Black Butler was WORSE than you remember 

I still think it's so funny that the shinigami have gardening tools as weapons and it makes sense because a scythe is really also a gardening/farming tool

Wait until they discover the manga has been on/off hiatus because the creator is working with Disney Japan which opens a whole new rabbit hole- twisted wonderland.

“Did they have face piercings in the Victorian Era?” Oh, honey. They had _nipple_ piercings in the Victorian Era 😁

Well, the abuse of children isn’t fully for shock value. If anything, a large part of the manga is about discussing the abuse, exploitation, and adultification of children, the crimes of the rich and the class & nobility system, and how the two intersect. It doesn’t always do it well, but it does often surprise you with how poignant it can be.

the asolute FEAR i felt reading that title, as a black butler fan i wouldn't wish that curse on anyone 😭😭

Spoilers: Grell constantly trying to commit suicide at the beginning becomes really dark once you find out in the manga that all shinigami are former humans who committed suicide.

I know the filler season 2 has a fair amount of hate but looking it at a logical standpoint- realistically there would be other demons tricking humans and making pacts and The queen would have more than one family working in the shadows

"...The butler archetype was an example of positive masculinity. You have someone that provides and is also not holding it over someone's head." This! This! This! Capable, chivalrous and dutiful without harboring secret expectations for it.

Im both like "oh no" and "oh yes" lmao

As someone who read the manga- I cannot describe to you the physical or emotional effect that Undertaker's reaper reveal (YOU KNOW THE PANEL. YOU KNOW THE ONE.) had on me. Changed my life. Truly made me the woman I am today.

the appeal of ciel in a dress has never been the fact that it's funny because he's uncomfortable, it's always been the fact that yaoi/shounen-ai enjoyers back in the day loved the crossdressing trope. There was a whole subgenres of shounen mangas written by women who left homoerotic subtexts because they were actually yaoi enjoyers. The authors in this genre had written / publicly liked popular yaoi or shonen ai mangas. Yana toboso, for example, drew yaoi doujinshis before blackbutler. Same goes for Clamp, the authors of pandora hearts, nanami d.gray man etc She was not using crossdressing for laughs.. it was for horny (edit: sexualisation of minors is not something i enjoy. But i was there at the time and was a manga fan who read a lot of BL and had friends with similar interests 15 years ago. I've never met anyone who didn't see the undertones)

The only suicide joke I can recall stem from Butler Grell in the anime. Some people have speculated it’s “foreshadowing” to her being a grim reaper - as in the canon it’s divulged that reapers are made from humans who have killed themselves and must collect souls as a form of “punishment” and “cause for redemption” for taking their own lives (some lore has been sprinkled concerning a “higher up” but we doubt Yana will do much with it). However the anime foreshadowing anything like that without Yana’s creative input is very unlikely, and it was mostly just used as a dumb gag.

The only thing you missed from the ovas is your reaction to CLaudes tap dancing.

In relation to what u said about how much shock value BB has with kids its actually kinda toned down? The circus arc isn't but Ciel himself and his trauma is, as you get through the manga, they heavily imply that every form of abuse you can think of was used on ciel(s..)

This is going to be one HELL of a video

I was screaming "THIS IS NOT CANON! THIS IS NOT CANON " during half of the video😭 the manga is much better aaaaaaaaaaah😭(can't wait for you to review the green witch arc aaaaaaaah)

As a kuro fan Don't watch s1 and s2 as your first experience of kuroshitsuji, read the manga then watch book of circus and book of Atlantic. Then eithe watch until April for weston college arc, or read the manga. Looking forward to watching the video!

Absolutely insane that the premise of the story is “Rich kid has a deal eith a devil for his butler and patrols the criminal undreground” and at like 6 minutes in Sebas is getting (deserved praise) for being an ideal male role model mostly

Glad to know I’m not the only one rewatching Black Butler as 2024 begins

Honestly Black Butler feels like a wild fever dream from middle school. Half of the time I was trying to figure out which episodes I had seen and which ones I hadn't and the side characters I honestly thought I had made up or were from a different anime that I had forgotten about. And I remembered hating Ciel and Elizabeths betrothal but couldn't remember specifically why until you reminded me that they are cousins.

