Black Butler

It has a nice dark Gothic aesthetic and an interesting story . I say it as a jack the riper era London, meets demon bonding.

I believe the manga was still on going, but some of the fan ships that turned me off this show some of the interactions with a hungry demon are romanticized on someone who it should not be romanticized on.

Set in an Victorian era London, lives the 13 year old Ciel Phantomhive as earl. He got this position after the Phantomhive manor was attacked and set on fire killing his parents and his dog, Sebastian. (The story contains many dark elements but let's not go into detail. Also, the anime shows it differently from manga). After much endurance, he unintentionally managed to summon a demon and formed a contract with him. Hence, the Faustian contract symbol on Ciel's right eye. After the formation of the contract, the demon reveals he will consume Ciel's soul as payment for helping him achieve his goal; revenge on those who brought down the House of Phantomhive. The demon then starts living as Ciel's Butler until Ciel could get his revenge. Ciel then names him Sebastian Michaelis, after his deceased pet dog.

The concept is very dark and interesting but the anime decided to take a different route from manga. While, it is still understandable and the storyline still remains as interesting, it's the characterization, that takes the beating. Few of the antagonists like Lau and Fallen Angel developed faster than we expected. It felt rushed. Interestingly, we hardly got to know anything about Elizabeth and Undertaker in this season despite the fact that Ciel's fate was shown in this season itself. It was not until Book of Atlantic, do we get to see their real motives. The anime contains the references of many European literature and it also briefly talked about Indian/Hindu mythology. Each of those references looked well researched and felt accurate. The kind of an action we see in the anime, doesn't look 100% satisfying. I felt the anime had a potential to have even more intensed climax and more powerful action scenes.

Is the anime recommendable? Only if you are not a manga reader. Is the manga recommendable? Maybe. I am certain that the manga content must be multiple times better than the anime version. Lastly, even though I was always okay with that, I feel the need to say this - Beware, this anime contains some indirect homosexual contents. If you are not comfortable with that, you can avoid watching this show.

I have watched this anime more than once and fell in love with season 1 and all the Ova's. Season 2 I have come to a pretty soild conclusion has nothing to do with Season 1 time frame at all; if season two does happen it happens about two years after season 1 ends. Coming to this conclusion also makes make believe that Season two just does not happen within the Black Butler timeline at all, it would cross paths with at least two other crimes that were being solved by Ciel at the time Season 2 would have also been taking place.

Beside the very confusing Season 2, this show was very good, I loved the characters and the animation was great even comparing it to some of todays animation shows and scenc done in them. The dynamic between the butler and master is good never really changes yet still improves ever season, this is one of my favorite parts about the show.

"Black Butler" started a bit disappointing. It was clear from the beginning, that the anime would walk in the footsteps of "Deathnotes". After some time, the typical anime plots (Faustian Pact, Lost Parents, Revenge, Friendship) are revealed but then the Victorian Age feeling gets much better and bigger attention. There's a ton of really well researched stuff and the tension rises as the main story unfolds.

The show is not as good as "Death Note" and has imho a lot of homosexual content in it, which is more or less openly shown. I assume it is, among other things, to attract more female and viewers. The funny thing is, that females are either shown as dolls, clumsy servants, killing machines or just some extras. While Walt Disney is getting really feminist lately, the Japanese have yet to invent better female - believable - anime characters.

Including all flaws - this is one of the best anime shows at the moment. A mixture of Steampunk, Gothic Horror and Crime. Not too violent and gory but at times very thrilling!

8/10

Sebastian is the perfect Butler to Ciel. Not only does he protect him with his life, Sebastian is also a Demon which makes his ability even stronger. But Sebastian doesn't serves Ciel, because he pays him with money, but with his soul. Ciel wants to take revenge on the people who killed his parents which is why he sold his soul to Sebastian for his support.

Black Butler has a basic idea that without a doubt could have been implemented magnificently.

Unfortunately, it wasn't. The anime gets entangled in so many directions that at some point it just gets confusing and you wonder what the goal of it all is.

I think that's a shame, because the series had such great potential, which was then simply thrown away...