout
The whole desk	4XL, 23.6″ × 47.2″ (60 × 120 cm)	The full academy cast

Between those, L at 11.8″ × 31.5″ (30 × 80 cm) and 3XL at 19.7″ × 39.4″ (50 × 100 cm) suit desks with more width than depth.

Gifts from Death City

Soul Eater is a good pick for someone who watched it on its first run and still quotes Excalibur, a student who likes their art a little spooky or a Halloween fan who wants October on their desk all year. Pick by partnership, Maka and Soul, Kid and the Thompsons or Black☆Star and Tsubaki, or choose the moon when you're unsure. An XL is the low-risk choice for a desk you haven't seen.

Production takes 1–3 business days, after which the pad leaves Turkey; most US orders arrive 2–5 business days later.

Keeping black art sharp

Soul Eater designs are mostly black, so they hide skin oil but show lint and pet hair. Run a lint roller over it whenever you vacuum the room, and wipe it with a barely damp cloth when dust builds up. When it needs more, wash it by hand in lukewarm water with a little mild soap, rubbing the dirty spots with your fingertips, then rinse, blot it between towels and spread it out flat to dry. A washing machine, a tumble dryer or an iron would only do it harm; the fade-resistant print keeps the moon's red grin vivid without them.

A note on names

The Soul Eater name and the names of its characters and places tell you what inspired these designs and serve no other purpose. Padrift has no connection to Atsushi Ōkubo, Square Enix or Bones and is not sponsored or endorsed by them.