Honestly, I'm happy that more people know and become fans of this manga. I always wanted the prejudice caused by unfounded facts about this work to disappear, so I believe that the more people entering the fandom and knowing the truth, the better. Ps: For those who like the Victorian style of Black Butler, I recommend reading Pandora Hearts and The Case Study of Vanitas. Both are very good!

After reviewing the manga, I would also love if you did some kind of review on Twisted Wonderland, the official Disney anime boy gacha game that Yana Toboso is the concept creator, character designer, creative director, and main scenario designer for. So basically, it's moreso Yana Toboso's Disney-funded Twisted Wonderland than anything. Several characters are obvious references to Black Butler characters, some in terms of looks and others in terms of personality. The story is also great, even though the English translation team is obsessed with downplaying the characters' trauma- I recommend watching YuuRei's videos for more on that. Regardless, I would highly recommend it.

14:24 "Coming sir", "Yes in fact I think he is." XD

It still to this day kills me that Ciel bought the whole “Alois killed my parents” shit when he should know damn well that Alois would’ve been like……12? Or 10? Bruh I know your math ain’t that bad

37:50 Ciels outfits, ESPECIALLY this one, are what got me sucked into BB in the first place. Id spend literal hours scrolling the concept art/references for all of their outfits and dissecting how to draw ruffles and folds and flowers and lace and details and shit from it. It made something in my brain click and I was obsessed with lolita/ouji fashion, which lead into historical victorian fashion, which lead into victorian architecture, which lead to my obsession with the Victorian era as a whole [its the car crash I cant look away from]. 100% Yana Toboso contributed to me being a fashion history nerd. The aesthetics of the manga are gorgeous and Yana's art is beautiful.

Ive been reading Black Butler weekly for 15 years. Im so happy its picking up again! Its a cult classic for many!

I must have brain rot all I hear is Connor when Sebastian speaks

oh the undertaker zombie experiment ... well how do I tell you 💀...

oh honey.. the crossdressing may have been framed as for laughs for general audiences, but it was pure fanservice for its core audience. It's for the girlies

Black Butler was one of my First Anime back when I was 13 or so. Really liked it back then, though in retrospektive I can really see some...weird shit with it. Never actually read the Manga, so I am really interested to see where it goes!

I’m sure someone else has said it but the Public School arc is after the story covered in Book Of Atlantic. Everything after the Curry arc in S1 (Episode 15?) and S2 also isn’t Canon to the manga.

The undertaker is an existence that can no longer really have anything to gain so his motivation truly couldn’t be anything other than curiosity or boredom.

Welcome to the fandom brother. Yana Toboso also happens to be the illustrator for a Disney Game made by Aniplex and Square Enix, Twisted Wonderland. You should come try it out.

"it feels so slapped together." 😂😂😂 Yes. That's why I prefer the manga. Most of the anime is just all over the place, lol. So much more of what's happening will make sense to you once you've caught up on the manga.

Undertaker does have a proper reason for the zombie experiment that will be explained in the manga further down the lane. The whole animal weapon part is more of a "making use of a failed product" type of situation. It's more like a "I wonder what would happen if I do this." And "okay, this is what it does. Now, what can I do with that?" If that makes sense. Like he didn't make the zombies for the purpose of getting money from the military.

I will admit, Grell was one of the queer characters that helped me figure out I was genderfluid (along with Steven Universe and a couple of genderfluid creators I watch). I have always been a huge fan of her, and I find it sad that all the characters use male pronouns with her (even if it is a 'different time' they're portraying it was VERY confusing for my 14 year old brain at the time). But hey, Grell takes it in stride regardless so good for her. (SPOILERS) And, fun fact, Grell originally died trying to do a sex change on herself. And it was during a time when that wasn't really a thing, so...yeah. Really explains her obsession with what she was doing with Madame Red.

the Public school arc is most definately NOT the first arc in the manga. The order of arcs in the anime Ignoring the filler sticks to the order of arcs in the manga. Public school is like arc number 7 or something.

