One Hell of Story: A Look at Black Butler

(The following article is a review/minor analysis of the first season of the Black Butler anime. Hopefully at a later date I can cover the second season, but I'm also not posting any major spoilers for either. I haven't read the manga and at the moment have no plans to, so my perspective is limited to what I'm given in the anime.)

I’ve done it…I have descended into the abyss. I have…*gulp* watched my first anime.

Actually, hold on. Let me back up, because that’s not an accurate statement. My first dip into anime was about three years ago when, out of boredom and curiosity, I scrolled through the anime section on Netflix and picked out the first thing that sounded interesting. That show happened to be Elfen Lied, a weird, grotesque, and ridiculously violent story with hints of incest, outright molestation, and puppy beating. Somehow I liked it enough to finish all thirteen episodes of it and remembered feeling so many confusing emotions towards the antagonist Lucy who switched back and forth between a bizarre, almost brain-dead character and her actual murderous personality that spent a lot of time without any clothes on.

I really have no idea how I sat through that.

After that I attempted to watch Hellsing, but for whatever reason stopped after episode five or six. My assumption is that those were the only episodes I could, at the time, find in English and I wasn’t interested in watching the Japanese version with subtitles.

I don’t really tend to count those experiences because of a commonality between them: I was completely embarrassed by the fact that I was watching them. There’s a definite stigma that comes with watching anime or reading manga and, like comics, I think that comes from the stereotypical image of the person associated with liking them. I had a friend in high school try and get me to read or watch a few things and even dragged me into the manga section at the bookstore, but I could never bring myself to touch any of it. It was—and still is—a pride problem on my part.

And then a few weeks ago a friend of mine suggested an anime that, based on my comic book preferences, she thought I would like: Black Butler. College helped to mellow me out a bit in terms of my steadfast refusal to be involved in anything that wasn’t “normal,” and so I decided to take her up on the offer and watch it after she gave me a rundown of the plot.

Lo and behold, I actually thought it was pretty freakin’ awesome.

I’m going to go ahead and throw a few disclaimers out there, just so that we’re on the same page: One, I know next to nothing about Japan, Japanese culture, or their perception of storytelling. I am a cultural ignoramus, I’m sorry. Two, my understanding of anime as an artistic medium is lacking. There is a definite and distinct visual language separate from Western animation, but I’m not qualified to really discuss it because I don’t know anything about it. And three: I watched the first four episodes of season one in English and the rest in Japanese with subtitles, so I had exposure to both versions. Like my first point above, I don’t speak Japanese or understand its cultural nuances, so if for any reason I missed something in regards to the language, I’m sorry in advance.

Because of these limitations, I’m looking and analyzing this show from a Western perspective and understanding.

The premise is this: In Victorian London, a young boy named Ciel Phantomhive, the heir of the Funtom toy company fortune, makes a deal with the demon Sebastian Michaelis after the murder of his parents and destruction of his family's mansion. According to the stipulations of the contract, Sebastian is to faithfully serve Ciel as his loyal butler and assist him in exacting his revenge. Once that revenge is complete, Sebastian can devour Ciel's soul. A mark is placed on Ciel's eye and Sebastian's hand as the seal for their arrangement.

This storyline has a lot of connections to the British play Dr. Faustus, written by Christopher Marlowe and published in 1604, though the story and concept has been around for as long as...well, time. In the case of Marlowe's play, the titular character is written as a scholar whose knowledge of various fields is extensive, but he decides one day that he craves the ability to conjure up spells and perform magic because his basic human knowledge isn't enough anymore. He summons the demon Mephistopheles and uses him to make a deal with the Devil: He will be granted the ability he seeks and Mephistopheles will be his servant for 24 years in exchange for Faustus' soul. Faustus actually produces his own contract on paper that he signs in his blood.

The similarities between the two are obvious and the deal Ciel makes with Sebastian is even called a Faustian contract. I think that's pretty cool.

