At first glance, the last surviving member of the Phantomhive bloodline doesn’t leave much of an impression. Stoic and humorless, brooding and pretentious, it’s easy to write him off as a misanthropic youth going through a phase of ennui, and yet there’s so much more to the Earl of Phantomhive than meets the eye. After he nearly lost his life alongside his late parents, Ciel quite literally sold his soul to the devil, promising his life as payment for a powerful demon to protect and serve him until the day that his revenge for the slaughter of his family is complete. This demon, who has pledged to remain by his side until his earthly business is sorted out, goes by the name Sebastien, and he is one hell of a Butler. To realize his ambitions, Ciel will work directly for the queen, investigating the London Underworld to solve any number of disturbing paranormal mysteries, as he inches ever closer to his goal... And to the end of his life.

Black Butler was one of the earliest projects by A1 Pictures, an underdog studio at the time that has never stopped growing in popularity since. I’ve seen plenty of their catalogue, at least enough to say that Black Butler is by no means an outlier to their more common trends. In particular, A1 rarely ever strikes me as the kind of studio that has a massive budget to work with... Yes, I’ve seen a few titles of theirs that looked absolutely lavish in terms of production values, but they’re the exception rather than the rule. A1 is generally really good at managing anime with limited funds, they know how to use clever and conservative direction to save money for where it’s needed, but things can still go off the rails whenever a story requires any kind of excessive high-frame-rate action, at which point they’ll often rely on some pretty damn ugly frame-breaking runny eggs shit to make ends meet, yes Sword Art Online, I’m talking about you. Thankfully, this never happens in Black Butler, and while it’s fairly obvious throughout the series that a large budget was never on the table, it never feels cheap or stilted as a result.

Part of this is due to the fact that, design-wise, Black Butler is drop dead gorgeous. Gothic aesthetics have always paired well with the setting of Victorian England, adding a sort of tragic beauty to the dark and dreary atmosphere, so it’s beyond natural that the results would look so attractive here. The characters are well proportioned, with each of them given the exact amount of expressiveness to match their demeanor; Characters like Ciel and Sebastien always have really subtle countenances, allowing them to tell you a lot about what they’re thinking while saying very little, while the more comedic characters are more likely to go over the top. The clothing is beautiful as well, and while I am mainly referring to all of the imaginative dresses, flowing gowns and cultural apparel, even the simplest black suit is anything but generic. The color palette mostly sticks to black, red and purple, and while there are obvious exceptions to this, characters who deviate from the palette are allowed to do so in ways that underline just how much they stand out from the characters around them. The pink clad Elizabeth, for example, always feels kind of alien on Phantomhive property, as I have to imagine was intended. I can’t imagine the thrill someone would feel at being a superfan of this show, and putting together a good cosplay from it.

The music is mostly forgettable... It’s not bad, but it blends into the story so well you won’t remember it unless you actively seek it out. A few exceptions to this are opening and closing, both of which are pretty addictive, and weirdly enough, the bumper music. I don’t know why, but I love the bumper music.

The English dub, on the other hand, is far from forgettable, as Funimation pulled out all the stops with this property. As with most anime that take place in western countries, Black Butler sounds a lot more natural in English than it does in Japanese, especially because it gives Funimation’s famous voice actor stable a chance to flex their accent muscles. A few of these were allowed to just go over the top, such as Monica Rial, Jason Liebrecht and Ian Sinclair in the roles of Ciel’s estate staff, and all three of them sound like they are clearly having the time of their lives doing it. Jerry Jewel and Trina Nishimura, again, play the only asian characters in a sea of white people, something they both get typecast as weirdly often. Cherami Leigh sounds sweet and wholesome in an English accent that kind of reminds me of Laura Bailey’s turn as Evangeline in Negima... That is a good thing, for those of you who don’t get the reference... And Daniel Frederick pours everything he has into the foppish Grell.

