Black Butler

This is by far one of the best series! It has mystery, drama, romance, comic relief and involves the supernatural world. I would give it more than 10 stars if possible! Every character is complex. Every so often viewers will want to cry, laugh and get angry at Ciel and Sebastian. Some of the characters (Finny, Bard, Mey-Rin and Lizzy) not only add comic relief, but also have stories on their own that they tell. I will defiantly be watching the next season. Oh yes, and if you are interested in finding out more about what happens to our faithful butler, Sebastian, the Queen's watchdog, Ciel and the rest of his gangly crew, the manga version is really, really good as well. If you ever have a chance, watch this because you will not regret it. At first it might seem a little weird, but after the second or third episode viewers will be hooked on the show and will want to see more of the adventures of the amazing duo, the butler and his master, Ciel and Sebastian!

"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...

This may be the most well written anime series I've seen. Not that it was Oscar-worthy writing, but most of the writing I've seen in anime has always been the thing that prevented me from really loving it. This series doesn't have the lazy, shortcut type of writing that simply fills the plot gaps. It actually builds different stories to support different themes.

Anyways, the series themes of revenge and redemption are woven together well with well-crafted story lines. This isn't an anime with non-stop action, but it does have its share of dark supernatural battle scenes, as well as witty humorous battle scenes. There is quite a bit dark humor in different parts of the series, but it's balanced out by traditional anime slapstick comedy (which I'm actually not a fan of and part of the reason it didn't get 10 stars).

If you watch the dubbed version, the translation and acting are all excellent. Some hardcore anime fans complain about the fake cockney accents, but they're mostly limited to some supporting characters. The voices for the two main characters (Ciel and Sebastian) are portrayed terrifically and are true in tone to their Japanese voice counterparts (I saw season 2 in the subbed version). Simply put, this may be the best job of versioning I've ever seen in anime. In its early U.S. import days, anime had horrible translations in both subbed and dubbed versions, due to what I expect as literal translations of the script from Japanese to English. Funimation has really done well in this department, as they've taken the meanings of the original Japanese script and rewritten it in English with English idioms and phrases that work perfectly with the characters and themes, rather than just lazily taking the Japanese words and translating them directly into English words, creating phrases that are unusual or that simply don't make any sense.

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.