Maka Albarn (マカ=アルバーン, Maka Arubān) is one of the main protagonists of Soul Eater. She is a young but dedicated student who takes after her mother, another prodigious meister. However, her relationship with her father Spirit is strained due to his constant flirtations with women, leading her parents to divorce. As such, Maka is obsessed with turning her weapon partner, Soul Eater, into a death scythe that will surpass her father.[ch. 0a] She collaborates well with Soul in battle, but sometimes gets frustrated at him when he does something foolish. When in danger, however, Maka does everything she can to keep Soul out of harm's way.[ch. 4]
The anime depicts Maka as the most mature and casual character out of the main protagonists. She is brave, strong-willed, hard working, humble, kind, and determined to do what is right, but hates injustice and can lose control of her emotions when her friends are in danger. She also at times tends to get annoyed with Soul due to his laid back personality, but they are still good friends at heart. She differs from most main protagonists in anime in that she has the characteristics most male main protagonists have, but is a female.
Because she has strong morals and a good sense of justice, she hates seeing her father cheating on women, and tends to be annoyed with Black Star at times due to his arrogant and self-absorbed personality. There are times when she gets ticked off, she does a "Maka Chop," which is when she takes a hardback book and slams it down onto that persons head. Usually her father's, Black Star, or Soul. In the anime, Maka was the only one who could defeat Asura, who was on the verge of destroying the world. Soul, Black Star, Death the Kid, their partners and Shinigami all failed to defeat him, but Maka defeated him all by herself because of her bravery. She confused Asura by proving to him she would never give up despite her being weaker and all her friends having been defeated, which made him doubt himself and confused him, allowing Maka to punch him, while he was distracted, with all her force and defeat him. In the manga, however, Maka used her courage as well as her determination to partner with Soul, Black Star, Kid, and Crona, using the weapon known as Brew to defeat the Kishin.
In the anime, Maka's kindness and compassion shows often with Crona. She recognizes him as being misunderstood and mistreated. She wants to be his friend to help him because he's been alone his whole life. She puts herself at risk of losing her sanity to help him and temporarily gives herself to the black blood in order to better understand him. Despite the others seeing him as an enemy because he's helping Medusa, she feels he's only helping Medusa because he had nothing else and was simply confused and misguided. She easily forgives him when discovering he was helping Medusa and spying on the academy, feeling Medusa had manipulated him into it. She loses control for the first time and violently kills Medusa with an Anti-Magic wavelength when Medusa almost kills Crona after he pushed Maka out of the way to save her.
Early in the story, Soul is infected with black blood during their first battle against Crona, which causes Maka to become infected as well, risking her going insane under the black blood's influence.[ch. 11] She later gains some control over the black blood by developing a soul wavelength inherited from her mother called the Anti-Magic Wavelength, which helps her resist the effects of insanity.[ch. 60] She is also adept at a skill called Soul Perception, which allows her to detect the souls of other people and measure their strengths.[ch. 2] After turning Soul into a death scythe, Maka gains the ability to combine the power of her uniquely shaped soul, called a Grigori soul, with Soul's and grow angelic wings on Soul's weapon form, enabling her to fly.[ch. 63] Maka can fully synchronize with Spirit due to their bond as father and daughter.[ch. 106] In the anime adaptation, Maka is shown to have demon weapon powers inherited from her father and mother, allowing her to conjure blades from her body while she is unconscious.ep. 51
