Black Butler S1: Quick Thoughts

As a yuri fan, watching yaoi is…weird and totally not my cup of tea. From the story to the art and animation, its really different. I did give this genre abit of chance to prove themselves, and maybe just maybe, I would like some. One of the yaoi animes that I watched and note this, I liked, is Black Butler.

Well, technically, Black Butler is not a yaoi anime but a yaoi-bait anime. There is a difference. In certified yaoi/yuri animes, canon relationship develops. While in bait animes, the lines are blurred. The characters are so close to each other but they are not canon. So yeah.

Here in Black Butler, its the latter. The level of yaoi-baiting is through the roof though. But its not that bad. Heh.

I now understand the fame of Black Butler. At first, I thought this anime would have meh plot and more on yaoi baiting, but I was dead wrong.

The story was quite interesting. A human formed a contract with a demon to seek revenge, that premise is definitely intriguing in my book. But even with a promising premise, its all in the execution. Did Black butler did well? Yes and no.

Yes, cuz they handled the premise really well. The consistency was remarkable, each arc was told in a very stable pacing. It made me remember how bad the pacing of Trinity Blood was. Lol. Another thing was the story arcs itself. I didn’t expect all the arcs to be connected at the very end. I really thought most of the arcs were fillers or something.

The twist really works.

Even with those positives, I can’t help but notice the negatives as well. As much as I love the consistency and the stable pacing, there well quite alot of plot holes in the story. On my first watch, I didn’t think much about it. But after I finished watching it, I still have alot of questions un-answered. There were also alot of scenes that were too dramatic, even though it could have been solved easily. I’m also abit bummed by the exaggeration of Sebastian being the “amazing butler”, it was getting annoying after it was repeated again and again and again in every episode. I get it, he’s amazing and one hell of a butler. But bruh…context clues, everyone? I know I might be nitpicking some stuff about the series but they are affecting my enjoyment.

Enough with the negatives, let’s proceed.

The characters were really amazing. Not a single one of them were useless. All of them has roles to play and had enough development to know them better. The art & animation was quite good for its age. It’s really nice to watch and I didn’t see any problematic cuts. I do wanna point out how fanservicey the looks of almost all the characters, especially the men. It’s clear where this series was aiming for.

Overall, I really enjoyed watching this series. I didn’t expect I would liked it as much as I do now. I mean, this is not my cup of tea, but everything works.

That is all.
Thanks for reading.