Black Butler 2
Posted: June 10, 2010 Filed under: Black Butler Leave a comment »Yana Toboso – Yen Press – 2010 – 9+ volumes
Hm… yes. On one hand, I had a deal with Black Butler that if it dumped its annoying manor characters, I would be its friend forever. On the other hand, it scared me by putting said characters in the very first chapter (making it about those characters, in fact), and then proceeded to tell the story of Jack the Ripper. Again. Without really adding anything interesting.
Maybe it’s just me, but I’m sick of hearing about Jack the Ripper. If there was a moratorium on all fiction that mentions or references that killer, I would be very happy. It’s interesting, but it’s been done absolutely to death. While we do get a very well-researched version of the story here (honing in on key facts to structure the story around, and also using the real Jack the Ripper victims and settings), it’s as I said, there’s not a whole lot new to this version. We see the characters discuss and research the case (Ciel and Sebastian, along with his society-crazy Aunt, her butler, and another random character for silliness), and when they figure out their suspect, the story comes up with a reason to make Ciel cross-dress, there’s a near-miss involving some sort of black magic ritual, something else comes up later… hm. Not even the supernatural twist at the end did much for me this time, simply because that character was awful and didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
The story carries over into the next volume, which bodes well since this series seems to do better with longer stories. I also like the fact that new supernatural twists have been introduced in each volume. I also like the Victorian England setting, combined with the supernatural stuff. It’s… just not very good yet, though. It’s getting there, and I think I’ll like it in a few more volumes, but there’s a lot of disappointing key elements at this point.
