A Stray Dog Into an Earl: A Look at Black Butler II

(Due to the fact that one of my main talking point is in fact the ending to this season, be aware that there are spoilers. Also, this is really damn long, so read at your own risk.)

Fun fact: The first I ever watched of Black Butler was actually the first four episodes of season two. Netflix decided for some reason to eliminate the first season from their library and, because I wasn't paying attention when I clicked on the show, I started watching from the beginning of this one.

And my initial reaction? "Oh. Wow, okay so I hate the two main characters. This will be fun."

I didn't realize that it was Alois and Claude and not Sebastian and Ciel that started out the season until Alois made a reference to Ciel in the first episode. I was still really confused, but because I didn't have much of an idea of what to expect from an anime, I assumed it was a round-about way of introducing the audience to the main characters. That, or my friend who suggested the show and had given me the basics of the story decided to leave out a rather important detail in her explanation. It took me until four episodes in, when I stopped watching the episodes one after the other automatically, to realize I was in season two at all. Suddenly what I thought was a terrible way to open a story and introduce characters turned into an intriguing continuation.

There were many people--a large majority of which were readers of the manga--who were aware of the fact that this season was taking a different direction than the source material. The anime had already deviated from the manga about halfway through season one, but I feel that what they did with the story there worked well as a single one-shot adaptation. Season two, on the other hand, was more or less pulled out the writers' asses, and the perspectives and opinions on the season turned out to be pretty polarizing. Some thought it was fantastic, others thought it was a horrible and ridiculous idea.

I'm...somewhere in the middle. I ran through the series twice, because my initial viewing spanned about forty-eight hours and I had a lot of questions that were left unanswered. My second viewing helped to clear some things up, since I was less focused on flying through everything and more on, you know, the different facets of the story. Unlike season one, I watched the entire thing in English as that was all that was available on Netflix.

The premise of season two is that a new young aristocrat, Alois Trancy, after being kidnapped as a baby and spending his childhood living in a poor village, survives the destruction of his home and the death of his baby brother, who was his only familial tie that he had as the two had become orphaned early in their lives. Soon after, he becomes the...uh, "toy" for a pedophile earl and Alois manipulates the old man into making him the heir to his estate. The earl then "dies" and Alois takes over as the new earl of Trancy Manor. He runs the mansion alongside his new butler, a mysterious and deadly serious man by the name of Claude Faustus*, who performs his duties to the utmost perfection. With Claude's help, he sets his eyes on the young earl Ciel Phantomhive and his own suspicious butler, Sebastian, hoping to destroy them.

The good news: I didn't actually end up hating Alois or Claude.

The bad news: This season is all over the place. Some of it's great, and some of it falls short.

I'll start by saying that, structurally, the pacing is wonky. The first four episodes spend far too much time on plot lines that have no bearing on the actual story that's being told, instead dragging us through episodes of deranged ladies killing people with cameras, Lizzie screaming, and a really dumb reference to Aberline in the most useless episode of them all involving a train and a kidnapped boy. Most of these plots felt like excuses to bring characters like Lau and Grell back into the show, though Grell at least becomes useful towards the latter half of the season. Sort of. Once the story picks back up, there's a lot of weird scenes involving food fights and two or three dinner invitations and glaring from Sebastian and Claude and oh my god someone please get Viscount Druitt out of this show I'm begging you.

That being said, I do like how they opened with an ambiguous scenario where Sebastian goes to great lengths to steal some tea from Alois' basement that you find out wasn't actually tea later on. It was clever.

The inclusion of Hannah is alright, but there's a lot about her that doesn't make much sense and isn't explained until much later in the season when we could have used it sooner, if it's explained at all. We may find out why she puts up with Alois' abusive behavior without complaint, but then what's the story with that giant demon-slaying sword being held inside her body? It's both disgusting and interesting, and like many other things in this season, left largely unexplained.

I still don't understand who on earth those triplet demons are and why they follow Hannah/Claude around, but I guess the writers didn't feel like giving them a back story was important. They had a scene where they brushed Hannah's hair. I guess that counts.

It's pretty obvious that the writers wanted to construct Alois and Claude as the dark doppelgangers to Ciel and Sebastian. This isn't an original idea by any stretch of the imagination, but it was certainly a challenging endeavor to take on. Neither Ciel nor Sebastian are, by any means, "wholesome" characters, and so creating two unique characters that went even darker than they are while still keeping them interesting and--on some level--likeable sported it's own set of hurdles to overcome. It's debatable whether or not they achieved that balance, but I will say that they managed to balance screen time and importance within story amongst the four leads well.

I'm not really a fan of this kind of approach with characters because too often it feels contrived and pointless. At least in the case of this particular story, they managed to make use of the fact that Alois and Ciel have such similar pasts. The only problem is that it comes across pretty forced and ham-fisted.