The structure of the story is linear: The characters and the world are set up in the first few episodes and continue through a singular arc with each episode. As the show progresses, certain mysteries are illuminated through flashbacks or narration from another character and the conclusion to the story is designed to more or less draw everything that’s happened to a close. This is, personally, my favorite type of storytelling, as it provides you with a goal or purpose that is carried out by the protagonist and therefore the show has a direction to go in. For the most part, Black Butler manages to stay on course with its direction without going down too many bunny trails.

I say for the most part because, at 24 episodes, there are a lot of episodes that feel like they could either be combined with others or cut out altogether. The problem is, amidst some of these more slagging episodes, there is almost always going to be a piece of information or an experience or a character that will come back into play later, and so I’d argue that watching each one is necessary. This can feel almost like a trick on the part of the writers; it’s like they use those elements to force you to sit through weird curry-making competitions and ice sculpting challenges in order for you to get what you need for the rest of the story. I find this annoying and frustrating, especially when people only have so much time to commit to watching something. The filler episodes can be fun, but oftentimes they feel distracted and disconnected from what the story is focused on.

Before I get into anything else, I want to discuss the setting, which is odd because setting isn’t normally one of the elements I tend to focus on in fiction—animated or not. Given both our nations’ generally linked histories and the fact that, as an English major, I’ve spent the last four years of my life more or less entrenched in the culture of England (90% of the good English language-based literature is British, sorry haters), I’ve grown to love and appreciate it. For me, the setting and world that this show builds—one that is steeped in British history and culture—is half of the major appeal. It also takes place during a particularly notorious period of that history, the Victorian Era (1837-1901, give or take a few years), and the show takes every advantage of that fact, absorbing these characters in an elegant, dark, and Gothic aesthetic that is absolutely beautiful. The amount of detail put into the world itself is amazing: the period-specific clothes, the design of the Phantomhive mansion, and even the fancy “Intermission” cards that they used, I’m assuming, to delineate commercial breaks and that have an Alice in Wonderland vibe to them—a great choice, considering the infamous novel was published by Lewis Carroll in 1865.

I’d also like to point out that the Victorian Era was a time of change in British history, and one of the most important of those changes was the growing number and power of the middle class. This budding new category of people saw morality and custom as a way to build their esteem and put them on par with the elite, thus the prevailing notion that most Victorians were stuffy and prudish. There was also a strong emphasis on duty: What a person wanted was less important than what they needed to do based on society's expectations. At the same time, there was a huge idea in the artistic and literary world known as decadence—the belief that society itself was crumbling and all of the major institutions (government, religion, etc) were falling apart. There was the massive spread of child labor that stripped many kids of their innocence, a rise in prostitution that brought with it diseases (and Jack the Ripper) as well as riots and political instability that took away many people’s trust in the government.

There was basically a tug-of-war between the people who were losing their faith in God and humanity, and others who clung to custom and morality as a means of solidifying their social status. And presumably their sanity.

I say all this because, aside from the fact that finding a way to include Sebastian in a story set in the modern era and keeping in line with his relation to Ciel without making him socially…displaced would be challenging, it’s an absolutely ideal time for someone to make a deal with a demon. And while the connection between decadence and dealings with hell-based beings isn’t directly stated anywhere in the show, it makes the setting play an even more important role and explains Ciel's obsession with having to fulfill his duty no matter the cost.

I do have one element that I think is…not necessarily a criticism, but more or less a personal preference. I admire an effort by any culture to create something that is centered on another culture that is so fundamentally different from theirs, and the resulting perspective of British culture filtered through a Japanese lens is fascinating. However, in this particular case I have to be honest and admit that watching the Japanese subtitled version for the majority of season one disconnected me just a little bit from the world. I’m not going to say it’s hard to ignore or get over, because at the end of the day it really isn't, but if there’s one benefit of watching the English dub, it’s that you’re able to get the accents that go along with Victorian London. Because of my ignorance of the Japanese language I’m not going to make any assumptions here and say that there was no difference between “regular” Japanese and one with a British flare to it, but I will say that the few times English is spoken it tends to come across as awkward and stilted. Obviously, I’m not blaming that on the actors because God knows I couldn’t say anything in Japanese without sounding like I’m having an aneurism, and it’s not like I would expect it to sound flawless. I just don’t think the inclusion is necessary.

