Do you need a rewatch before Season 4 drops?
Summary:
- Black Butler Public School Arc starts airing next week.
- The anime has some major differences from the manga.
- Public School Arc will be a faithful adaptation.
It’s April, everyone, and this means that Black Butler: Public School Arc (Kuroshitsuji: Kishuku Gakkou-hen) is just around the corner. The new season will air on April 13, 2024 and will reunite us with our beloved Ciel and Sebastian.
Fans are getting ready for the upcoming season, and while some of them decided to rewatch all the previous seasons, others prefer to stick to the manga. But which is the best approach?
There Are Differences Between Manga and Anime
Season 1 started pretty well: it was faithful to the source material even though there were minor differences. However, the animation studio started running out of the manga chapters somewhere along the way, so the adaptation began to deviate from the original story.
The second part of Season 1 is not as manga accurate as the first one, and Season 2 tells a completely new story that wasn’t in the manga. This is one of the reasons why so many fans disliked the season, and it’s considered non-canon in the fandom.
Season 2 provides an original take on the finale of Black Butler, so there was probably no intention of making sequels for the series after that. Which, as we know, turned out to be false.
However, everything that was released after Season 2 was pretty much a copy of the manga.
Book of Circus (aka Season 3), the Book of Murder OVAs, and the Book of the Atlantic movie ― all of these are very accurate to the source material, so there’s no great difference between experiencing them in the manga or anime format.
There are still some minor differences and fillers, though, but manga readers don’t see anything terrible about them. It’s just a regular adaptation and can be considered 100% canon.
Public School Arc
From what it looks like, Season 4 or the Public School Arc will follow suit and will be a faithful adaptation of the manga, so the best way to get ready for it is to read the manga.
However, you don’t have to do that if you aren’t feeling like it. The Public School Arc will have a story that will be great as a standalone project, too.
Of course, you’ll see a couple of familiar characters in the upcoming season, so if you want to refresh your memories of them, it’s nice to experience the previous parts of the story, but if you feel like you still remember most of it, you’re good to go.