Category: Kuroshitsuji II

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)

I tried. I really tried watching the first Kuroshitsuji series, but yet again I only got as far as episode two before it became too much of a chore to watch. Shallow, predictable, annoying, I really don’t want to watch more of it. I know that I don’t have the right to criticize the second season without having fully watched it… but I’m gonna do it anyway. Thanks to that first episode, I’m really willing to give it a chance. This show was advertised as that you could watch it even without having seen the first season, so the creators had better live up to that.

So, as for the most burning question: no, there were no Alois and Claude in this episode either. Again, this episode acted like nothing happened. My guess would be that this series is flashing back without announcing it, or something in that direction. Either that, or that mysterious spider hints that Claude was behind the incident of this episode, which if true would really suck because even for him it would make no sense.

This episode wasn’t as awful as episode two, but it still was pretty unimpressive. It showed another character who seems to be a recurrent one: that red haired guy with a chainsaw. I don’t like him, especially in the way that his voice actor continues to ham up his performance. This episode was a bit of a murder mystery thriller, in which someone is setting people on fire.

It all was pretty shallow, the culprit revealed herself pretty early, there wasn’t much attempt given at fleshing her out, so the creators just sent her into a maniacal killing spree without making her really interesting to watch. Her weapon (photographing people to death) was a nice idea, but that also was all it was: a nice idea. It’s neither used well nor would this episode have been any different if she just stabbed people with a knife.

For some weird reason, Tetsuya Endo turned out to be the episode director of this episode… which is strange because he should be working on Digimon Xros Wars. Either way, both here and with Digimon he’s not really showing his best side. This confirms to me that he really is one of those directors who needs good source material in order to really shine. I admit that you couldn’t do a lot with an episode that had a premise like this one.

Okay, so the original author said to give this series a chance until episode four or eight, so I will withhold judgment for now. But seriously, this series is going to have to become a lot better than this now. What I want to see are bold, new ideas executed well. The way that this series has been set up, it’s the perfect opportunity to try out new stuff, but instead it’s been stuck with ideas that it never uses. I mean, this is A-1: they’ve been doing nothing but that in 2010, despite a shaky production at times. I understand that Kuroshitsuji isn’t one of their main series, and that it’s really apparent that they are focusing on Occult Gakuin this season. I’ll be fine with the lackluster animation or the CG horses, as long as the storytelling tries out something interesting.
Rating: – (Disappointing)

Okay, so in this season my method of choosing the series to blog is going to differ a bit from the previous season. In the past spring season, I was pretty much juggling with the series that I wasn’t too sure about, until I was happy with the series that I ended up with. This season I’m still going to cover twelve anime, meaning that I’ll pick up the seven most interesting new series. However, whenever they end up disappointing or too much of a chore to write about I just drop them so that I can get some extra time, watching some of the older series that I’ve been meaning to check out.

Because honestly, this episode was pretty terrible. The two new characters really were fantastic: Claude and Alois were incredibly fun to watch, and I really want to know more about them. That’s the reason I’m blogging this series. And this is also why I’m willing to try out this series as an experiment, without having watched season 1.

Because after this season, I really don’t want to watch more of Ciel and Sebastien than necessary. Together, they’re decent, but bland. The biggest problem however, is that their friends are all annoying stereotypes and especially Ciel’s fiance is just a complete moron without any personality. This episode also just made no sense, and lacked the attention to detail that made that first episode so good. A flood appears from nowhere. Instead of running away, the characters just stand there like it’s nothing. The fiance somehow finds it a good idea to climb on a boat. There is a dam to which water flows from both sides (how the hell does that work?) and after the flood is over, it really completely disappears. It leaves no marks, or scars to the landscape, conveniently for the plot of the episode like nothing even happened.

The first episode worked because it was so incredibly camp, yet well executed, creative and shocking. The servants were all well characterized and stuff. I’m glad to see that in this link, it becomes clear that Alois and Claude will form a big part of the second season, but it also seems a post that’s mostly focused on calming down the fans of Sebastian and Ciel, portraying them as the good guys.

This really has me worried, because good guys generally tend to get more airtime than bad guys. On top of that, I also really don’t hope that the OP is spoiling the entire plot of this series. Also, didn’t Ciel supposedly die at the end of the first season? Good luck in trying to write that into the series correctly…

Oh, and for those who were wondering: there was no iota of Claude and Alois in this episode.
Rating: — (Lacking)