Not gonna lie, I fangirled a little bit when you read out my comment. 🤩 It was a bit of a "Sempai noticed me!" moment. It's interesting you like Book of Murder more than Book of Circus because I've always described Book of Murder as "the filler arc". XD Though I LOVE that Ciel is the reason the Sherlock Holmes series continued in the Black Butler universe. A Death Scythe can kill demons yes, but that doesn't mean one hit from a Death Scythe will kill Sebastian. The Undertaker was able to see the Cinematic Record because that's an ability of the death scythe. It's not stated that someone has to be dying for the reaper to see the Cinematic Record. I'm very excited to see you cover the manga! I've been a fan of black butler since I was like 14. I fell of of the series for a few years during the Public School Arc. While it's a good arc, it's better read as a binge read rather than one chapter a month. I hope you'll discuss the Twin Theory in the manga video because I feel like it was a big part of the fandom. Though I suggest not actually looking it up until you're completely caught up on the manga because it does contain spoilers.

I can’t help but love black butler and its flaws xD it’s a series that has brought me so much enjoyment and community. The anime is all over the place and I hope we get even more seasons in the future 🙏🏼

Oh yeah. Oh dear. No, yeah, please read the manga. So many things fall into place given the deeper context presented in the manga. It's still Black Butler at the end of the day, but it is very gratifying to see Yana Toboso come into her own as a storyteller.

this is a huge win for grelle nation, looking forward to the manga analysis :>

I'm gonna be honest, most of the fandom of this anime, at least in spanish, was simply bc the yaoi options at the time were so few that we'd take anything with more than one male protagonist and make it as gay as humanly possible, and the amount of fanservice in black butler certainly helped with that. Fujoshis were just desperate for even the smallest amount of gay, nobody cared about the plot unless it involved ciel moaning suspiciously while having a corset tightened

The best thing to come out of the black butler anime was Grell with the safety scissors for his reaper weapon since his scythe was revoked.

I don't know how many people know of this interest fact. The saw weapon that Grell uses can lead to what the first invented saw was. An early medical device was actually a tiny saw use for women abortion(I could be wrong on the main surgery it was for). So interesting that the weapon that Grell has and its introduction is during the same time Madam Red is a villian in the series

34:43 - thank youuuuu - I'm glad you agree that this final twist of S2 ruins Sebastian and Ciel's relationship because it takes away all of Sebastian's attraction (for lack of a better word), and all the tension of the 4D chess game Ciel has to constantly play to stay one step ahead of the supernatural force after his soul while being only human. After S2, he's just... a demon. Who trapped another demon into a contract that will never end, making Sebastian kind of SICK OF him. Grumpy, resentful, his heart's not in it. He's not having FUN. Which is the opposite of their vibe in, like, all the other media (especially the manga, which I take as the central canon from which all these others pieces are adaptations, but that's just me). I disagree with the "S1 Angel wasn't an interesting villain because the motivation was really basic" because I find it refreshing when the villains ARE just one-track-minds who do One Thing to the complete hilt, choose a hill to unalive on, and DO SO. Like "hunchback of notre dame" Frollo. Sure, there's room for tragic backstory type villains who waffle about their plans and have internal conflict (very Shakespearean of them), but sometimes having a very predictable antagonist is what one WANTS out of a story. The villains can be like, forces of nature that the protagonists have to battle against, and grow from overcoming. Instead of the screentime for the protag development being co-opted for this new person, who'll only be around for a few hours, and leave the protag unchanged but for another anecdote to tell around the dinner table. (Book of Circus goes HARD on this angle and it's RAW as hell) Definitely looking forward to more BB review!! I hope it continues to grab you and you don't get tired of it!

As a massive fan of season 2, you're completely right

You made me a fan of Black Butler in 2024 BTW, couldn't it be perceived more like an Alternate Universe than a FanFic?..

