Creative Staff
Story/Art: Yana Toboso
Translation/Adaptation: Tomo Kimura
What They Say
Their elaborate schoolroom deception at an end, Earl Ciel Phantomhive and his peerless manservant, Sebastian, finally hit upon the truth behind the incident of the vanished students at Weston College. Just what tragic steps did the elites of the school, spurred on by their overwhelming sense of justice, take to stamp out the bullying running rife in the halls of their institution?! What began as a seemingly simple case of missing persons goes round and round, spinning out of control into a great menace, one capable of perplexing even a devil…
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With Derrick having made an appearance finally at the midnight tea party in a very dead yet still moving state the pieces fall quickly into place making the reappearance of a familiar face inevitable. That revelation also explains how the mysterious headmaster managed to avoid Sebastian’s pursuit as The Undertaker is also a being that falls into the class of decidedly more than human entities that wander through the world of Black Butler but it maybe that his presence is less cause of the current mystery than effect of the real truth behind events.
While the history between The Undertaker and Ciel and his butler have been long and dangerous The Undertaker is not one to lie when there is not cause and his statements cause the focus to quickly change from the undead youth’s current state to examining how it is that Derrick joined the ranks of the dead in the first place.
This leaves the four prefects, having found themselves in a position where they have no ability but to reveal all, bring forth a tale of misery and woe as they expose their shame as well as their mistakes in trying to correct the fall out of their actions in an effort that went so far astray. As the quartet talk they share how it was that they went from unbelievably ecstatic students who reveled in their love of their school to the brooding and heavily secret laden youths that Ciel and the audience was introduced to a couple volumes ago.
The four reveal that they had come to think quite highly of Derrick Arden and even allowed him a fair amount of power as a result of their believing that he was very talented student who was also greatly loved by all at the school but when the truth is revealed the quartet find themselves overtaken in the moment. Despite his public appearance it turned out that Derrick was a vicious bully who has been playing everyone as his family’s money and power has him in a place where he is practically untouchable- though his own scheming has helped him insulate him in the school’s hierarchy and rather than sharing a deeply held love of the school and what it stands for he saw it as merely something he was forced to do and he was willing to let his cruelty out as he felt there would be no consequences.
With his love of the school basically being mocked and faith in one of its highest administrators shaken one of the prefects snaps but rather than take ownership of the actions himself and accepting the likely severe consequences the other three prefects protect their impulsive friend by forming a pact to try to hide the results of the actions of that night- a cover up which then served to bring The Undertaker to this school as the youth had heard of the Aurora Society’s experiments, not knowing that the experiments would not return the youth fully to human nor that they were inviting such a dangerous presence into their midst. Ciel witnessed for himself that Derrick is far more advanced than the other undead hordes that Ciel encountered on the doomed ship he first encountered this new threat on but it is actually another being that may open the door for an admission from The Undertaker as to what his final goal is for his grisly experiments moving forward.
Despite the clear and present threat that that revelation presents the option of trying to capture The Undertaker is taken from Ciel and Sebastian though when the Undertaker unleashes all of his current experiments on the gathered youths, and even Sebastian isn’t talented enough to fight them off at the same time as he keeps The Undertaker from reaching Ciel and thus the being with a mad plan escapes while the aftermath of the horror he unleashed on the University grounds have to be stitched together in such a way that the events that took place are never revealed to the public- but could it be that in order to explain everything Ciel is required to pass the information on to someone who may contemplate using this menace and which presents the potential for everything to go far more wrong in the future?
With his current mission finished, Ciel finds that he needs to take care of some of the business of his Funtom company which gives an excuse for the staff and he to travel to London, though not before a bit of time is used to catch up with another pair from the cast who had been involved in the previous endeavor (even if one was doing so in secret) and one is quit unhappy that Ciel left the school without telling him and just leaving him to find out on his own, though his servant being exposed by Sebastian distracts the youth enough for Ciel to again slip away and go back to his planned business trip.
With his staff having some need of their own, Ciel has them accompany him to the city where they get to see the sights and the audience gets a few moments of fun with some cast members who had been left out of the previous story arc. The trip isn’t without incident however as Ciel also finds out a chilling secret as it looks like The Undertaker has had contact with his family for far longer than Ciel dreamed leaving some ominous portents for the past and future- though such seriousness will not be allowed to stand long when a bit of insanity can be thrown in and a new method of marketing can be born to help serve as a break between story arcs.