I think for English speakers, though, the British accents and ability to understand the vocal inflections help to bring the characters into even sharper focus. There was a lot that I got from Sebastian and Ciel in the English dubs that I don’t think I did (at least not as clearly) in the Japanese since I don’t speak Japanese. That being said, I hear the translation of the dialogue itself for the Japanese version was fantastic and crafted in such a way that it remained faithful to the original content but still made sense to English speakers. That’s pretty impressive.

But even beyond the setting and well-done translations, everyone knows that the best parts of the show are Sebastian and Ciel themselves. I'd argue that it's not so much the characters individually as it is their relationship to each other that makes them both compelling.

When I began the show, my initial reaction to Ciel* was skepticism. I didn't think that I could be convinced of a twelve year-old's ability to not only run an entire company, but to have any idea how to go about exacting the revenge he wants for his parents and the family name. He's a kid in a particularly turbulent time period. And in many ways, to the show's credit, they acknowledge that fact--it's made pretty clear that there's no way Ciel could have succeeded in what he was doing without the aid of Sebastian. Like many members of the upper class at that time, Ciel is incapable of even getting himself dressed; he's wholly dependent on Sebastian as his butler. There are hints of his helplessness throughout the season, but it's brought to the forefront when Sebastian disappears in a later episode and it takes Ciel freaking forever to find the port to get home. Even then, he has to stow away on a ship and give up his family ring as payment for a lifeboat because his name and estate means nothing to the people he's interacting with. Ciel is very much spoiled and, in certain moments, a serious brat. But his negative qualities are balanced out by his underlying compassion, mercy, and willingness to put up with a whole lot of crap from the people around him (*cough* Lizzie *cough*). It's an interesting take on how tragedy affects people, as it's obvious that Ciel was a very different person before the death of his parents and burning of his mansion. Lizzie remarks that he used to smile all the time but, since the tragedy, no longer does.

Ciel is frighteningly self-aware, stubborn, and passionate for a kid his age as well. Underneath all of his rage, there's a person who is capable of great loyalty and honor down to his last moments. He doesn't try and weasel out of his contract with Sebastian; he is content in his decision and where he's going to end up.

He's also got hella great fashion sense. He makes me want to bring back the trench coat and top hat as an appropriate form of clothing. If mom jeans can come back, why can't they?

Now Sebastian,** on the other hand, is one of the most puzzling characters I have ever come across. I'd be interested to see what the original author's intent was with him--whether or not she wanted there to be goodness in Sebastian or if he was always supposed to be an irredeemable demon. I've suggested before that, while it's often easier to get away with having an irredeemable monster of a character as your antagonist, the same isn't the case for your protagonist. You can have a morally ambiguous protagonist, but there needs to be something to humanize the character for the audience, otherwise they disengage.That isn't to say it can't be done, but I think it's the reason why someone like The Joker has never had a successful solo book, as interesting of a character as he is. He just doesn't work as a protagonist because he has nothing that the audience can relate to, no real motivation to do the horrible things he does outside of "because he can." Lack of motivation creates disinterest in the audience because they have no reason to care or invest in that character's journey.

In the case of Black Butler, Ciel is the main protagonist, but I'd say that Sebastian is just as much of a protagonist as Ciel. He doesn't do anything to inherently oppose Ciel or stop his mission like an antagonist would. If anything, Sebastian's job is to make sure nothing does hinder Ciel. The problem is, Sebastian's very essence as a character is one that we are programmed to dislike. He's a demon, and (at least according to Western culture) demons are evil. Yet...there has to be something that sets him apart, otherwise why does he matter? Why should we care? And perhaps what's most fascinating is that the show is never entirely clear on the level of decency in Sebastian.