That POV episode is the only fanservice episode I respect. It fits the overall vibe of the show it is for, isn't unnecessarily revealing or an excuse to get revealing(Such as our characters going to the beach for easy revealing fanservice) and has some plot that is right at home with the series.

I was so obsessed with this show as a pre-teen I successfully begged my father to take me to three separate conventions to meet J Michael Tatum and the third time he recognized me and I've never lived this down:)

Heyooo, as one of the fan-translators for the English language patch for the DS game, I would 100% love to see you play it on stream!! I haven't actually played the game in its final form since the patch was released!! (different tumblr name, I'm the one with the Finny avatar in the credits)

The feeling that washed over me as I read this title. This was one of my first anime obsessions

Oh my god I hope they read the manga first and then watched the anime, or read the manga while watching the anime

You pointing out Ciel as a warlock made my day

I'll give the anime this: I do appreciate what they tried to do with Season 1. Season 2, I've yet to rewatch but I will soon just for fun before the series comes back. I like the consistency with the animation throughout the years with the different arcs. I had issues with a lot of anime adaptations that take place during this time period (Yuukoku no Moriarty comes to mind for me), but the first season of BB I did not mind. The rest of the series, movies and episodes, I enjoyed wholeheartedly. The manga has always been my favourite thing, and has stayed that way for many years. I'm really happy that many others have seen how great it is. I hope that the story for the continuation doesn't change very much, especially given how much of a pivotal point it's going to be if they want to adapt the rest. That's as much of spoilers as I'm going to say. Thank you for giving it a shot and for becoming a fan! edit: added a few words to clarify.

Welcome to the fandom there are 12 of us. Can’t wait until 2030 when the manga finally ends and I’ll be free from this prison. We haven’t seen Ciel and Sebastian outside of flashbacks in literal years because the pacing is f*cked **Spoilers for ch 206:* * But hey at least my favorite character has been bleeding out for the last three chapters :)) help

As one of the Tumblr Black Butler Fans, this gonna be interesting lmao

dont know if you know this already but in the charakter guide Grell refers to herself as a woman and wishes explicidly for a gender reasignment surgery, atleast in the german copy of the book. in question one and two of the interviw part

My friend in high school showed me black butler and I was obsessed with it ever since. Granted this was about 8 years ago. I just find sebastion so fine and I cant help but love a man who loves cats

So far the Manga Arc into Anime Season 1 Ep 1-15? Book of Circus Book of Murder Book of the Atlantic Public School Arc Alter Universe Anime Season 1 Season 2

52:52 cinematic records can appear when you get hit by a death synth it doesn't always mean that the person will die , in the story Sebastian was hit twice by a death synth for example in his fight with grell in red butler arc , and Sebastain even after his cinematic record appeared he was able to countinue fighting and he used his demon power to heal , in his fight with Undertaker the wound that was caused with the death synth didn't heal fast and he did have a hard time fighting but survived I believe if Undertaker hit Sebastian one more time ( he was going to do it but unfortunately the ship start sinking ) Sebastian wouldn't survive a second wound .

Yes! please make a video about the manga! after so many years I feel like i outgrew Black butler, which is sad because I used to be a very big fan. I would like to know what your opinion is on the story. I found black butler when I was like 19 years old and I am now 33. I used to love edgy sexy demon butlers and the fantastical fantasy world they live in. But nowadays its so gory and my frial old grandma heart can't handle it anymore XD Also as a man openly loving cats, he rocked my socks of. XD

The fact that everyone is completely ignoring that this is shota con bait. The mangaka has LITERALLY written a smut manga with a 14 year old boy and a grown man. And writes extremely uncomfortable tension between Ciel and Sebastian. Ciel was raped. Alois was raped. The mangaka has a thing for young teenagers being sexually abused by adults.

