Reviews

Well, if one would look at my anime list they would probably say, "Wait! This guy only watched 15 of the 24 episodes and he thinks he can write a review!?" and I'd say back, "Normally not," but this is an exception because I find that in any story the first few episodes are absolutely crucial. If anyone tells me a show is good but you have to bear through the first few episodes to get to the good stuff then I'd tell them that they lied because that is not a good show. A good show, in my opinion, is a show that will keep me from the hook to the end. Therefore, if the beginning is unbearable, or the story loses me part way through (and I'm not talking about a story having a slump because that is natural for most long series, but rather make me completely lose interest and take me way outside of the experience) the show has failed regardless of what comes after (again in my opinion). So I'm writing this review of my experience of the first 15 episodes of Black Butler (黒執事) and why I dropped it. I'm not going to go through all the rating categories (story, art, sound, etc.) so I'll just get to the heart of the matter.

***We might be getting into some SPOILER GREY AREA pretty soon so read at your own risk***

So this show actually got a good start (which is why I've managed to shove 15 episodes down my throat) and held together an interesting plot, interesting characters, it understood when to reveal information and when not to (going back on the 'show, don't tell' principle), it got right to the chase with the plot and interesting developments started almost immediately, and most importantly a scene would set a distinguishable tone and stick to it. Now one of my favorite video games of the past few years is called Bloodborne and because of it I took a new found liking to a Victorian style setting and tone, so Black Butler has everything going for it right now (except maybe the Shoujo fantasy but I've learned to put up with that stuff). My only qualm with this so far is the Black Butler, Sebastian, is such an extremely useful butler and almost no flaws which becomes a very convenient plot devise to make things far too easy for the main character. Again, another thing that is very common in anime, so I learned to put up with it and focused my attention on the more interesting and conflicted characters.

But around the 7th episode, when the demon hound story begins, Black Butler practically committed seppuku here. So the main characters showed up in a small England village that is run by a rich man. This village is haunted by an elusive demon hound that kills all those that disobey the rules of the rich man. The village lore declares the hound a long-time protector of the rich man's family and the main characters take it upon themselves to solve this mystery. This story kind of reminded me of the Wolfman (which I really liked) and everything was going great: good tension was building up, there was a tone being set, and I was truly intrigued to see how it ended. Since it is about a demon hound and since people were found horrendously torn to pieces by this hound, I was really looking forward to a somewhat scary/thrilling conclusion to this story.

***Now this is some SPOILER territory so be warned***.

So the demon hound has finally been found and it turns out it is actually a demon hound. So here comes the thrilling conclusion to all this building up tension. Except thrilling would be the last thing I'd call it. Sebastian (the Black Butler) showed up immediately after finding the demon hound and he ends up kicking the thing so hard into the ground that they discover a new hot spring. After the fight, Sebastian beat the demon hound into submission and ended up taming him. Thus they brought the demon hound back with them to be their new friend. And it turns out that this demon hound was just confused and didn't know what he was doing when he killed those people.

I felt absolutely betrayed. That was like blowing up a balloon but before it pops somebody just poked a hole in it and let all the air just pathetically deflate. What happened to all that tension? What happened to the tone? All my emotions up until then were just thrown back into my face like they were saying, "Oh! Were you hoping for an actually good story with an exciting end? NO! You get a happy-go-friendly ending that the characters did nothing to earned!" I hate happy endings. Ok, that's kind of not true so I'll reword it; I hate happy endings that weren't earned. What I mean by that is a happy ending doesn't happen so easily in the real world so I despise when these characters get a happy ending without hardly doing anything. If you've seen the Naruto ending, I liked that happy ending because that was hard earned that could've turned south real easily. However, this was pathetic and anti-climatic. Sebastian is such a plot devise for simply solving problems to keeping the other characters from actually having to do anything except make jokes.

So I almost stopped there, but they started foreshadowing that all those events had an underlying purpose to the main story that looked a little interesting and more promising. So I kept watching until episode 15 rolled around and they ended up having a curry making contest before the Queen. Doesn't sound that bad, does it? Well, it was. From the beginning of this story arc, it was established that this was a serious advancement of the story and not just an extra comedic episode. Well at first it was, but it quickly turned into the most goofy, absurd, and unbelievable series of events I could imagine. Now this wouldn't be bad if I wasn't meant to take this seriously just like Gintama. However, the climatic scene ended up being jumbled up foreshadowing and comedy which did not work together at all creating such an awkward experience. You see, the problem with this is TONE. I have no idea what I'm suppose to be feeling about this because it pulls me straight out of the story. Is this suppose to be serious? Is this suppose to be funny? Is this actually plot development? Is this filler? Is what is happening important or even make sense?

This episode also used way too much symbolism that was thrown crudely in your face and they constantly reminded you, "THIS IS SYMBOLISM!" just like that which I hate. Also, three characters were introduced in this story arc and they were far too emotional for me to care about them. Any character that is emotional and sad when you first meet them isn't going to make me care about them or the story; it makes them look like pathetic wimps. And after the whole climatic scene, they explained that all the stuff that went down was because of some 'evil spice' that brings out the bad stuff in people's hearts, and the police heard that and just accepted it like that was normal not even questioning it. This is a world where they have to hide the fact that Sebastian is a demon because that would cause people to panic, AND when a 'demon hound' showed up in a small village the residents went absolutely superstitious and freaked out. So 'evil spice' is just the norm is this society I guess. And annoyingly, Sebastian and the main character ended up talking down to the new characters like they knew what was up. Well do they? I hate it when characters talk like they are coming from experience and authority when they really didn't learn anything themselves up until then.

Well that's two strikes and I didn't feel like giving it a chance for a third because I already despise these characters and the story. No matter what comes after this, nothing is worth pushing through something this miserable.

I'm not sure how other people would think about this but I found myself being extremely disappointed with this story. So, if what I explained to you is something you think you would like I won't dissuade you from it. I'm not going to give it a rating because again I haven't seen the full show, I'm just saying don't expect a good story-telling experience with Black Butler.