Review: Kuroshitsuji

It’s not dead yet! I know it’s been forever and a day since there was any activity, so I bring some new reviews! Beginning with Kuroshitsuji aka Black Butler.

Take Little Lord Fonteroy as envisioned by the Japanese, cross it with The Tragical Tale of Dr. Faustus and then put a gothic lolita filter over the whole thing and you will probably come up with something resembling Kuroshitsuji. The show is about a young British lord in Victorian England by the name of Ciel Phantomhive, the world’s first twelve year old with a stick up his ass that may or not be made of awesome (and may or may not belong to his handsome butler). To put Ciel’s history in a brief pithy saying and hopefully not spoil it too much for those of you who haven’t watched the show, some bad things happen to Ciel after his family was killed and his home burned down. So he did what any person in that situation would do, summon a demon and make a contract with him to get revenge. Thus enters Sebastien Michaelis, butler and demon extraordinaire that looks like Vincent Valentine, and acts like a combination of Alucard and Walter from Hellsing. This all combines to make the most awesome butler in existence.

The series is primarily about Ciel’s search to find the people responsible for hurting him as a child and getting revenge. All while acting as one the nobles in England who does the queen’s dirty work, fending off crazy angels and crazier death gods. A lot of anime shows try to blend seriousness and slapstick comedy and fail mightily, Kuroshitsuji manages to not fail, which is probably one of the reasons I enjoy the show so much. The dark parts tend to be counter balanced by bits of light hearted silliness that might happen at the exact same time. The characters are original and the show takes it time to build up to the ending, doing so subtly enough that you almost don’t realize the roller coaster has picked up speed until its nearly over. The first episodes definitely take their time and build the world and the characters so that you have that emotional connection by the time things start to go bad. Even the characters originally annoying I ended up liking the more I saw them.

Overall Kuroshitsuji is a very enjoyable series, well executed and it manages to handle it’s different materials well without fumbling too much. Best of all, the ending is an ending with actual resolution instead of just a trail off. Funimation got the rights to release this in the US this year, and I’m looking forward to getting to watch the English dub of it, mainly because when Funi wants to, they can do a fabulous job. I’m hoping it’ll be a bit like Hellsing where I’ll get real British accents, which would just be the icing on an already great cake. So if you want an enjoyable show that is mostly serious with funny moments and an overall unique story, you deserve to check it out. It you’re just a closet victorian/steam punk fan, you should definitely check it out.

Tags: anime, geek, girl, review