Review of Black Butler

The real crux of why this anime fails to have any impact is the characters. Not a single one is capable of pulling off the swagger they purport to have, summed up by the incredibly terrible "catch phrase" of the butler being "one hell of a Butler," which is always said so apathetically that it makes it even more boring. The main shota-boy is the worst of all, as Ceil manages to pull off nothing at all. Ceil is constantly bratty without being really grating or especially irate because all he likes to do is complain. The series plays up his parents' death making himungodly fixated on revenge, but even that passion is never actually displayed in the series. Another good example of a purely character related flaw is how much time people spend blushing over Sebastian, each time being groan worthy.

Now, of course, the anime had to have some reason I kept watching (even though I was playing Ocarina of Time the whole time), and that was because the plot did have a decent trajectory. It was interesting to see them play out the demons' existence and purpose and Ceil's quest, although it was of course bogged down repeatedly by things like the aforementioned lack of passion and the fact that when it did choose to finally fixate on characters, they were often horrible.

The way the characters are drawn is horrible, but the way the rest of this is drawn is great. I could mostly ignore the characters and look at the otherwise pretty art though (except when it was terribly chibified or the like).

The voice acting is thoroughly mediocre while the music is pretty great.

All in all, it was not enjoyable, really, but was not godawful at the same time, as contradictory as that might seem. I still would never recommend anyone to watch this with so many series that actually achieve being "epic," not merely pretending like this one does.