Meditations on Kuroshitsuji and Ciel

[branchandroot]

Having cheerfully spoiled myself for the anime ending of Kuroshitsuji, I’m afraid I will probably be dissatisfied with it.

The fact that Ciel gives up his life after achieving revenge for the death of his family implies that only revenge drove him, that his family duty means nothing to him. Now, I could almost sort of see this being the case once he finds out that Victoria herself was the author of that tragedy. The source and touchstone of the Phantomhive duty turns out to be the greatest traitor of all.

But, based on his manga characterization, I still find it hard to believe.

Ciel never shows any hesitance or even distaste for living in and dealing with the underworld. In fact, he seems to take both pride and satisfaction in it. Consider the latest issue, and what he says when his servants are threatened. "Who do you think you're talking to? They're Phantomhive servants." Which is to say, they will be the deadly ones. He's smiling as he says it, for the first time since entering that repeat-the-sacrifice room.

And Sebastian is behind him, smiling just as widely, savoring that fact and Ciel's pride in it, the ultimate Phantomhive servant himself.

See, that's what I think binds the two of them. Ciel is like Sebastian in a lot of ways. He lives in the shadows; they're in his blood; he doesn't want to make some kind of break for the sunlit world, because he likes being what he is. This is not to say he's any kind of masochist; losing his family, being enslaved and sacrificed, seeing people gruesomely killed, he hates those things. But he lives in the darkness precisely to keep things like that from happening, and if that requires that he be dark himself, well that's just fine with him. He strikes me as a very pragmatic soul, in that way. We never see him angsting over his family duty. We never see him angsting over Sebastian's nature either. He owns a demon, who will eventually eat his soul; just another day in the life of being him, who probably never had any expectation of Heaven anyway, being what he is. And he never pines for Heaven. We see him wanting, a bit furtively, kindness, trust, closeness, but we never see him wanting the Light.

I suspect this seventy-degrees-from-the-rest-of-the-world, this pride and pragmatism and odd serenity of Ciel's, is part of what fascinates Sebastian.

So if Ciel did find out that the Queen had betrayed his family for personal gain, had fallen herself... I think he would immediately shift her person, in his mind, from "the Crown" to "just another criminal". The Queen is dead. Long live...

For him to not only accept but court death, to feel he's finished with everything he needed to do, implies that anime Ciel does not have that pride in his family identity and duty (which I find as fascinating as I think Sebastian does). For him to say "kill me now and make it painful" implies that he thinks he has something to atone for, that he is disgusted or feels dirtied by the things he has done. And I have seen no sign of that in the manga Ciel, which is what makes him interesting and not just another emo-fate gorefest.


So if those things have been altered in the anime Ciel, I don't think I'll find him nearly as fascinating. And if they haven't been altered, then the ending won't fit at all, which is always distressing.

Comments

[dancing_serpent]

I don't think the deal was about "until Ciel felt he had finished everything". I got the impression that the terms of the pact were more specific, even if they didn't explicitly say so in the anime. Maybe it was something like "until everybody who was responsible for the death of my family has been punished"?

I wasn't very satisfied with the ending of the anime, but I have to admit I do like that part about the pain. As far as I understood it, Sebastian offers to be as gentle as possible and Ciel refuses, because he wants the "pain of his existence to be carved into his soul".
To me that meant that he wanted to give himself to Sebastian completely, with everything that made his life/his existence. No pretence here - pain was part of his life and so it has to be part of his death, too. Without that pain Ciel's soul wouldn't be complete.

[branchandroot]

See, and here I've gotten the impression from the manga that the contract is basically for however long Ciel lives. Spears' remarks about how odd it is that a demon should hold off and actually seek to preserve his contractee's life, and Sebastian's jibe that it makes the taste sweeter in the end, seemed to imply something like that.

*rather amused* Yeah, if that's how its played, I could see that. Ciel is ruthless; I could totally see him refusing to back down to the very last.

[dancing_serpent]

Yeah, I was only referring to the anime here. I did mention before in one of my postings that there are big differences between the Kuroshitsuji anime and manga - even if it was only that one single sentence and no differences specified. *g*

I'm uneasy about making direct comparisons at this point because I'm not sure how much sense that makes when the manga is still in progress.

[branchandroot]

I really am going to have to download the anime and see. *rueful* Especially since I have to take the manga in small chunks or it starts depressing me in a big, scary way.

I will be fascinated to see how close they do run, though; sometimes, when the anime needs an ending first, it's a total departure and sometimes it's an odd kind of AU and sometimes it's almost exact. I always kind of like seeing which it's going to be.

[dancing_serpent]

At least the anime isn't quite as extreme in the mood switches as the manga.

I'm very curious myself, definitely. After all, the anime ending made it more than clear that there won't be a season two, three or whatever. At least that much can be said already.

There's just no telling how far in the future of the manga that will be. *g*