Review of Black Butler

I will start by saying that I have mixed feelings about this anime. I read the manga beforehand, which means that I already had my ideas about the characters and knew how the story would develop. It also means that I am biased. If you don't care about the manga you might consider reading a review written by someone who has seen the anime first (or only that), it will probably be less biased. The strong points of Kuroshitsuji are the characters and the story. Add to this good animation, great seiyuu and beautiful music and you get this anime. All in all I recommend it, especiallyif you fancy the genre, but as a fan of the manga I can't avoid making comparisons.

The story, set in Victorian England, is essentially dark and manages to skillfully mix together mystery, drama, angst and humor. It's made up of a few arcs, with some fillers usually inserted as "break points" between two arcs, but it's one long story. The first half of it is mostly faithful to the manga, while the second half develops into a completely original story. The manga is still running, so the anime has an ending of its own.
As for the setting, if you're an expert of the Victorian era you might cringe at some anachronisms, but the fact that demons and other supernatural beings are involved should make you realize that the story is not exactly aiming to be a perfect replica of Victorian England.

The characters all have different visuals and personalities that make them stand out and they're all interesting in their own way. Even minor characters are very likable. One thing that you realize almost right away is that there are mostly no "good" or "bad" people. You might sympathize with some of the characters, making them "more good" inside your mind, but that's usually not the case if you look at them from an objective point of view. However, all of this is undermined by the main original character in the anime, but I'll get back to it later.

The animation is fluid and generally good. The character designs by Minako Shiba are outstanding. Yana Toboso's art in the manga is very beautiful, and Shiba managed to keep that charm while making it into something that could be animated. The only character I didn't really like is Vincent, because he somehow looks different than he appears in the manga, but I have nothing to complain about the rest.
Toboso herself designed all the outfits that appear in the anime (Ciel changes clothes many times). It's nice that they decided to do this instead of giving characters single outfits, even though it means it's more of a hassle to animate.

I was extremely pleased with the seiyuu. Daisuke Ono as Sebastian is a perfect choice, same for Maaya Sakamoto as Ciel. She's usually cast to voice girls or women, so I was really amazed at how wonderfully she can pull this off. As for Sebastian, I was surprised to find out that in the first drama CD he was voiced by Toshiyuki Morikawa, and even though I do like Morikawa's voice I think it wouldn't fit Sebastian because it would make him too "cliche'" in a way. Ono provides a fitting voice that still manages not to make him sound like a stereotyped butler.
Jun Fukuyama is also brilliant as Grell (I must say since I watched the anime every time I read Grell's lines in the manga his voice echoes in my head, this is how much it stuck to my mind), and I admit I didn't even recognize Junichi Suwabe as the Undertaker when I first heard his voice.
The other seiyuu are all very good choices too.

The music by Taku Iwasaki is fitting and beautiful. The soundtrack is very diverse and flawlessly matches every single scene. I'm especially fond of the sad and melodic BGMs, which are very nice to listen to as a standalone as well.
The OP/EDs are good songs, with beautifully animated pictures. Though I must say the first ED, "I'm alive", is a bit random (the song itself is not bad, but I don't really see how that fits Kuroshitsuji).

As I said, all in all it's an anime I'd recommend, but I'll go a bit more into detail as to why I have mixed feelings about it.

I really liked the first half of the show, especially the Jack the Ripper Arc. It's very faithful to the manga, and you might think this makes it a bit boring for the ones who already know the story, but the animation is beautiful and the seiyuu are perfect, thus it's actually enjoyable because it's like watching the characters you love come to life. Too bad it goes downhill in the second half...

The story completely takes off into an original development (different than the manga's) from about halfway through the Curry Arc. I won't go into detail not to spoil what happens, but it already started looking gloom when the ending of said arc was turned into something quite lame. But it still got worse.

The main problem, in my opinion, is that the original characters -- though it's hard to say "characterS", seeing as only one really stands out -- are not interesting enough, their motives are random or trite and they have basically no character development. The appearance of someone that could be called "the big baddie" is not necessarily a bad thing, but if that character is stereotyped and lame then it becomes quite boring to watch.
I also disliked what was made of Queen Victoria in the anime. In the manga she's very funny, but in the anime she just makes no sense and, unlike many other characters in the series, she's also very hard to sympathize with.
Sebastian is also too "emotional", with little to no character development to explain why he suddenly became like that. As much as I don't dislike some fanservice (as long as it's not over-the-top), I would prefer it to have some concrete basis if it must be used in such a serious way.

The anime also makes use of some things (mostly lines/dialogues, but also scenes) that happened in the later arcs of the manga, but adapting them to fit a whole different situation. However, in most cases they didn't succeed in keeping them as brilliant as they were in the manga.

The last few episodes contain many scenes where - in my opinion - Sebastian is very out of character, which is a bit of a turn off even though at least Ciel is coherent. In addition, the action is quite exaggerated, as is the paranormal aspect of the story, that in the manga is not as recurring, contrary to what you might think.

All this said, I did love the very last episode. It's beautiful and it's actually something that I could have seen happen in the manga as well (of course now it probably won't considering that it's already been done). A reason I love it is also that it's a kind of ending that could fit many different plots and not necessarily the one that was used in the anime. (In other words, I can pretend that what happened before it didn't exist.)

If it were for the first half of the anime, I would have given it a 9, but the second half deserves a 5 in my opinion, so overall it gets a 7 from me. I understand that it's hard to create an anime of a series that is still running, because you either leave it open or you have to close it somehow. This time they decided to invent a whole different plot, with a solution of its own and thus also an ending of its own. Too bad the plot itself, and the characters involved in it, are disappointing and boring, not to mention too cliche'. I'm not necessarily against original storylines, as long as they make sense. With season 2 they proved to be able to create nice ones, so I wished they had put a bit more effort into the original characters of season 1 as well.

I still recommend this anime, especially because watching it also allows you to watch season 2 as well (and that's much better, in my very humble opinion), but also because, story aside, it's very enjoyable thanks to the nice animation/music/seiyuu and, last but not least, interesting characters (main villains aside). Anyway, feel free to take this review with a grain of salt. As I said, I read the manga before watching the anime, so you might get a different impression if you haven't read the manga beforehand.