There are a couple of moments to note about his character in this regard, and one of them comes right from the very beginning scene. When Ciel is making the contract, Sebastian explains to him exactly what that means for the both of them, and if you notice, he says, "I'll ask but once more...do you wish to form a contract with me?" Sebastian not only asks Ciel, but he does so twice just to be sure. We don't get much information outside of that, but Ciel makes it pretty darn clear what he wants, which is something else to keep in mind: Ciel chose to make that contract. He wasn't tricked, bullied, or forced into it. He made the decision, like Dr. Faustus, of his own free will. We can speculate what would happen if he told Sebastian to get lost, but it's ultimately irrelevant because that isn't what played out.

Another moment is when Sebastian is forced to break out into demon mode and asks Ciel to close his eyes so that he doesn't see him in such a disgusting way as it would be inappropriate. The trick with this is that it can be taken in a couple of different ways: You can see it as Sebastian having some grace and not subjecting Ciel to such a horrific image of someone who's been around him for so long in a certain form. But you can also take it as Sebastian not wanting to corrupt Ciel's soul in any way, therefore ruining what he's worked hard to "cultivate." The last moment comes in the final episode when Ciel has achieved what he wanted and the contract is fulfilled. He asks if the devouring of his soul will hurt and Sebastian says that yes, it will a bit and then adds: "I will make it as gentle as I can, though."*** For me, it seems harder to argue that he offers to do this out of malice or as part of the contract. He has nothing to really lose even before Ciel tells him to make it as painful as possible. If he didn't have some respect for Ciel, why would he bother to show restraint? What difference would it make to him?

And I'll go ahead and address the pedophillic undertones while we're talking about his "feelings" for Ciel. I don't think there's an accurate word (for me) that describes their relationship. It's not as friends or family, and it stems beyond just master and servant or business partners. When you spend so much time around someone, it's going to change the way you see them. At the same time, I think that possessive feeling Sebastian has for Ciel is specifically constructed to make people uncomfortable. When moments like the ones I mentioned above happen, there are the bizarre, ten-second staring contests to remind you that this relationship is not normal and shouldn't be considered normal. But for me, Sebastian never takes it too far. It's enough that you can notice it and it may make you uncomfortable, but that you can also ignore it to a large extent.

Compare that to Claude in season two who damn near obsesses over Ciel and, to a lesser extent, Alois. His attachment is far more perverse and sinister and you can see it in his language towards both boys. Where Sebastian is more, "I really want to eat your soul," Claude is freakin' all, "I want to consume your beautiful, delectable soul and savor every moment nom nom nom..."

I'm not suggesting that Sebastian is a good or wholesome character, but he is intriguing. There's something strangely noble about him. It says a lot when your audience can look at a demon and say, "Yeah, I'm cool with this creature of Hell taking the soul of a twelve year-old boy." We shouldn't think that, and yet we do.

I'd also be remiss not to mention the wonderful voice acting (in the English dub) for Ciel and Sebastian. Where the minor characters and their cockney accents can be...grating, both Brina Palencia and J. Michael Tatum do phenomenal jobs bringing those two to life. Ciel is, of course, played by a woman, but Palencia's monotone treatment of the voice work adds a bit of color to Ciel. There's a level of control and sophistication to both his dialogue and the vocal performance and I think that goes a long way in convincing the audience that a preteen can run a company--to some degree, at least. My favorite moments, though, are when he offers a snarky remark, as the dry delivery of the lines fits so perfectly with that kind of humor. J. Michael Tatum has the vocal chords of a god because his voice is just...fantastic. It's the exact kind of voice you would expect to come out of the mouth of Sebastian and his British accent is phenomenal.

Of course, I like the Japanese voices just fine (the guy who plays Sebastian is just as good as Tatum), but I can't comment on them much for obvious reasons. I don't recall disliking any particular voice, and the actors for the three Phantomhive servants might actually do better jobs than the English actors who tend to go over-the-top with their performances.

As much as I'd love to discuss the other characters, this post is already ungodly long, so I'll move on.

Here's some of them! :D

One of the coolest aspects of this show is the repeated motif of games (in particular chess), starting in the first episode where Ciel insists that his conniving business tycoon guest finishes the twisted game that they're playing before he leaves the mansion. The game aspect plays into Ciel's mission to exact his revenge as a game in and of itself, calling various people "pawns" for his own use. It also reflects on his relationship to Sebastian. Pact though it may be bound by, there's an element of wit and technique to their interactions. Sebastian doesn't lie to Ciel, but he isn't always straightforward and finds ways to skirt around his orders in a way that doesn't go against what Ciel told him to do. In that sense, Ciel is his pawn--he tolerates the crap that he's put through because in the end, he's the one who wins the game.