Since Alexis Tipton, Chuck Huber and Colleen Clinkenbeard give really good performances that I can’t really talk about for spoiler reasons, I guess it’s time to talk about the two leads. J Michael Tatum is the star of this dub, and there’s an argument to be made that Sebastien is possibly his best individual performance to date. His smooth voice and perfect posh accent is captivating... Seductive yet dangerous, cocky yet humble, duplicitously conveying two conflicting emotions at once, one on the surface and one lurking just below. On the other hand, Brina Palencia’s performance as Ciel is a bit of a disappointment... She’s the kind of actor who can lose herself in a dark and brooding voice, and she can act with a lot of depth and complexity, but she sometimes struggles to do both at once. This kind of happened in Hell Girl, and it happens here as well, because while she nails the tone and accent of the character, it feels so flat and shallow at times that his dialogue can occasionally come off as laughably pretentious. Thankfully, John Burgmeier’s adaptive script does what it can to minimize the damage.

Getting old sucks. I was originally planning to start this paragraph by bitching about certain aspects of pop culture in the late 2000s and early 2010s that I didn’t like, but let’s be honest, as you get older, every generational trend that you didn’t personally experience is going to activate your boomer switch. I fully understand my own bias here, but I really did not enjoy the rise of emo culture. I didn’t like any of the emo guyliner bands, I openly mocked Twilight and the slew of paranormal romance books that followed it, I made fun of every wrestling RPer who made their own Undertaker rip-off, and while I didn’t hate Black Butler upon my first viewing, I’m willing to admit in retrospect that since it came out around the peak of this trend, I didn’t have it in me to fully appreciate it either. I liked some things about it, but I still had that voice in the back of my mind whispering “look at this emo trash” the whole way through. But hey, the trend petered off almost ten years ago, and I’ve found a lot of my opinions at the time don’t really hold up. I read the first Twilight book, and while it's not GOOD, it’s not THAT bad either. I can name at least half a dozen Stephen King books it’s better than. I like a few MCR songs. So eventually, I’ve understood for quite some time that, eventually, I was going to have to give Black Butler another shot.

Watching it again in 2022, divorced from all that baggage, is it better than I thought? Is it worse? Well, kind of both, but it is honestly more on the better side. I’ve already praised the production values of the series, and while I was a fan of the aesthetic and visual designs even back then, the animation is overall better than I remember. I have slightly more complicated feelings about the writing, though. There are two sides to Black Butler, those being the dramatic and the comedic. Yes, you could say that about most stories, but it feels especially important here, because the two don’t mix very well, and I do feel that disconnect damages the series in a lot of ways. For starters, Black Butler has a really strong premise. Ciel’s backstory is very dramatically compelling, and upon hearing it, you’ll instantly want to see where this young man’s quest for revenge... Which he is not only willing to die for, but has already sold his soul for... Is going to go. There are so many possibilities, it’s positively salivating to think about the depths of tragedy that it promises... So it’s kind of a problem that the comedic side of the anime is about a million times stronger than the dramatic side.

I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing, mind you, because this show is funny as fuck. The jokes aren’t constant, but when you do get them, they land at least eighty percent of the time, often with really smart timing and execution. There’s an element of slapstick that’s mostly attributed to Ciel’s three servants, and while they may be annoying at first, they’ll grow on you with a vengeance. They are genuinely funny characters, with a strong dynamic not only between each other, but in their relationship to Sebastien, who operates as their cold-hearted no-nonsense boss. They also occasionally provoke a funny reaction out of Ciel, and considering how one-note he can be at times, these are some very welcome interactions. There’s also a strong element of LGBT representation, and his name is Grell, the grim reaper who was iconic before being iconic became a thing. He does kind of fall into that ‘predatory queer’ trope, which is usually highly problematic, but seeing how his target is Sebastien, I don’t mind so much. Not only does Sebastien need a foil to balance him out, but I mean, he’s a fucking demon. You can get away with a lot in a story if the victim is a demon.

The only comedic aspect I didn’t like was Pluto, the aptly named dog spirit who can transform into a man... A naked, muscular albino man who still has the mind of a dog. And when I say muscular, I mean Tommy Wiseau potato body muscular. I hate his design, I hate his concept, he is the worst part of every episode he’s in. I know this show likes to be campy, appreciate these levels of camp, but the dog man shit is just downright embarrassing. I’ve heard he wasn’t in the manga, and that definitely tracks. But still, aside from this one character, Black Butler has a really wicked sense of humor that makes it a genuinely fun series to watch... I just wish they would have spent more time on the dramatic side of things, because seeing the writers meander their way through such a strong concept is a huge let down. My first time through the series, I kind of hated all of the little episodic msadventures, including some pretty ridiculous side quests like a town being haunted by a ghost dog, an ice sculpting competition, a fucking curry making competition... Watching it now, I do see the subtle ways these episodes tie into the greater plot, so they’re not nearly as bad. At least not on their own.