The way they managed to circumvent the happenings of the last episode of season one were kind of clumsy. Even when they took a clever plot point--the fact that Sebastian lost his arm that had the mark of their covenant--and used it as a way to start the conflict was marred by the fact that they don't explain it well. Sebastian says he "temporarily lost his arm" and therefore their contract was rendered null and void, so why did he not regenerate that arm the minute he lost it? Sebastian never puts that arm back within the span of the final episode, presumably because he was expecting to eat Ciel's soul and no longer need that form, anyway. If he knew that not having that arm would kind of eliminate their contract, why wouldn't he regenerate it sooner? He also mentions that Claude "stole Ciel's soul" more or less out from under him. How? Sebastian was standing right there the entire time. We're not shown how Claude does it. Ciel is just lying still on the bench while Sebastian has a hissy fit, and the only indication we have that Claude is even there is the cryptic shot with the spider on the bird's head. It's not an all-together bad way of fitting this conflict into the larger narrative, but the way they went about presenting it just leaves a lot of questions that I don't feel were adequately answered.

The biggest blunder, though, is the fact that Ciel has no memories of what happened prior to his "awakening" other than what we started with at season one. Amnesia is almost always a cheap plot device, and the fact that it only eliminates a certain stretch of Ciel's memories rather than all of them makes it worse. They don't bother to explain why he lost those memories in the first place (or even why he didn't lose ALL of his memories instead of just the past two or three years), just that Sebastian knew something was wrong when he put Ciel's soul back in his body. That's a cheap shot.

By the back end of the story, there were so many contracts overlapping with each other that it bordered on ridiculous. Three contracts were connected to what amounted to one body. I re-watched the season mainly for the last five or so episodes because the first time around I had no idea what the hell was going on. That being said, the mixing of Ciel and Alois' minds allowed for a great episode involving a garden maze, and the way that it pitted Claude and Sebastian together made for both some funny and poignant moments.

To be fair, the focus of this season wasn't so much on plot. Everything was centered around the four leads, and any conflict that did arise felt almost incidental rather than born out of a genuine motivation. I think the writers just wanted to sic a bunch of twisted characters on each other and see what happened.

I still can't make up my mind about how much I like Alois as a character. I won't claim that he isn't well constructed, because I believe he is, but some of his defining facets I find...not entirely grounded? The fundamental thing that Alois seeks--which motivates all of his actions--is unconditional love. That makes sense. He grew up poor, lost his parents at a young age and then his baby brother, was constantly ridiculed and condemned by the people in their village, and then sexually abused for who knows how long by a man probably five times his age. Fine, cool, sad back stories are interesting. My problem with it is that Alois is kind of a little shit regardless. Even before the worst of those things happen, Alois was doing and saying things that were not normal for a psychologically healthy child. Wishing for the villagers to die because they threw some rocks at his brother Luca is twisted. I don't believe kids ever say those words and know exactly what it is they're saying, but Alois does. He makes that statement to Luca after also spending a lot of time threatening the villagers with violence in his little brother's presence, and he says it with such blatant honesty and deadness in his eyes that it creeped me out both times I watched those scenes.

Alois comes across as a snot even to Luca, and because Luca was too little to understand the misbehavior Alois directed at him, his undying devotion feels--to me--tragic more than endearing. Luca is painted as such an innocent and good soul that he even thanks the demon he later makes a contract with right before he dies, so it's not unbelievable that he would feel that way towards Alois, but it irritates me anyway. Alois craves love and affection, but he doesn't act in a way that would ever allow him to find it. He beats the crap out of Hannah for no real reason on more than one occasion, threatens to kill Ciel's friends as a way to blackmail him, threatens Sebastian with Claude as his weapon, and then has the gall to beg for his life when Ciel stabs him. Alois is twisted and disturbed, and while I think he has reasons to be the way he is, I also feel most of what happened to him amplified the rotten character that had always been there. I don't see much in him that's redeemable; he's just someone to pity.

That's where he and Ciel differ for me. Sure, Ciel is a spoiled brat with a traumatic past, but he doesn't prance around claiming to be a saint or blame anyone else for his problems. He does some terrible things, but always with a purpose. He does have a heart underneath his trauma and anger. There's honor in Ciel.

One thing I do like about this season are the moments where Ciel shows his childish side, in particular when he botches his attempt to stab Alois and then has a tantrum because Sebastian won't let him finish the job. Aside from being amusing, since it makes Sebastian look like a father holding his bratty son, it also reminds us that Ciel is still a kid. Despite all of his maturity and self-awareness, he will still lose himself at times because that's what thirteen year-olds do. And when Ciel breaks down, he freaking breaks down. This becomes a little more obvious in Book of Circus, but that moment gives us a good look into Ciel's desperation that is very, very childlike.

