Black Butler: Season 1 Review

STORY

This show had such an interesting premise: an orphaned son of noblemen makes a contract to see his soul to a demon in exchange for the demon's help in seeking vengeance for his parents' murder. The demon takes the form of the boy's butler and will obey his every order until the killers are brought to justice. When that day comes, the demon will consume the boy's soul.

Great premise! And a good writer could have done a lot with it. Unfortunately, for me, the execution on the premise fell flat.

Starting, by the way, with the way most of the premise was rapidly unfolded within a few seconds in a montage scene at the beginning of the first episode. There's so much juiciness in the basic concept that I would have loved to have seen it unfolded slowly, like a good mystery. I would have loved to see at least an episode or two from the viewpoint of the other servants, wondering how the hell this creepy red-eyed butler gets all his shit done so perfectly, without the viewer's having had the benefit of Explanatory Expository Montage.

Instead, the show dumped it all upon us at once. Which I might have forgiven it if had something interesting to do. But it didn't. Most of the show consisted of a bunch of aimless, unconnected, useless, uninteresting filler episodes. Most of the episodes followed a Sherlock-Holmesian detective style, with Ciel (for some reason that the show did poorly at explaining) acting as the Queen's guard dog and investigating the supernatural mysteries. A few episodes here and there were interesting from a character perspective, but they were the exceptions.

Even the main plot itself, when it finally got going, felt sorely lacking. It was awfully forced, from a thematic point of view, and mostly incoherent without even satisfactorily resolving the central mysteries of why the Phantomhives were chosen for cleansing.

The season was at its best when it focused on the relationship between Ciel and Sebastien - especially when tension rose between them at the season's end. I wish they had done more with the relationship throughout the series to cap it off with that delicious ending. It felt as if the relationship stayed stagnant for most of the season . . . and then it ended just when things got interesting.

I should also note that the series suffered for its uneven tone. I appreciate that it was trying to mix humor with the dark, but that worked best when it came from Sebastien, and not when scenes of darkness were juxtaposed with sight gags from the Gaggle of Annoying Servants (see "Character" section below).

ANIMATION

Middle of the road. Some of the colors were a bit bright for my taste, but that's just personal preference. Nothing to write home about, although I did appreciate the attention to detail in animating in the Victorian era. The character designs obviously appealed to the man/boy love fangirl crowd, with a dash of Annoying Anime Girl and Androgynous Villain with Boobs for the fanboys. I suppose Ciel's English noble-boy wardrobe changes were fun to watch, but overall there was nothing particularly interesting about the character designs.

SOUND

I enjoyed the music for Black Butler. The opening and ending themes were not memorable, but the music during the show itself was appropriately foreboding and created a dark, brooding atmosphere.

I must also comment on the excellent voice work for the leads, Ciel and Sebastien. Brina Palencia did the English voice over for Ciel, and it was perfect: the way she enunciated each syllable and imbued it with haughtiness and contempt. Sebastien's voice actor also did good work. Even with the umpteenth repetition of "I'm simply one hell of a butler," I never tired of hearing his voice. I can't say the same for anyone else in the English dub, though.

CHARACTERS

The annoying character ratio on this show is off the charts. As in, the majority of characters on the show are extremely, extremely annoying.

Exhibit A: Lady Elizabeth, Ciel's Annoying Simpering Anime Girl betrothed, complete with squeaky shrieky high voice and no redeeming traits whatsoever. That episode where she was turned into a doll was deliciously freaky (and accurate). I was hoping she would die a rapid, horrible death, but, alas, no.

Exhibit B: The Gaggle of Annoying Servants, including Red-Haired Maid, with the awful shrieky cockney British accent, Super Strong Guy, with awful girly voice (a horrendous Jason Liebrecht!), and Annoying Cook, with no cooking skills. Oh, and I forgot to mention Old Butler Guy Who Deflates. Each servant also came with a suitably annoying voice (at least in the English version - sorry, Netflix only has the English dub). Toward the end of the series, the writers attempted to give the servants all interesting back stories, but by then I disliked them all so much that I didn't care. The servants were supposedly used for comedy, but mostly they were just annoying. Later, the servants were used as cheap emotional parlor tricks, but that failed because they were annoying and, hence, conveyed no emotional heft when they were put in peril.

Exhibit C: Red-Haired Scythe Grim Reaper, who was mostly a plot device, and not particularly interesting. Or funny. Fun character design, but that's about it.

Exhibit D: The Undertaker Reaper - also not particularly interesting. Or funny. Creepy, but not creepy enough to be interesting.

Exhibit E: Lau, the Chinese guy, who appeared in random episodes without my ever knowing who he was. It's still not clear to me whether I was supposed to have known who he was before the episode that actually focused on who he was.

All of the above greatly diminished my enjoyment of the show. The sole saving graces, I suppose, were the main characters, the arrogant and dark lord Ciel Phantomhive, and his black butler, Sebastien Michaelis. The erotic undertones of Sebastien's desire to devour his little lord's delicious soul made each interaction all the more fun to watch, and the show played up on this obvious theme quite well. From the character designs to the random scenes of Sebastien bathing Ciel, to Sebastien seeing Ciel in various states of undress, Black Butler made every detail feed back into and tease out the demon-master relationship. After all, the central premise of the show is that a demon wants to devour a child's soul: the show would have been remiss to not capitalize on the twisted perversions hinted by that premise. As it turns out, this was about the only thing the show did right.

OVERALL

I suppose I enjoyed watching the show, although so many of the characters annoyed me. Every time Lady Elizabeth appeared in an episode, I groaned. I found the mix of dark themes with the supernatural interesting, but the attempt to mix dark themes with humor was not always successful. Again, the central relationship between Ciel and Sebastien was the most interesting to watch - and I say this from a character standpoint, not because I particular enjoy man/boy love anime or found the characters attractive (which I didn't particularly).

But, as always, it came down to the story. Or, in this case, the lack thereof. Black Butler lacked a compelling enough story to support the interesting central characters and premise. The main plot felt thematically forced, instead of unfolding organically from the seeds of a planted mystery. The main villain was weak, one-note, and uninteresting, and hardly the dramatic equal of Sebastien.

Overall, the season was a mixed bag. I will not be watching the OVA or the second season.