While I mentioned above that I don't know much about the specific artistic elements of anime, that isn't going to stop me from saying that this show is gorgeous to look at and, for the most part, well-animated. Some of the fight scenes tend to be a little lack-luster, but they aren't focused on enough to be a big issue. Sebastian has a wide range of facial expressions that are all fun to watch and his design makes him one of the most attractive...creatures...I have seen in animation of any form. Which is fabulous, because if demons were to be anything in real life it would be attractive. No one wants to hang around something that's evil and ugly. The colors are pretty great, in particular those of Ciel, but I'm also a sucker for the color blue in general. The backgrounds of London are grey and a bit murky, which juxtapose nicely against the colors of the characters' hair and clothes which tend to be brighter and more saturated.

There is a bit of an issue with the tone, though. The general direction it wants to go in is dark and serious, which makes sense given the concept, but there seems to be a weird comedic side that it embraces as well. Granted, all good dramas have moments or characters that are intended to be humorous to balance out some of the dark, but a little humor goes a long way. In Black Butler's case, it sometimes goes too far off into the comedic direction and too often to completely work. You don't have to have a comedic scene for every dramatic one, and having 80% of the cast play mostly comedic roles in a show that is designed to be dark down to its premise alienates the main characters in a way that isn't good. Does it break the show? No, obviously not, but I think if they cut out some of the goofier moments it might help to eliminate some of the tonal disjointedness and maybe even a bit of those fillers.

Aside from that, my only other major complaint is the obvious pandering to audiences with some of the sexual content. There are moments where it feels practical, sure, but there's a certain character that pops up every now and then that seems to exist solely as some sort of toy for another character and for dudes to ogle at. The only time it happens with the major characters (other than Grell who is...a topic for another day) and feels gratuitous is in regards to a certain nun and Sebastian in a scene in a barn that completely freaked me the hell out when I first saw it and is now branded in my brain like a horrible scar.

But I suppose, at the end of everything, this is the first show in a while that's hit me in such a visceral way. I love the setting, the premise, the characters, how well thought-out everything is. My only concern now is that, if I decide to watch any anime in the future, they won't be able to measure up. I guess I'll have to wait and see.

******

*"Ciel" is French for "Heaven" or "sky"--which gives his blue eyes even more symbolic meaning. His name is also incredibly ironic and I'm 99% sure that was intentional on the writer's part.

**"Michaelis," when translated from the Hebrew "Mika'el," means "who is like God" or "God-like." And for even more irony, Michael is the name of the most famous archangel in Judaism and Christianity who leads an army against the forces of evil, a.k.a. demons. "Sebastian" also stems from the Greek word sabastos which is itself derived from sebas meaning "awe, reverence, dread." Were these connections intentional? Maybe, but they're interesting regardless.

***From the translation in the subtitled version

You Are Who You Choose to Be: The Iron Giant Review

When people typically think of animation, the first thing that will come to mind is Disney, and this isn’t without merit. Disney is so ubiquitous in American culture and cinema that not knowing of the company and its creations is a mathematical impossibility. You don’t go through life without watching at least one Disney film as a child, and in many cases it’s more than one that have been watched until the VHS tape starts falling apart. And while I will always be appreciative of the work that the company has put forward (for heaven’s sake they more or less established animation as a valid art form with their first several feature-length films), there’s a certain problem that has surfaced because of their widespread familiarity: People seem to forget that there are other animated films outside of Disney.

To be fair, I think a lot of it stems from the fact that “Disney” is or more or less synonymous with “animated movie,” which is just something that happens when the name of a certain product dominates its genre or area for so long. But the result is a lack of certain amazing achievements in the genre getting undermined, left unknown, or forgotten because they don’t have a giant corporation with decades of tradition or backing their advertising.