I highly recommend you give a thorough look at Twisted Wonderland, a game by Aniplex and Square Enix with Yana Toboso being mostly in charge of the script, character designs, and illustrations. Considering how you're into Kingdom Hearts, EAH, MH, and Descendants, a video on this would be a must

Yana Toboso has written and drawn underage yaoi smut. Once i learned that, i dropped Black Butler. It made all the creepy undertones with Ciel and Sebastian so much grosser than it already was, and even adult fans shipped them. It was awful.

Black Butler may suck, especially how that season 2 is vastly hated by the fandom as a whole, but it will still have a special place in my heart, purely for the fact that season 2 introduced me to the band The GazettE, whose song Tomorrow Never Dies is the very reason I am still alive today. If it wasn't for the anime, I likely wouldn't be here today.

I think a big reason people loved Grell so much was the character design, chaotic red head was real big for some people (see also Axel Kingdom Hearts, Hisoka HxH, Reno FF7/Advent Children, etc). Hype for the manga video though because I was a fan of the anime until I read the manga and then I hated the anime with a passion lmao

The first face piercings we have evidence of was on a 12,000 year old skelleton, in case anyone was wondering

one thing i hate with the anime is that in one of the non canon episodes in season 1 , it tells you that the undertaker is a grim reaper which takes out the built up surprise in book of the atlantic where it gets announced in the manga

This makes sense why I don't remember the 2nd season; just blocked it all out.

my main memory of black butler was selling my small collection of the manga before leaving college, cycling to the post office with 15 books balanced on the handlebars and losing control of my bike, throwing the package into a hedge and myself to jolt off the seat and gravely injure my pride.

also in case it hasn't been said the public school arc is like the 6th arc in the manga

Black butler mentioned 🗣🗣🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥RAAAGH

You should review Yuri On Ice!! It was revolutionary when it came out. They definitely had to sacrifice some visuals due to their restricted budget, but it's still gorgeous and will always be my number 1

when talking about the undertaker's motives in book of atlantic, i feel like that's a build up to something, for example there are many tiny references made to ciel's grandmother, most noteably in that locket chain thing he has around his waist, one of them has "Claudia Phantomhive" written on it and some dates, so someone related to ciel, a mortal, is of clear importance to him, somehow. and if i remember correctly in book of circus the undertaker gives the locket's to ciel telling him to take good care of them but i could be wrong, it's been a while. Yana is going to eventually delve in deeper into the undertaker i know that much, i haven't been keeping up with the series as much as i used to so it could have already happened. but that's all know for now

I love the dramatic ass getting all dolled up to go “WHEN WOULD CLAUDE HAVE STOLEN CIEL’S SOUL” 😂😂😂👌🏻

ok but the red suit at 28:00 is giving major mcr helena vibes and I'm obsesseddd

42:05 Yeah. That’s the theme of the entire anime, “humans are crueler and more awful than demons” it maybe gets lost with season 2 portraying demons as also terrible and twisted and season 1 introducing angels But if you consume the manga in a vacuum, Sebastian is perhaps the lesser of two evils. Ciel choosing him over humanity symbolizes both Ciel himself being an awful person, and Sebastian somehow being the one to save him. Circus served to drive that home

Man, kuroshitsuji is such a weird thing for me. I was into it when I was 12, before it was ever dubbed or officially subbed. Back then, I found that most of the fandom surrounding it was into Sebastian/Ciel. You couldn't google it without seeing it. I ran into I don't know many doujinshi that were WAY too explicit, especially for the age of Ciel. I grew out of the show around the time it got a season 2 I and started feeling icky about it.

That part of the Frankengirl remembers me a lot of the false humunculus in FMA Brotherhood fight escene.

I loved the anime as a teen. I'm sure it forged my taste for gothic fashion aswell at finding the butler job so cool I eventually became one and still am 😂 I find the anime hard to watch now, but the nostalgia is strong

18:00 Me being updated with the manga, this line shocked me after hearing it like holy god this is why I like Yana.

