Kuroshitsuji is a well-known, well-loved series, with a fascinating story and an interesting take on Victorian England. It is well paced, with lovingly crafted animation and beautiful sound. The characters are well-rounded, and the story is fairly consistent within its own boundaries.
This movie throws all of that out the window. It comes off as a shameless cash-in on a popular franchise, which ignores parts of the story as told up to this point in an attempt to pull off its big plot twists. The mixture of CGI and traditional animation is clunky and poorly executed at best. The background music is barely even worth mentioning, since it is easily forgettable and lends nothing to any given moment.
Two of the major plot twists (and I use this term very loosely) shown in the movie are nonsensical, especially the movie's ending "twist", the fact that the Undertaker is a Shinigami in disguise. The entire scene jarred me out of my immersion in the story, because it wasn't a twist at all. The fact that the Undertaker is a famous, powerful Reaper is a plot point that *already played out in season one*. That's right: this movie used a" plot twist" that they had already used in the initial series. The characters being shocked to find out about it was a total wash, because they already knew, or at least they should have if this movie followed the canon of the original anime.
All in all, this movie would have been fantastic if it were intended to be a stand-alone or introduction to the series, rather than the *fifth major installment*. As it is, this movie was a huge waste of time and money, reflected by its terrible box office in North America. Even if you're a big fan of the series (perhaps especially then), give this one a miss and hope they do better next time if they decide to adapt more of the manga.
