Still One Hell of An Anime?: Black Butler Re-Review

Hello there, people of Earth!  It’s time once again for another review!  This one will be my last re-review for this month, as well as for the time being.  You may all remember back in December, I did a review on the show Black Butler.  Though at the time, I had seen two seasons of the series at the time of the review.  However, I was one season short, this being the third season, Book of Circus.  Well over the holidays, I saw this third season.  So now, I can talk about it, and also a little more about Black Butler.  In any of it, let’s get started on my last re-review!

Now, considering that this focuses on watching one season of Black Butler, this synopsis will mainly focus on Book of Circus.  This season begins with young Earl Ciel Phantomhive receiving a mission from Queen Victoria.  In this case, children are mysteriously disappearing throughout England.  However, disappearances seem to occur when a traveling circus called the Noah’s Ark Circus comes around.  The duo goes to the circus and eventually joins it for further investigation.  Later on we do find that the lead members of the circus-who also happen to be amputees-, are in fact responsible for the disappearances.  However, they have been receiving orders from Lord Kelvin, a baron who is obsessed with beauty and has gone through several plastic surgeries in order to resemble a porcelain doll.  After Ciel and Sebastian visit the Baron Kelvin, a performance is put on for them featuring the missing children.  After witnessing a grotesque show where a few of them die, Kelvin later gives Ciel a horrific surprise; a complete replica of the arena in which Ciel was tortured by a mysterious cult, as well as the place where he and Sebastian made their contract (As well as having an obsession with beauty, Kelvin also has an obsession with Ciel.  After a chance encounter with Ciel and his late father Vincent, Kelvin suddenly feels that he is too hideous to interact with the two.  This later leads to his many plastic surgeries.  And going even further with his obsession with Ciel, he builds the arena in order to reenact the torture that Ciel went through and then save him.)  During this process, Kelvin, the ringmaster of the Noah’s Ark Circus Joker, and the doctor who traveled with the circus are killed.  Kelvin’s home is also set on fire.  It is also revealed that the doctor used the bones of the children that died in the home to make the prosthetics used by the lead circus members.  By the end of the season, all of the troupe members except for the snake charmer, Snake, have been killed by Ciel and company.

The last time I reviewed Black Butler, I gave the show four out of five stars- I also gave the two current season I had seen separate ratings of their own.  After watching the new season, I would give Book of Circus four out of five stars.  And for the series overall, I give it a new rating of three and a half out of five stars.  I’ll explain the reasoning for this later on, but for now, let’s focus on what positive aspects came out of the show.  Honestly, nothing really changed.  Animation and story were both good throughout the series as a whole, and season three was not a disappointment in either.  However, the story was a little enhanced in Book of Circus due to the fact that it followed more closely to the manga that inspired the franchise. 

Even though nothing changed with the positives, a lot of things did change in the negatives.  Both of the first two seasons of Black Butler had issues with plot.  Season one had plot holes that should not have been there, and season two’s plot was an absolute train wreck.  Book of Circus had no issues with plot- at least none that I noticed.  So there was some great improvement there.  Otherwise, there was nothing else glaring.  Another issue was  the rating that I gave earlier for the entirety of Black Butler.  This had nothing to do with plot, but does go back to season one.  The way that season one ended gave the perfect ending to the series, which made the next two seasons unnecessary.  In other words, season two and Book of Circus should not have happened.  It’s this continuation of the series that brought Black Butler’s rating down.  Still, despite this, Black Butler is still a treat to watch and I would still recommend it to anyone.

So yes, Book of Circus was certainly entertaining from start to finish.  However, season one should have been the last nail in this franchise’s coffin, but Japanese producers decided to add two more for good measure.  Book of Circus is streaming online - I’ve found most of the episodes on YouTube-, but has yet to be dubbed in English.  The first seasons are available in English on DVD in store and online.  Now before I go, you may have noticed that I didn’t do Character of the Month this month.  That’s because these shows were already reviewed- and most of the main characters were Characters of the Month in the past.  So I decided not to do it for this month.  That’s all that I have for this week.  Stay tuned for more because next week starts with the highly anticipated Flashback February!  So new reviews will be coming soon!

-Hanime on Anime

If you want to read my original Black Butler review, click here: One Hell of an Anime: Black Butler