One of the noble families of England - Phantomhive, has a butler, Sebastian Michaelis. He has unquestionably perfect knowledge, manners, talent with materials. martial arts and much more. But for some reason, he serves a 12 year old master.
Story & Characters
Story:
Warning: This review represents my personal opinion of the show, and is therefore far from objective.
The Story revolves around the quest for revenge of the 12 year old Earl, Ciel Phantomhive and his butler Sebastian Michaelis.
The plot, while initially appearing simple, doesn't take long to branch out into a complex and gripping story, which doesn't fail to give dept to its characters and hints at the potential of the tale. And I do mean just hints!
The anime branched out from the manga after the primary arc, which consists of the first 6 episodes, which suffered a few changes itself, but not much. While the new arc was somewhat entertaining, there were just too many wasted episodes, and the final villain was rather disappointing, but the conclusion of the story was somewhat satisfactory.
On the other hand, season two resolves most of these issues, giving us a number of 1, maybe 2 wasted episodes, a villain much more worthy of Sebastian, and a much more gripping story. Of course, season two did have only half of the first one's episodes, so I might be judging them a little unfair.
Characters:
I won't lie. I hate most of the characters of Kuroshitsuji. Mostly because, anyone else that isn't Sebastian and Ciel, is just a generic stereotype, with a few supernatural powers added in to make them look cool at times, and while that works for Lau, Grell and Tanaka, the rest of the servants are clumsily annoying and their incompetence begs to question Sebastian's judgment for hiring them. Maybe it has something to do with my hatred for sob-stories, but they never managed to impress me much.
Elizabeth (Ciel's girlfriend) is your average, annoying girly-girl. It doesn't help matters much that the Anime made her a totally useless character by giving her a few feeble rolls of damsel-in-distress, when her role in the Manga was slightly different, dough I still disliked her.
Alois Trancy (present only in the Anime, season 2) was again, one of those characters who I disliked from the moment I set my eyes on him. I probably would have dropped the second season had the story revolved around his characters, seeing as he is a spoiled brat with little consideration for other people. However, as the story progressed, and the viewers are slowly introduced to the back-story behind his characters, I confess that I found myself captivated by the youngster's tragic past, which moved me slightly and actually had me feeling for his character (I still hate him though).
Claude Faustian is a character whose motivation I can't understand for the life of me. Maybe it has something to do with him being a demon, or me preferring Sebastian, but his character looked completely blank to me, like any other demon would have done just as good a job, if not better than him. Especially if you compare him to his fellow comrade Hannah, who had a much deeper back story, and whose drive behind her actions became clear by the end of the show. I don't know however if that's a good thing, since I still hate her character…
Sebastian and Ciel are easily my favorite characters of the Anime as well as Manga. I've always admired Ciel's maturity despite his fragile age, and the fact that he still manages to preserve an ounce of innocence to his characters beneath that cold mask of indifference, considering all he's been through. Sebastian is probably the only living Gary-Sue which anyone could like. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that he's a butler, and is therefore expected to be perfect in order to accomplish all of the insane tasks which his master likes to bestow upon him (mostly for laughs), or maybe it's his somewhat respectful and at the same time sarcastic personality, but his mister-perfect attitude never seemed to get on my nerves.
So to wrap this part up, I'd give the two TV shows an 8 for story, and an 8 for characters. Now, your going to ask me why an 8 for characters when I myself admitted that I hate most of them? Well, the answer is easy! Because most of the other characters barely make an appearance in some filler-episodes ore are just around for a few forgetful minutes, while the rest of the story focuses around Sebastian and Ciel, and so they don't really subtract from the enjoyment of the show, much.
Rating:
I'm not a big fan of the Anime's art.
When comparing the extremely detailed and artsy looking manga to the meek and uni-colored style of the anime, I can't help but feel slightly disappointed. Frankly, most of the action scenes look horrendous (except for a few where you could really tell that the animators put some extra effort into them, like the last episode from season 1, and 2), and the character's facial expressions are about as consistent as Inoue Orihime's from Bleach. I will give them credit for the close-ups, that's the only time when the facial expressions look somewhat consistent. And of course there were some cool scenes here and there (mostly Sebastian centered).