Respites are only temporary by definition however and Ciel quickly finds himself thrown back into action when tales from Germany of strange deaths that are accompanied by descriptions deformation of bodies and rumors of werewolves reach the ears of the Queen and out of concern for the family she has that lives in the country her Watchdog is dispatched to get to the bottom of things-no matter how much he would rather not engage on this trip. When even picking the brain of one of his father’s trusted information sources brings nothing more concrete then tales of witches and curses Ciel and his servants are obliged to head off to Germany. But even if Ciel doesn’t believe in witches and curses will that matter if witches and curses believe in him- and in a world that includes demons and Grim Reapers is there any good reason to doubt in witches and curses anyway?
Sometimes I think I am simply spoiled with some of the richness of entertainment that some titles can bring table and Black Butler is currently in the midst of being one that really draws out the feelings behind that sentiment. With the cliffhanger at the end of the last book of the appearance of both undead as well as The Undertaker as having been hiding in the shadows of the mysteries at Weston University I was honestly expecting the plot to play out where The Undertaker had wormed his way into the college by corrupting those in the know and I was surprised at how he had entered the college- not by infiltration but rather by invitation and just how that occurred.
The reveal of what happened to Derrick and how he had wound up in the state of needing to be brought back from the dead was masterfully done as it tied perfectly in the events of bullying from earlier in this arc to create a situation where the reveal felt like it had been building quietly all along and that the death of Derrick made sense in the context created. Yana Toboso however was clearly building to this reaction from his audience and he uses that to turn things on their head as he carefully and spectacularly destroys any sympathy the reader might have had with the four prefects with a near perfect reaction shot from Ciel, done just after a page turn so as to deliver maximum impact and shake me at least out of the moral squishiness that the playing out of events had cultivated, especially when laid on top of the earlier chapters in this arc. I absolutely loved that bit of moral shock that was delivered and that made such an impact on me that it was primarily what I remember of the end of the arc after reading the volume and I had to go back to try figure out just how it was that The Undertaker made his exit (which was well in keeping with both the series action as well as placing Sebastian in a moral quandary of his own) as it just seemed to be lost in the aftermath of that moment.
When first reading through the rest of the volume I just couldn’t quite get back into the flow after the end of the previous arc and I suspect this might have been a situation where reading the chapters as they came out might have helped me in my initial impression as reading these following chapters immediately after the rather rousing cap to the previous adventures left me feeling almost cheated as I was unable to make the leap from climax to reset and it struck me like the series went into neutral in the aftermath.
Upon revisiting the chapters though I find that there were pieces that I really like and it was more the historical callouts that kind of annoyed me- from showing off the under construction Tower Bridge to Sebastian doing the kind of historical tweaking of creating a form of marketing that just annoys me in period pieces but which seem to be common today, as if the characters have to somehow be at the center of everything that happens kind of took away some of the quiet moments with the cast that a revisit helped me to appreciate. Honestly minus a handful of pages that marred things on the first read through for me (and which were mitigated but didn’t actually improve on the second) related to the reappearance of a character I’d forgotten existed in order to do a kind of cheap joke the volume as a whole is remarkable in retrospect.
There was one moment that went the other way for me both after finishing the book the first time as well as in the re-read and that was the moment that had so much impact on me the first time around- Ciel’s dropping the moral hammer on the prefects who had managed to convince themselves they did the right thing in the situation by killing Derrick. Having Ciel deliver the moral coup de grace upon further contemplation feels a bit off in terms of moral authority as Ciel is a youth who has pretty much done anything in service to Queen and country and he also isn’t above using some slightly shady methods in business either. This leaves it kind of hard to really think of him as a moral sounding board upon reflection and it kind of feels a bit odd afterword- and some of this awkwardness is somewhat covered well by a comment from The Undertaker as well as Sebastian- but it still doesn’t feel like it fits perfectly as I think of it now. Still, Black Butler serves up another fantastic volume and it makes a strong case for getting an OVA adaptation of these events as well as the previous Book of Circus arc.
In Summary
As the mysterious case of a disappeared University youth comes to a close it seems that even the dark possibilities hinted at before will fail to fully match up to the lads current state- especially as the appearance of The Undertaker indicates that not only is Derrick no longer counted among the living but that once he appears a number of other people at the tea party may soon join that same status. Whether Ciel be able to overcome the newest confrontation with this more-than-human being and make it out alive may suddenly become a minor concern when the full plans of The Undertaker come to light- and things may not get any better when others hear of these new creations walking the planet and start to ponder just what use they could be put to before launching Ciel headlong into yet another strange case that may lead to his death. With its amazing pacing and ability to still find areas of Ciel to explore and then spring in surprise on the readers Black Butler continues to show that it may have a devilishly good writer at the helm.
Content Grade: B+
Art Grade: A-
Packaging Grade: A-
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: October 28th, 2014
MSRP: $13.00
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