Sebastian and Claude are the pair that make this season, however, and for all of the arguing and complaining, not many seem to have an issue with the conflict between the two demons. If anything, it's the element that's done the best in the season and leaves us with the least amount of questions.

Claude is a foil to Sebastian in ways that are little less subtle than Alois and Ciel. They're both demons, so they both operate on the same basic level of consuming souls for food. Unlike their humans, they are not fundamentally different. It's the ways in which they go about their business, and how they present themselves, that differs. Claude is constructed as a "real" demon where Sebastian is more unique.

I mentioned in my other post that Sebastian, as a protagonist, needed to have something different about him that made the audience care about his presence in the story. He becomes interesting because he has not only a personality, but because the quality of his own character is ambiguous. Someone that is supposed to be evil and irredeemable has moments where the audience can see something deeper within him. Claude remarks at one point that Sebastian's overprotective and obsessive behavior towards Ciel is very much unlike a demon and asks if any soul is worth the trouble to allow a second chance at achieving their revenge. Sebastian's response is more or less "Yes, and you wouldn't understand, so back off." When Ciel and Alois' souls are merged, Sebastian is ordered to leave and stay out of sight, and as furious as it makes him, he respects the order.

Claude, on the other hand, is a bastard. Where Sebastian plays along with Ciel's idea that he is a pawn for Ciel's games, Claude never makes any attempt to do so with Alois. When Alois demands that he laughs at something that wasn't particularly funny, Claude hesitates and almost refuses. He reminds Alois that he will "make one hell of a feast" out of him. Claude then kills Alois, essentially breaking their contract as he didn't fulfill Alois' stipulations, which is painted as some kind of demon treason, and uses Alois' soul to gain Ciel's. He then has the audacity to criticize Sebastian when they both think he has disobeyed Ciel's order to stay out of his sight. Claude also does so in a pretty juvenile way, repeating, "He saw you, he saw you!" several times like a damn five year-old. When, in the body of Ciel, Alois asks him why Claude killed him, Claude's initial response is to lie--something that Sebastian swore up and down to Ciel that he (or any other demon) doesn't do. And above it all, he betrays one of his own kind with a pact that he made with Sebastian on a false pretense. He isn't honorable, tactful, or even honest. He's entirely selfish and manipulative.

And so, when compared to Claude, Sebastian's own tactful means of operation look that much better. It's clear that Sebastian harbors some affection for Ciel, which Claude notices and takes advantage of. It's almost as if Claude fights so fiercely for Ciel's soul simply because he knows how much Sebastian wants it. The competition that comes out of their rivalry amplifies everything about the story--Sebastian's feelings towards Ciel, the quality of Ciel as a character to have such a desirable soul in the first place, the uniqueness of Sebastian as a demon that makes us care about him, and Ciel's awareness of what Sebastian is when he isn't playing the dutiful butler.

Which brings me to the ending.
Good grief.
What a way to make fans rage quit.

Let me start by saying that there are three different kinds of endings to stories: Appropriate, inappropriate, and appeasing.

Appropriate endings are those that fit the tone, direction, and arc of a story. They can be sad, happy, bittersweet, surprising, whatever--as long as they match the rest of what's been presented. Inappropriate endings are the opposite; they contrast completely with what a story has been working towards and tend to not make any sense. Appeasing endings are those that the audience wants. They can be either appropriate or inappropriate, but they're almost always happy. Funny enough, Victorian novels tended to be that way; people didn't want to read a 600-page book and then find out everyone died or something. They wanted happy endings. They're all, of course, debatable depending on your perspective.

This ending...manages to fit well with none of them.

I don't believe that the decision to turn Ciel into a demon is out of left field. For all of the weird ways they scooted around plot points, this one was one of the few decisions that made at least some sense to me. Alois' deal with Hannah makes it so that Ciel is helped and Sebastian hurt, because he comes to realize that both Claude and Sebastian are using the two of them for their own gain. Ciel doesn't have to die and Sebastian is forced to remain his butler until he has consumed his soul, which doesn't even exist anymore, so Sebastian is stuck serving Ciel for all eternity. Do I wish they made it clear that demons had the power to make humans other demons? Yes. But it's also not something that's entirely unbelievable for a demon to be able to do. Look at vampires: They have the ability to turn humans into other vampires. I think that the process would be similar here. Humans are, above all else, food for these creatures, but if either of them decide to make a human one of them, that's an option as well. It just doesn't happen often because--why would it? There would need to be a reason for either case, and Hannah doing so as a stipulation of a contract supplies that reason.

