Review of Black Butler: Book of Circus

After the poor, anime-only season 2 ended (while barely making sense along the way) we thankfully have A-1 Pictures willing take a risk by retconning it and giving us a great adaption of what I thought was probably the best arc from the manga. I appreciate straight adaptions and there's little deviation from the source here. One notable change, and one I did appreciate, is a scene where the circus group kidnap one of their child victims. It was well put together and surprisingly violent as well. This is the sort of thing which adds instead of taking away from the source material. Speaking of violence,this was one of the darkest series I’ve watched. It was quite a leap from what came before it, and you could argue it bordered on being tasteless. Then again, I think the darker moments are when Kuroshitsuji is at its best.

As far as complaints go, I'm not a fan of the comic relief characters in Kuroshitsuji and never have been. Spears, Grell etc. don't add much to the story but they're only in a few short scenes so the pain is minimal. There are also some minor pacing issues but I want to emphasise the word 'minor' because it didn't spoil any enjoyment I had. I'm just pleased that they didn't drag this out to be an extra 2-3 episodes and stuck with 10. The soundtrack is great, the highlight being 'Thorny' which plays in the last episode. However, there wasn't many actual tracks in the soundtrack so the music did become repetitive by the end, which was a disappointment.

I had zero complaints about the animation, sound design or voice acting; all were good to great. The main and side characters get plenty of development, the story is interesting, and the mystery behind it was the focus for the entire duration. I wouldn’t go as high as a 9, but Book of Circus gets a high 8 and a strong recommendation from me.