OVAS here: http://adziu.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/kuroshitsuji-ovas.html )
It’s taken me some time to get around to finishing Kuroshitsuji, which I started watching over a year ago. I suppose to some extent I lost interest, especially when the anime diverged from the manga, and instead of going to the interesting, dark places the original went in the circus arc, embarked on its own climactic section opposing the demon with an angel.
Kuroshitsuji is the story of a little boy with the unlikely name of Ciel Phantomhive, a young earl in Victorian Britain, although mangaka Yana Toboso apparently never found out an earl needs another name to go with the title. Poor Ciel has had an incredibly sad life, losing his parents and very nearly losing his own life as a human sacrifice. He was saved only by a Faustian pact with a powerful demon, who takes the form of a butler. With this immense power under his control, Ceil becomes a great aid to the Queen, solving lazily-plotted supernatural crimes, tangling with some flamboyant death-gods and introducing finger-food to the Great Exhibition, all with the aid of his inept but super-powered staff members.
I am perhaps describing it unfairly, because while it has healthy doses of silliness, it is an anime that presents itself with a pleasing lack of irony, and aims for elegance and some degree of emotional depth. The heart of its appeal is the homoerotic, pederastic relationship between the 12-year-old boy and his pretty-faced adult demon, and some scenes, such as when Ciel is disguising himself as a girl and needs Sebastian to put a corset on him, are open references to the homosexual implications of the scenario, even if they are jokes. The rather pretty coupling has attracted a huge female fanbase, who like that sort of thing. Personally, perhaps to the surprise of some, I didn’t really find Ciel cute or Sebastian interesting, and thought Finnie was much sweeter. Possibly it’s just an aversion to the tsundere character mould.
That said, the character designs are very nice, with special emphasis placed on the attire, kodona rather than authentically Victorian, and the animation from new studio A-1 Pictures (put together by Sony to be, presumably, a more complete, standalone anime studio than Aniplex, A-1 are working on adaptations of games like Persona and Valkyria Chronicles, but are also one of the studios behind the disappointing Fairy Tail anime) is unspectacular but neat and pretty to look at.
The danger is taking Kuroshitsuji too seriously, for while the manga has managed to take itself to more mature places, the anime is still about demons fighting with silverwear, naked werewolf-men, effete shinigami with stationary chainsaws or paper scissors and elite assassins working in the kitchens and sculleries. There is tragedy at the heart, but Kuroshitsuji is primarily daft and proud of it, and that’s why it was almost always fun to watch. And while the ending went off on a strange tangent about Queen Victoria and ended with a very unimpressive power-up moment, it also impressed in several ways: I rather liked the way lots of clichés about London were used, but transplanted: there was a Great Fire, but with a shot of the Monument to make sure the viewer knew this was no anachronism. There was a London bridge, falling down, but it was Tower Bridge, under construction. And then the very ending…well, with its charged eroticism, sado-masochism and finality, it was something I certainly didn’t expect to see – and it’ll be interesting to see how the second season deals with it.
One minor quibble at the end, though – I really hated the way Shinsen-Subs (and a lot of others following them) decided to translate the show’s catchphrase, ‘あくまで執事です’, ‘akumade shitsuji desu’, which means something like ‘(I am) a butler through and through’ or ‘(I am) a butler to the core’, but also serves as a pun: ‘悪魔で執事です’, or ‘(I am) a demon and a butler’. Seeking to preserve the pun, Shinsen decided to translate it as ‘I am a hell of a butler’, which everyone seemed to love. I thought it was terrible. It’s just horribly anachronistic (especially from a British-biased group like Shinsen) and gives a false impression of confidence rather than humility. I’m sure some suitably infernal reference could have been devised, like ‘I am a butler from very deep down’ or similar. But that is just a translation issue, and nothing to do with the actual series.
I will watch the second season, and continue to read the manga, too. As Kuroshitsujii’s popularity swells, so does antagonism towards it, and it weathers a lot of abuse for being aimed squarely at ‘yaoi fangirls’. But I’ve never abandoned something I like for its reputation, and if it does aim vulgarly for that market, so what? It’s not like it aspires to be great art, and it’s funny!
(Originally written 3.4.10)
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