Is Black Butler worth a first-time watch today? Probably Not, Unless…

Disclaimer where one is due: This is review is much more subjective than it is objective. My approach to recommendations is based on personal experience and how much I enjoyed a work rather than a critical rating. This review is also less about analyzing specific qualities so much as outlining what to expect from Black Butler for the uninformed. Anyway...

Overview:
To me, Black Butler will always be the epitome of a "middle-school anime," a show that is easily digestible enough for a younger audience, while "darker themes" serve as a point of intrigue. The ideal time to watch Black Butler is as a young teenager with chipped black nails and a plastic choker. All that is to say that any present-day enjoyment of Black Butler has much to do with indulging nostalgia. I feel that the modern culture around anime has grown past this silly show as the anime community expects media that is not only entertaining, but a genuinely good story besides. Black Butler is much more the former than the latter. This is not a show I would recommend to anyone looking for something substantially meaningful. If you start with high expectations, you will be thoroughly disappointed. But I can't, in good conscious, fully disparage Black Butler without outlining why I will still find myself sneaking in rewatches like a midnight cookie.

Problems:

Black Butler is a ridiculous show, and it knows it most of the time. I would call it campy if it did not, in the same breath, want me to take seriously some truly outrageous melodrama that resorts to child sexual abuse to shock the viewer. Oh yes, that is indeed here, though much more egregious in later seasons than the first. Black Butler has a habit of using shock value, both in gore and abuse. This is not to say those things can't exist in shows and be portrayed well, but Black Butler is not that show. Even if its handling wasn't so clumsy, the abrupt tonal shifts of the cast's looney-tunes antics would give the watcher a whiplash like no other. Black Butler has no shortage of slapstick humor and the like on the other end of this show's spectrum. This is no problem on its own but, as stated before, can be a bizarre dissonance. One of Black Butler's most significant objective flaws is the Flanderization of its cast. Many side characters introduced with intrigue - Grell being a prime example - are later relegated to these one-note gags stuck on repeat any time they are on screen. It is not nearly entertaining enough to not get old and could potentially bastardize characters you might want to care about. If you think this would bother you, Black Butler is not your show.

The series also has an often...uncomfortable portrayal of adolescent boys, with Ciel the shining star. We all know that anime has its problems with sexualizing very youthful characters. Black Butler teeters on the knife's edge of what could be seen as "acceptable." This does not even have to do with Ciel's penchant for gothic-lolita-like fashion and crossdressing - I couldn't care less - instead, the show lives on its boys-love baiting between Ciel and his very-adult demon butler. Prepare for plenty of scenes like Ciel Phantomhive in his barely butt-length nightshirt being tucked into bed or a gag where we're shown a close-up on Ciel moaning Sebastian's name only to pan out and see him struggling with a tight corset. I am far from a prude, but I think it's important that prospective viewers know about this aspect of Black Butler before they watch it. There is, of course, the part of Black Butler's audience that lives for this sort of thing, but I would rather not think about them. If you think this would bother you, Black Butler is not your show.

Black Butler is also not a very narratively-complex series. I would best cast it as a hot-topic victorian-England soap opera given anime form. It is some of the hottest trash out there, but you might enjoy this particular strain of garbage if it's to your tastes. You're not going to get anything beyond a demon butler and the boy of English nobility who bosses him around, the cults they dissect, and the different supernatural beings they face. No battle hype, no breathtaking animation (the quality is like downright cardboard sometimes). The premise is, to be fair, decently intriguing, one about a child orphan forced to grow up too fast and a demon preying on that vulnerability by becoming a servant in exchange for consuming his soul after death. But if you want to see his concept at its full potential, you will have to imagine it yourself. It often amounts to not much more than set dressing.

Now, For What Black Butler Does Right:

If you are someone who enjoys watching something stupid and comfortable with this stupidity, Black Butler might be for you. It's low-brow anime edge at its finest, but with a certain je ne sais quoi that sets it apart. Somehow, its iconically eclectic cast, baffling tonal whiplash, peculiar alternate history, and occasionally genius art direction have, by working together, endured to me what would otherwise be just a bad show. I can't help but feel affection any time I see Ciel or Grell out in the wilds of the internet or a fourteen-year-old in a busted Sebastian cosplay at an anime con. Black Butler's charm is linked with nostalgia, yes, but that nostalgia would not exist in the first place if there wasn't a little something to earn it.

Final Note:
In my opinion, the ideal watching experience would consist of nothing beyond the first season and, if you truly want more, perhaps the Book of Atlantic movie, which gives a lot of love to the often-neglected side characters such as the Shinigami, and even beyond that is a lot of dumb fun for anyone who ever wanted to see what would happen if there were zombies on the Titanic. Yes, the actual Titanic. What did I say about guilty pleasure? I absolutely mean it about not touching the later seasons, though... I would mark those as the point where Black Butler's flaws far outweigh its charms.

Thank you for reading! This is my first review on this site and it's a bit all over the place, I know. All the same, I hope it could be helpful.