Black Butler

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.

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!

OK, this is not cowboy bebop of FLCL (which I am not that big of a fan) but it is a very good show. The story flows, it slowly lets pieces of the mysteries go, and best of all it actually has a decent ending.

I am pretty picky about my anime. For the life of me I cannot understand the love for Trigun, except Nicholas Wolfwood. Most animes ruin it with the ending. This one is really good. I agree it starts out pretty bad but then so does Hellsing OVA and it turns really good really fast. It has a darker feel toward the end reminiscent of Fullmetal alchemists. If you want the standard hero shows up has a minor problem then overcomes the bad guy with some special power. This is not your show. If you want a solid story with some of the cutsie stuff that ends well, has really decent lessons, and great side character stories then I say give it a try. The second half is not quite as good but then ending makes it well worth the time.Plus there is no way to not like Sebastian since he is "One hell of a butler"

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.

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.