Kuroshitsuji anime

[branchandroot]

I finally got around to finishing up my watching of the Kuroshitsuji anime.

Eh.

It's not horrible. It's not the travesty that some anime I could name are. I just didn't like it nearly as much as the manga.

For one thing, I didn't realize going in just how greatly the anime storyline diverged from the manga. The fact that the very first episode totally rewrites the first issue with its dark hints of Ciel's real job and preparation for the first arc was... well, I found that typical throughout. The anime has its own meta-narrative, built around anime-only characters (Ash/Angela and Pluto), and it doesn't keep any of the build up to the manga meta-narrative.

Given that, I would actually have preferred that the Ripper and Curry arcs not have been 'translated' into the anime. The Ripper arc has a very different tone than the anime settles on, and the conflict early on was jarring. The Curry incident was nudged into the anime style and that style is more blunt than the manga . That was jarring for me particularly because I'd read the manga first.

And that touches on the part I liked least about the anime. It is considerably less subtle than the manga, and erases a whole lot of the moral ambiguity. Anime Ciel, in particular, seems far less at ease with his family heritage and position, more given to actual self-deception about his own motives. The pathos of "little boy lost in the dark" is highlighted in the anime, where the manga deals more with all the ways in which Ciel is a ruthless and willing participant in the darkness. That made for a different kind of story, one that focused on Ciel's internal struggle with his work. That struggle made his reliance on the touchstone of loyalty to the queen (heightened for the anime) make sense, but it made his character less interesting to me. As for Ash/Angela... eh. That plot and character didn't really engage me. It might have with a lighter touch, but the whole "fallen angel dominatrix" thing came across as gratuitous and not well developed.


So, in general, I thought the anime was fun in places and not dreadful, but I definitely won't be re-watching it.

Want another manga issue now, please.

Comments

[annotated_em]

Hmmmmm. You're not encouraging me to keep watching the anime, here.

I'm finding more and more these days that I prefer manga to anime, just because the stories stay sharper there. There's something about the adaptation from page to animation that dulls so many stories. Perhaps it's the audience shift?

[branchandroot]

Yeah, count it as fluff. Watch it if you have a lazy weekend, but don't put any priority on it. There just isn't nearly enough of Sebastian smiling debonairly as he drips with other people's blood.

I think it's definitely an audience shift. Maybe the producers figure, since they have to tone any violence down anyway, they might as well go whole hog and aim for a totally different audience by making these things actually silly.

Or maybe it's the decline of the field. I keep hearing about how the quality of animators is going down, and the new people just aren't pulling out the creative goodness (as well I wouldn't either if I knew I was going to work in sweatshop conditions my whole damn career). After all, it's always the new folk who get given the filler or "make more plot" stuff to do...