Wait a minute... isn't this an otome blog? Why am I reviewing an anime here? It's been a long time since I've written a proper review post, and since I'm not playing anything at the moment, I thought I'd cover something I've been watching instead: the second series of Black Butler (or Kuroshitsuji, whatever you want to call it).
I know this was released years ago and is old news now, but that's alright. It's always been like that, I discover something long after everyone else has found it and talked about it to death. Actually, I purchased and read the first volume of the manga quite a long time ago. Then I watched a few episodes of the anime and completely forgot about it until a few weeks ago. That was when I decided to watch the first season of the anime entirely.
Those first twenty five episodes I saw on Netflix I enjoyed quite a bit. I preferred the series when it was less comedic and focussed on the actual plot, but in the end I didn't mind the fan service stuff. Afterwards I wanted to read more of the manga, but because it's a bit hard to go out shopping for books at the moment, I settled on the second part of the anime. It took me three days to watch all twelve episodes of it. Yes, I know there are six OVAs as well, but I forgot to see those. Oh yeah, I also watched it subbed if that's important. I like how the English dub tries to make them sound British and use regional slang, but I'm one of those people who insists on only watching stuff in its original language.
So, what do I think of this second season? Keep reading to find out!
(Beware of spoilers, obviously.)
Before watching, I did my research ("research" being a few Bing searches) and found out that Black Butler II doesn't follow the manga at all, it's a 100% original story. I think that if I was a religious reader of the source material I would probably be more annoyed by this, but I didn't care that much, since a lot of the first series didn't follow it either. Usually adaptations of my favourite books and comics annoy me so much when they change or add stuff. Examples include the entire series of Riverdale (which I still watch every week without fail no matter how stupid it gets), the Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children film (which I remember writing an annoyed blog post about after seeing it) and that adaptation of Hetty Feather on CBBC I couldn't watch because it was so different. Nowadays I am trying to be more tolerant of adaptations and am forcing myself to understand that sometimes, they're going to have to change stuff. These past few sentences don't really have anything to do with Black Butler at all, but what I'm trying to say is that if I had read more than one volume of the manga, I would probably would've been quite annoyed with all the changes the anime made. (Except for the panel in the first volume where Sebastian uses a flip phone, I'm glad they changed that in the anime to be a bit more accurate to the time period!)
My research also led me to find out that this second season had a lot of fanservice in it. Luckily that sort of stuff appeals to me, but I hoped that they would at least give it an interesting plotline and not just hours of Sebastian X Grell ship fuel. After watching it all, I don't really think that it had as much fanservice at all.
The plot of Black Butler II is weird. A lot of it didn't make sense to me, and even now it's still confusing. It's basically about this weird butler rivalry between Sebastian and this other demon bloke called Claude (who is really just a clone of Sebastian with glasses) because they both want Ciel's soul. Also Ciel has amnesia for some reason but it doesn't affect him that much in the end. I couldn't understand why Claude wanted his soul, I don't remember it being explained properly. The ending was a bit of a damper for me, Ciel and Sebastian just said "bye" and left everyone.
There are multiple new characters to talk about, and I have a lot to say about them. Claude to me just felt like someone on DeviantArt or somewhere recoloured Sebastian, added glasses and then uploaded him as an "original" OC without fleshing him out at all. He felt a bit like a creep in some scenes, especially when he interacted with his master.
I cannot talk about Claude without talking about Alois, another original character. At first I thought he was going to be a carbon copy of Ciel, but luckily they have plenty of differences. Alois is a strange character. He has a contract with Claude and lives in this mansion with his maid (who I will also talk about later!) and his other staff members. After seeing him in the first episode, I did not like him at all. Everybody in his employment he treated so terribly, and not just with simple spoilt brat insults, no, he physically abused them and I didn't like it. Yes, I know he had an awful time in the past, but that doesn't excuse his actions.
However, in the end I couldn't hate him. I just felt that he deserved better treatment by the writers. They kept giving him all these disgusting scenes with sexual undertones that made me feel a bit sick. For some reason there were multiple shots of him shirtless, and some of the things that Claude and his maid Hannah did to him were... ugh. I don't think I even want to mention that flashback scene with the creepy old paedo bloke. Yes, I understand that this series has a mature rating and usually I wouldn't mind, but Alois is an underaged child. It's just disgusting. They didn't do much of that with Ciel, so why did they have to subject Alois to this? He really did deserve better and I just felt sorry for him in the end. At least things got a bit better for him in the final few episodes. Yes, he died, but at least he got to be happy with his brother. But I wished that him and Ciel could've had more interactions and a fleshed out relationship. He had a nice design and so much potential to be a great character, but there's only so much you can do in twelve episodes...
Alois' maid, Hannah, also deserved much better. She was mostly just there for fetish fuel. Why did they have to make it that she had a sword hidden inside her? No, I do not want to see characters reaching down her gob to pull that thing out, thanks.
The other new characters were sort of pointless or didn't have enough screentime to interest me. Those identical triplet demons I didn't care about at all. Ronald Knox (who is apparently from the manga) has the potential to be an interesting character, but he was in this for maybe two scenes, so I don't know yet.
I don't mind having new characters, but it's sort of sad that the side characters I liked from before got shoved to the side to make way for them. Mey-Rin, Finny and Baldo have a few scenes at the beginning but then have no screentime until the very end, which didn't bother me much at first, but then I started to miss them. Prince Soma and Agni don't appear often either, and when they do they're crying over Ciel for 90% of the time. Grell was there a lot, but all he did was go "SEBASTIAN HOT", but he mostly did that in the last season anyway. That blonde viscount (was his name Aleister? I can't remember) could've had his appearances removed entirely and no difference would've been made. What made me really sad was that the Undertaker only appeared twice and just for a couple of seconds. He was my favourite character...
Why I don't think that this season was that filled with fanservice is because the popular characters from before had literally no screentime. Unless you like Sebastian. He got plenty of scenes, but then he is basically the main character so it makes sense. Also if you like big breasted waifu stuff and shipping the butlers with their masters, there was plenty of stuff there for you.
I should probably say something positive. Even though I listed billions of flaws up there, I still enjoyed watching Black Butler II. I wouldn't have finished it in three days if it was complete rubbish. My favourite episode was probably the one on the train, or the ball episode. It didn't have the feel that the first season had, but it entertained me at least. The animation was better too, and there was a lot more 3D stuff I noticed. And the music and voice acting was good, but that was to be expected. I think they could've done without the new characters and just written some original episodes about Ciel and Sebastian solving some kind of weird mystery. Those stories were what I enjoyed most before.
Really, I could've just skipped this and watched the third season or got off the sofa and bought the manga instead, but I was curious and I had the free time. And look, I got a blog post out of it, didn't I? Out of ten, I'd probably rate Black Butler II a six, or maybe six and a half. I don't think I'll be watching it again, but it wasn't completely awful. I wouldn't keep watching if it was truly terrible. Also, I don't think it would have been released if the author of the manga didn't approve of it.
This ends my review. Perhaps I will do more stuff like this in the future. Yes, it's not otome, but who cares? Hopefully someone out there enjoyed this post.
Goodbye.
This review probably needed more pictures.....
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