The problem, ultimately, is what all of this does to Ciel. Even on my second viewing, with my mind more open and with a better understanding of the overall plot, it takes a really long time to get invested in him. His entire character is his backstory and plot, and you don’t learn about those things right away. The first time we get into serious details about his past in any meaningful way, it’s not for his benefit, it’s to explain the motivations of his aunt, whose story arc was too rushed to feel impactful in the first place. Ciel doesn’t become interesting until the final quarter of the series, up until then he honestly just feels like a killjoy who’s only along for the ride in his own story. The writers spend a lot of time up until then milking the dynamic between him and Sebastien to tease the fujoshi crowd, but they don’t spend nearly enough time endearing him to anyone else. Sebastien is really likeable. He’s an amazing character. He’s capable of doing practically anything, but because he does it with the attitude of someone who’s painfully overqualified for his dead-end job, it’s too funny to ever call him a Mary-sue over it. Also, again, Grell helps. I don’t know, maybe there’s something I’m missing about Ciel, but it feels like a failure of the writers that he just isn’t as strong a protagonist as he should be.

But while I’m talking about Ciel and Sebastien, and their problematic relationship with fujoshi, I guess it’s time I addressed the elephant in the room. A few months ago, when I finally reviewed Loveless... Another title that had been on my backlog for God knows how long... My main goal was to see if it had any redeeming factors outside of it’s objectively pedophilic premise. I believe there’s nothing wrong with enjoying problematic media, as long as you’re not enjoying it for problematic reasons, and for that particular anime, I could not find any non problematic reasons. I was then accused of not knowing the difference between reality and fiction because I made the mistake of calling a fictional pedophile, le gasp, a pedophile. Well, considering Black Butler’s less than savory reputation, where does this show fall on the same scale?

First of all, unlike Loveless, I can picture several perfectly legitimate reasons a person might enjoy it. Hell, if you actually wanted to see Ciel and Sebastien play hide the sausage, you’re gonna be disappointed, as any ship baiting between them is kept strictly to the subtext, and even then it’s entirely a matter of interpretation. Yeah, the undertones are there, and I wouldn’t blame you for finding them a bit on the uncomfortable side, but I never once genuinely believed Sebastien was interested in any part of Ciel aside from his soul. Hell, the amount of times he went out of his way to reiterate their connection via contract, I constantly found myself feeling entirely convinced that once Cel’s quest for vengeance was over, Sebastien wouldn’t think twice about disemboweling his master and making snow angels in his blood. Their dynamic can be slightly flirtatious at times, but never in a straightforward way. It’s played for laughs more often than not, and like I said before, this show does have a great sense of humor. The infamous corset sight gag will never not make me laugh. I might be proven wrong on all this when I finally watch seasons 2 and 3, but for now, Black Butler is just a fun, campy title that looks pretty damn cool.

Black Butler was originally available from Funimation, but has since gone deeply out of print. and has become unreasonably difficult to find at a reasonable price. Further seasons and OVAs have also been released by Funimation, and have entered varying levels of availability. The series has been so popular in the states that a live action movie from Japan has been dubbed and released by Funimation as well, and if that’s not insane enough for you, there was also a stage musical that you can still find clips of on Youtube. The original manga is available stateside from Yen Press.

From the beginning, there have been two main issues holding Black Butler back. First, it came out in an era where more than a few people had a knee-jerk reaction to anything smelling like tween girl fodder, and while emo culture probably did contribute to it’s meteoric rise in popularity, it also directly contributed to the cultural backlash against it. Second is a lack of focus, as it treated what could have been a really strong plot as an afterthought, prioritizing humor and campiness at the expense of the protagonist’s development. I haven’t gotten into any other related material yet, the manga and sequels and whatnot, so I know I’m missing some potentially important context, but judging the first season on its own, as an island, by its own merits, I like it. I think it has a lot to offer, especially in today’s market. Unfortunately, as many cool puzzle pieces as Black Butler may have, it wasn’t able to put them together, and I’m not entirely convinced that it tried to. It’s an unholy and unfocused mess, but it’s still a really fun series to watch.

I give Black Butler a 7/10.