However I won't tax the anime much, since it has some truly spectacular backgrounds and season two seemed to have a bigger budged and solved the problems of the shifting, twig-style character design and alien-worthy facial expressions.
Rating:
The music was the one truly good thing that the anime had going for it. The openings of the two seasons (“Kiss of Monochrome” – for season one, and “SHIVER” – for season two) were phenomenally well animated compared to the rest of the series, and the music suited them well. As for the endings, the first ending of season one (“I'm ALIVE!” by BECCA) was incredibly hilarious, and somewhat unfitting for a show with such a dark tone, but I couldn't help but love it. The second ending (“Lacrimosa” by Kalafina) was a fitting accompaniment for the respective anime arc, while season two's endings (“Bird” by Yuya Matsushita and “Kagayaku Sora no Sijima ni wa” by Kalafina) looked somewhat generic, but they were okay.
The voice actors were great. Even the annoying characters had voices befitting to them, especially Elizabeth (Yukari Tamura) and Alois (Nana Mizuki), kudos to their seyuu!
As for the background music, it was a fitting addition to the anime, which emphasized the action scenes and the characters' emotions rather well. The second season's soundtrack rather bugged me, especial Alois's character song, which consisted of some unsettling sounds, or just plain silence at some times, but I do think that blended well with his character, who's a little unstable, therefore, I can't complain much about it.
Rating:
A rather original anime seeing as we live in the 20th centuries and most of the tings have already been done before.
My advice to you is: if you enjoy dark anime with a somewhat comedic tone who don't shy away from obscene themes such as child abuse, murder and the like, you'll enjoy this anime.
If you're a shouneni ai phobe you won't like this anime, same goes for religious people.
Rating:
8.0000 (good)
Reviewed by kamuinoyume, Nov 10, 2010
Fantastic. A well-versed review... I couldn't have said it any better. I started out with the anime though, so I've yet to double-check on the manga's art. You might want to check on your grammar and words though... I take it English is not your first language?
That said, I mostly agree with your review. And if I'm not mistaken, reviews, though deemed to be objective, actually depend on the reviewer's own opinions, so no harm done in speaking your mind.
Kudos.
No, my first language is not English. And while I agree that every review has an once of subjectivity, most reviews try to be objective, while I decided that it was too much trouble (really lazy of me, but it was my first review). Anyway, thank you for commenting!
Definitely on my watchlist.
Good summarization!
merged: 02-07-2011 ~ 11:27am
I tell you just in case this review is not just because of the detailes used but also how it was presented quite uniuqe.
I guess its because of your use of words are accurate. Well its just personal opinion.
I watched it, it's one of my biggest fave of all! Even if I agree with you on the manga thing...
It's one of my favorite as well, but that doesn't make it perfect (I actually tend to hate perfection, it
seams boring... unless you're Sebastian!). I'm glad you liked the show.
basically I share the same view with you. Besides Sebastian and Ciel I pretty much dislike all the characters in the anime coz most of their significance have been severely played down. But I myself have given the story a much lower mark. To me it scores only 6.5. Because the entire plot is screwed as soon as Pluto the Hellhound and Angela/Ash the androgynous and psychopath angel make their debut. And I hate the endings of both seasons, which are forced and illogical. As for the arts, I don't think the twig-style character design problem has been solved in season 2. And the way the characters walk is just... weird. Seriously the anime did not do the manga justice. Though I agree the songs are lovely. :)
(yup,this is it), when i saw this anime
i love anime kuroshitsuji
I understand your opinions (but I love all the characters and season 2 is my fave one out off all)...but I don't understand how you can not see how detailed the anima is.. (Not making it overrated) but bb is the most detailed anima I ever seen do you not realize how much work they take to make an whole episode? Like seriously I know this is your opinion but I feel that you gone waaaaay to far to judge artwork,why don't you go there and make it better since your saying your "disappointed about their style
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