Black Butler season 1 review

Black Butler Review

   This 24-episode of season one of Black Butler, or kuroshitsuji, made by Square Enix sure spreads like wildfire. Luckily, I haven’t been set ablaze but all of my friends have and this review is more like my reply to their urging and requesting of me to watch it.

   I don’t hate it of course, but the bad is way more than the good in this anime. First let’s start with the main thing I’d like to question the fans:

   Why is anime with so much Western elements that it is even set in London becoming this popular? If I wanted to go look at medieval Europe, I’d go watch a European movie. Yet I go to the Easternmost country in the globe to watch about the West? My point is that I am against the invasion of Western elements all over anime and games. Even in attack on titan, they have English names. Sure, Fullmetal Alchemist had many western elements too, but it wasn’t all that. I am against the genre in general and rarely watch it, but for it to get this overrated: wow. I’m confused.

my possible third favorite character.

  My two favorite characters? Griell and Undertaker. After that there is no third position. Why? This anime is really popular among girls, so it obviously some yaoi. That’s no question. Let’s see, we’ve got Sebestian and Ciel, Griell and Sebestian, and some others which I did not care about. There is, as you guessed, a good-looking butler and a clumsy maid, as well as a blonde boy with hairclips. The character development sure lacks, as either all of it happened before the anime, behind the scenes, and etc. One big downfall is that Ciel’s face as well as many others shows fewer emotions than a brick. So almost every episode does not build or destroy anything, excluding the climax episodes. Although the main characters should be mad men, there are no mental breakdowns, nor are there any exaggerated grieving scenes, which I wanted to see.

image from here, maybe

  Next is the plot. As I mentioned above, the plot is made so every episode looks like the one before it, comparing to shows like That’s So Raven and Zack and Cody. However there is a plot. Here’s my non-spoiler summary:

In medieval Britain, one spoiled brat with a pirate get up decides to kill people he doesn’t even know. A good looking kind-yet-evil man helps him exact his revenge. This man is tied to the red string of fate with a guy using a chainsaw. Who will this love triangle favor?

Alright I did exaggerate myself, but the amount of internet talk about this is massive! Sebestian even buttons his shirt and makes him wear the ring! That’s a lot of work for a butler, though I haven’t really seen one, and it was quite understandable where SPOILER1 happens, although it was for a different reason.

Overall I think the plot would’ve been better if they focused on it. There were too few Griell and Undertaker scenes for me to be satisfied. Also, there is a huge amount of fillers at the beginning (Undertaker and Griell being two of them, slightly), although some of them eventually turn into plot points. Seriously the story could do without the sadistic humor, and it needs more blood scenes and fewer scenes of the clumsy staff and stupid inhabitants of the Phantomhive house. There are whole episodes without a single blood scene! That’s a waste of youth.

a redhead, with long hair, and a long metal weapon. What's to not like about him?

   Sorry, but I did not like the music too much, only a few tracks were nice, but the “HAAAAaaaaaa hs” song was disturbing, and made me turn the volume down and read the subtitles, guessing who said what. There were a few tracks that had this awesome feeling, one of them having a sad and satisfactorily dark feeling to it. The opening was from SID! I really like the singer’s voice as I’ve heard it a lot before.

  

    Now for the artstyle. I am really picky about this, and let me say; only Sebestian looked good. The artstyle isn’t bad at all, in fact, Dangan Ronpa and many new anime are copying it, but it sure is new and Ciel doesn’t always look good in it. Griell looks fabulous as always, of course; no question about that.

  Overall, I’d give it 6/10. Remember this is just season one of the anime so I did not compare it with the manga, nor season two.

Play More Zelda!

Spoiler1: when he starts frowning and actually left him when he was outside London. He was mad probably because of the fact that he didn’t end his revenge when he got the ultimate chance. Regardless of reasons, it was the right thing to do.