To answer the most burning question of this episode: yes, Claude was in it. No, he didn’t do anything. He only had two lines and most of this was another Ciel and Sebastian episode, though the next episode shows promise.
In any case, this episode was clearly inspired by Baccano. It really was a step into the right direction here, and I like the concept behind it, creating chaos inside a train full of interesting characters that has a hostage on it. I just don’t agree with the execution.
I think the biggest problem with this episode was that it was a Kuroshitsuji episode. This episode went through a lot of trouble to throw in as many characters as possible into this episode, but in the end they hardly amounted to anything here. There was a point at which everyone was getting pumped up on working together to free the hostage, but then Sebastian came and just god-moded everything back to normal. In fact, this is a problem that I’ve had with with every episode that has Sebastian in it: in theory it would kick ass to have an uber butler at your disposal (and Alois really showed this in episode 1), but if you’re going to use him in this way, a character like him just kills all of the build-up.
To me, this episode felt like it just introduced a lot of stuff for the heck of it. It was a fun episode because of this chaos, but the episode just felt too forced. At times, the direction also seemed to skip entire scenes without any proper transition. Train episodes like this can be done to great effects, though. Wild Arms for example had a particularly awesome one. This one however… it was too unbalanced.
Now, as for the main storyline, with Claude’s appearance (without Alois, interestingly enough), we got a few new hints as to what is going on. We really seem to be back in the past here, or either at the end of episode one we travelled into some kind of other dimension. My guess would be the latter, since I can assume that Ciel in the first season never really talked about this mysterious “spider”. At this point, the question most on my mind is how Claude knew that Ciel was looking for revenge.
Rating: (Enjoyable)
Dear lord, weren’t you paying attention? We are NOT in the past. This is all AFTER season 1, but Ciel has had his memories wiped. There are plenty of signs to this, if you just pay attention.
1. Grell knows Sebastian and Ciel, Sebastian knows Grell, but Ciel does not remember Grell OR Madame Red, and might think that she is still alive. This confused Grell in episode 3, but he just smiled and went on.
2. The inspector in episode 3 said that the Queen’s lapdog came back to London, meaning that he was away for a while.
3. The assistant detective is the twin brother of the one from season 1, and said that his brother told him a lot about Ciel. He could not have done that if this was happening in the past, now could it?
But honestly, regarding forced plot elements to bring the series back on track Kuroshitsuji 2 is really starting to propell through the…ah heck, it broke through the roof in episode 2 and now it’s somewhere near Saturn heading far into outter space…
A twin brother with the same job who had just enough time to learn everything there is about the main character?
A memory wipe that erases only the memories of the previous season’s events?
That’s even worse than the stunts that they pulled with Magic Knight Rayearth 15 years ago…
About the “sebastian going god mode to solve everything despite the interesting bunch of characters in a train setting” is for comedic purposes xD I see Sebastian’s “perfection” in these types of episodes as CRACK!AWESOME xD Hahaha!
I’ve heard that the setting of the second season is 6 months after season 1. So no, don’t think we’ll ever be going to the past unless it’s a flashback xD
“At this point, the question most on my mind is how Claude knew that Ciel was looking for revenge.”
I hope this will be revealed as soon as next episode *_*
Wah, I want episode 5 >_
1st noone wants Claude to be the main character..now everyone wants him to comeback….-__-;;;;