On the other side of the coin, it doesn't make sense because it couldn't happen. That isn't the direction that the story is headed. My personal opinion is that there isn't supposed to be a happy ending to this story at all. I'm not sure where Miss Taboso plans on taking this series, but if I had to guess it wouldn't be this direction, and not because people all but had a stroke over it. Some stories are not meant to be pleasant or positive, and there are plenty of moments within the anime that make it clear this is one of them. Everything about this story is layered in tragedy: Ciel's past, his pact with Sebastian, the fact that the only person in the world he has any amount of trust in is a demon, even Ciel's own actions that he does out of duty. It's all pointing to a desperate need for closure, which I think is why the first season as a basic adaptation, though not the scripted ending, worked. Ciel and Sebastian both win, it's just that Ciel's idea of winning is dying. That's the best he can get, and that sucks. But it fits, based on the content of the story as a whole.

And it certainly wasn't appeasing, because I think the fan base erupted like a volcano when they saw it.

So where do I see it? I don't agree with it, but not necessarily because "it's stupid" or "it doesn't make sense," and it didn't unleash a rage in me that it did so many other people. I disagree with the decision for two reasons:

1. Sebastian gets the short end of the stick without really deserving it.
2. They wrote themselves into a corner that doesn't allow for much else to happen.

I know that it sounds bizarre to say that a demon "didn't deserve" what ended up happening. But if we look at it from the context of the story, Sebastian has never once gone back on his word with Ciel, done something he wasn't supposed to do, or broke their contract in any way. He put up with a lot of nonsense from a lot of people, including Ciel himself. I'm not saying that his motivations behind what he was doing were good, but they are also what demons do. He wasn't behaving in a way that was abnormal, aside from the fact that he was developing an attachment to Ciel that demons don't or shouldn't. I said this in my previous article, but I'll say it again: Ciel chose to make a contract with Sebastian, and he was entirely possessive of him for the duration of the series almost as much as Sebastian was towards him. Their relationship was strangely symbiotic. As much as it sucked, Ciel knew that he was giving his soul away and Sebastian had every right to it as per their agreement. The loophole of making him a demon, despite the fact that it wasn't his choice but Alois', still screws over Sebastian in a way that didn't feel justified.

As for the second one, there really isn't any solid direction they could take with this story that would be engaging. I'm not a member of the Ciel and Sebastian Shipper Club and the last thing I would want to see is this story take off in that direction. I find that idea both creepy and uninteresting. Part of what made Ciel's character work well with Sebastian is the fact that he was so helpless; he needed Sebastian to get anything done or to survive longer than five seconds with all of the enemies his family made. As a demon, what could Ciel possibly need him for? Ordering him to fetch him souls? Demanding that he stop devouring souls? Sebastian would become a lackey, and Ciel--for all of his faults--doesn't seem like the kind of character that would keep someone around for the hell of it. People argued that maybe Sebastian would become his mentor and they might form some kind of friendship, but I don't see that happening. Sebastian lost out on the soul he wanted the most due to some technicality more or less and it's not like Ciel was particularly fond of him as a human. If Sebastian has no hope of getting what he wants, he could spend eternity being an asshole to Ciel because--what's he going to lose? And being forced by a contract to be nice to someone or to do things for them doesn't build a solid foundation for any kind of positive relationship.

To me, the story works best with Ciel as a helpless human and Sebastian as a powerful demon. That was kind of the selling point of the show and the manga.

The animation is still top-notch, with some parts of it surpassing the original. The line work looks a little smoother and more solid, and I do like the contrasting colors they chose for Alois. Then again, my favorite color is purple, so that might have something to do with it.

There is still a struggle with the tone, though it seems to have balanced itself out a little better since most of the season focuses on the seriousness of the situation with the occasional joke thrown in. The exception here are the first four episodes which, again, don't even fit well within the larger context of the story and feel like a repeat of the first season without any real purpose. They're made up of more humorous moments, but a lot of them don't work, in particular the idea that Lau is making money by having people gamble on Ciel and Lizzie's relationship and anything that the detective/Aberline stand-in/stupid character does in that train episode.

I can't emphasize enough how much that train episode does not belong.

The voice acting for the English dub is solid. I like the flat monotone of Claude's voice juxtaposed against Alois' high-pitched one. As usual, Brina Palencia and J. Michael Tatum are wonderful in their respective roles as Ciel and Sebastian.

And now, because this post is way longer than it should be, I'll conclude with this: I don't believe this season, regardless of the fact that it doesn't follow the manga and has a questionable ending, is that bad. Is it my favorite? No. But I can't bring myself to dislike it.

*"Faustus" is more than likely a reference to Dr. Faustus, which I also mentioned in my previous post.