[A little note here: at the time I wrote this blog, I’d only watched the first season of Black Butler. I’ve since seen all the rest of the existing anime and read quite a bit of the manga. So yes, I know the end here is not the end-end, but I think the point still holds]

I did not expect to like Black Butler. I figured it would be weird and lascivious and funny (it was), but I didn’t expect it to be moving or witty—and it was both those things. In spite of the absurd, dark humor, Black Butler can actually get quiet, and it leaves a lot unsaid. In those quiet spaces, I found myself feeling…disturbed. And, the biggest surprise of all, I was still wondering what made it so disturbing weeks after I watched it.

I’m starting to figure it out, though. I’ve been thinking especially about that last episode of the first season (I’ve only watched the first and second season, by the way, so it might take a turn that screws up my analysis here. If so—meh!). In this scene, Ciel has accomplished his revenge, and Sebastian is rowing him across a river to the place where Sebastian plans to eat Ciel’s soul. The physical and the spiritual are all muddled here—the river could be a real  or it could be symbolic…and it’s hard to  wrap your around what eating a soul looks like. We get the feeling that it’s not going to be like rainbows flying into Sebastian’s mouth, but neither is the soul some corporeal thing that can be wedged between a couple buns.  At any rate, the journey toward this soul-eating moment which will break the partnership between Ciel and Sebastian is a damn quiet one. As they row, little lights like fireflies pass them, and Ciel asks what they are. Sebastian explains, without sentiment, that they are the manifestation of his encounters with other souls—the people who have passed through his life. Ciel admits that he finds them “pretty,” which is