You know how to become a reaper in Black Butler? Suicide..and it's a punishment. So yeah, every each reaper in BB committed suicide. Have a nice day and remember that you're valid and loved

Gosh, the nostalgia... I remember first watching thos anime in 2010, I think. On one of the public channel in French dub. When I couldn't make it on time at home to watch it on tv, I watched it on my old sony Ericsson phone with the little screen (yeah no smartphone yet). But it was enough and I was always waiting for the next episode. I think I watched all the seasons and OVA before finally reading the manga. And I think, not reading the manga first helped me to apreciate the anime (expecially the seasons 1 and 2). There is different kind of experiences with the manga and anime. The manga is better than the anime (Hell girl), the anime is good and the manga gives you a bit more but both are excellent (Rose of Versailles), or both the maga and anime gives you a different experience like Black Butler. Since the first season is based on the manga which was not (and still not) finished yet, they had to create fillers. But they didn't wait for the autor to add more chapter with important informations for the story and just creating fillers for the time being. They created a story, a new narration and an end to it. Which is what give you two ''different'' stories, and I like this

I'm so glad that you finally reviewed the anime. I have been waiting for this one! And welcome to the fandom If you want, you should try playing Twisted Wonderland. It's really fun! Yana Toboso is the illustrator for it so a lot of characters look and act similar to Black Butler. The biggest example is the Leech twins (or tweels as me and friends call them) Floyd is the more chaotic twin while Jade acts like the calmer twin but has reserved chaotic nature. They look like Sebastian but act a bit different than him I would say more but 1. I want you guys to play the game and 2. Spoiler reasons

The manga is incredible, I highly recommend reading it. I really liked the anime when I watched it but the manga blew me away, still one of my favorite mangas to this day!

7:21 fun fact, while facial piercings weren’t common back then, nipple piercings were all the rage in the Victorian Era!

Oh! Since Bungou Stray Dogs closed its season I was looking for a new anime that I could watch, I was between Vanitas and this one! Thanks for the video.

Sebastian not dying from the Death scythe is because he's a demon therefore immortal not human.

Didn't the creator of the show straight up say she wants Sebastian and ciel to be an official romance couple? Despite one being the body of a prepubescent child and the other being an adult 🥴

Exactly, with the Xdressing! Cloud did it, and people loved that part of FFVII. As a genderfluid person, I've always LOVED Ciel's Xdress look.

I will say that the musical makes grell even better than the anime I am going to rewatch everything again

Honestly i really love that fact that alois fucked Sebastian over by making ciel a demon like, that's so tragic for sebby 😂

I really enjoyed this video, thank you as a Kuroshitsuji fan. Specially your rant about the BAD fanfiction that is "season 2". Listening to your opinions and questions about the animation and how much of a blast you are going to have with the manga. You think the animation is dark ... ho boy. Cant wait for your manga video

It’s funny how you said that Black Butler has middle school writing when that’s when I first heard out it more than 12 yrs ago. All my friends tried to get me into it but I was just too busy with another anime that they got me into. Now a days I’m still obsessed with that anime but I still haven’t watched Black Butler. Pretty funny if you asked me.

Thank you for your commentary! I've been reading the manga since like 2010 and I've yet to fall out of love with it. It's really tied to childhood nostalgia, I was blown away by every twist, and the art is simply beautiful. I am now used to never having anything explained until the very end, possibly never. Excited to hear what you think about the manga.

yes Victorian era had piercings. Including penile piercings. Mostly covered in clothing. But there's a reason the name of THAT piercing connects with Prince Albert, Victoria's husband.

My Lord, the My Chemical Romance/emo aesthetic made my heart skip a beat!! I’m demisexual usually but, damn, if that didn’t make me feel things 😦💕

The Undertaker was already weird

40:54 if I remember correctly, I'm not a doctor or anything but children bones are quite different from adults. The bones from children are far more flexibele than adults. Adult bones are far more harder and brittle, making it easier to break. So picking children bones is probably better for the long run if you want to keep using them. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that's why they picked children bones instead of adult. So technically thats probably why. Not sure if it would work in practice. So there is somewhat of a logical reason behind it

Actually, Grell's attempt at suicide reminds me somewhat of how concubines would hang themselves with white silk, but I think that's Chinese, not Japanese.