It’s missing the old Black Butler charm.
Summary:
- Black Butler is famous for its darkness.
- The Public School Arc is too bright for now.
- Weston College has great potential for being a creepy place with a lot of mysteries.
Black Butler (Kuroshitsuji) has always had an unmatched atmosphere. It’s a series that is capable of combining various genres masterfully. There’s mystery solving, there’s darkness and horror elements, there’s edge-of-your-seat suspense, and there’s hilarious humor in the series.
It’s not just one part that makes Black Butler so appealing, it’s the combination of them all. And this is something the currently airing Public School Arc is missing.
Perfect Place for Creepiness
The Public School arc is set in Weston College, a private school for boys, where Ciel enrolls to investigate a mystery of a missing student.
The concept of a private school fits Black Butler a lot. Old and huge British college, full of wealthy and even spoiled boys, each of them keeping their terrible secrets. There’s so much room for mysteries and conspiracies that can make the vibe of the series ten times darker.
But the anime is wasting this potential for now. We know that Ciel is in Weston College to investigate a case. A student stopped contacting his family, so there’s definitely something wrong going on at the school, but fans expected a frightening ambience straight from the beginning.
Of course, Black Butler wouldn’t be itself without at least a little bit of darkness, and CloverWorks knows that pretty well, that’s why there have already been a couple of unsettling moments. But for now, they hardly seem enough.
The Series Could Use More Horror
The new season has been very bright so far. We’re given hints at potential darkness, but we’d like the sinister vibe to permeate every corner of the academy. It would fit the Black Butler style a lot and make the series even more entertaining. After all, this is exactly what fans love it for.
Comedy is one of Black Butler’s genres, and it’s always been this way, but the Public School Arc adaptation relies a bit too much on it, which spoils the vibe of the entire show. It doesn’t mean that it’s not enjoyable anymore, but it just could be done better.
The Violet House of Weston College has the most potential to be terrifying, but it wasn’t scary at all. Black Butler knows how to add horror really well, and we wish it did it more with the Public School Arc as well.
Perhaps it’s too early to come to any conclusions for now, since we have another half of Season 1 ahead of us, and things are only starting to get more intense. We just hope that the anime will go back to its roots and introduce more horror and darkness as soon as possible.