Kuroshitsuji: Book of Murder — still a hit on zjiruha.net

Holy doodoobetty, what the hell am I doing with my life?

Now, no matter how much I may rip on Black Butler, in truth, I still find this manga (and the show, to an extent) pretty amusing and lulzy. I mean, there are so many things wrong with EVERYTHING that’s going on in there that you can’t possibly say you’re not being entertained by it, not even a little.

So here we have “Book of Murder” – two hour-long OVAs, which are the fourth installment in the Black Butler anime series and, in turn, a straight continuation of the previous season, “Book of Circus”. Overall, in form and substance, it’s almost a classic whodunit, with a murder in a giant mansion full of eccentric people trying to find out who the murderer is before any more of them fall his or her next victim.

…and try not letting anyone else die while you’re at it, kay?

The premise: Young Earl Ciel Phantomhive – the evermisanthropic and ultrasnarky head of the Phantomhive Manor and the Funtom Company (I still can’t count how much shit it produces. What was it, again? Candy, toys, curry buns and now, apparently, some motherfucking jewelry as well? Boy, Ms. Toboso, why don’t you quit dicking around and just make the brat the leader of all British industries altogether?) – throws a lavish banquet as a way to boost his reputation in the eyes of the Queen, who wasn’t too pleased to receive the results of Earl Phantomhive’s latest investigation. Yeah, I also thought it was kinda fishy: all of the suspects are dead, the mansion with the abducted children goes boom, no survivors whatsoever… I’d be suspicious in her place too, daym! So it turns out, the banquet is also about entertaining some rich German turdbag by the name of Something von Something Else, and he is – surprise, surprise! – the first one to get killed. Now, everybody gathers ‘round trying to figure out the fuck that was, and SUDDENLY Sebastian gets murdered next! Complete with mournful music and everyone from the household crying like a little bitch. Which, of course, instantly looks like total bullshit to anyone who’s been reading the manga up to this point – I mean, HOW CAN HE FUCKING DIE, HE’S A DEMON FUCKING BUTLER! HE KILLS PEOPLE WITH SILVERWARE, BURNS HOUSES WITH CANDLES AND STILL MANAGES TO PREPARE SOME TEA FOR HIS MASTER EVERY MORNING! Are we really expected to believe he would DIE JUST LIKE THAT? Cause some fagwad stabbed him in the back with a coal poker? YOU GUYS, C’MON, YOU’RE PULLING MY LEG NOW, AREN’T YOU? Well, bullshitting aside, murders don’t stop at that, and soon our posh party hostages find the third victim – some whiny lanky loser who never actually uttered anything memorable once in all of his screentime, so nobody would have given two shits about him if the murder method in his case wasn’t particularly different from the previous ones. So yeah, here’s the story.

Earl Grey telling everyone that they have only just met.

Inspecting the bodies…

…to find out they usually have a habit of decomposing.

Personally, I think Yana Toboso is some kind of genius, in the same kind of way that Swedish singer Gunther is. She manages to inflate her manga with such outrageous bullcrap that the fact that my boyfriend sleeps with two different girls (me included, so don’t worry ^_^) at the same time seems like the most normal thing in existence compared to all of that. No, seriously, where do I fucking start? A chainsaw for a death scythe, the servants who’d rather serve some buttkicking instead of meals, the Hogwarts-like private school with four Hogwarts-like faculties and almost a whole volume describing one game of fucking cricket, zombies on a sinking ship, the protagonist’s own aunt revealed to be Jack the Ripper… And that’s not even the half of it. But somehow… it works. The characters are fabulous like an Erasure concert and their pasts tend to be fairly dramatic, even given this amount of unrealistic and unbelievable things that lace the whole storyline together as if it was a hundred-year-old Victorian corset. My GOD, am I a sucker for seemingly stupid plot-twists turning out to be something totally orgasm-inducing and even sad. A little.

Daym, son. Ain’t that right.

“Book of Murder” is a nicely executed circus act of demonic rabbits popping out of a hat that’s been neatly hidden somewhere in the manor. Most of the OVAs’ screentime is, in fact, filled with explanations, investigations, more explanations, some occasional instances of Sebastian catching different objects thrown by the guests and offering everyone more wine in a conciliatory manner, all smiling and sparkling, like a character from a fucking Twilight book, and, of course, even more explanations. But, you know what, I can’t say I don’t fancy it. This kind of story presentation makes the whole anime look more adult and composed than all of the previous installments, save for the “Book of Circus”, since it was made by the same director. It really gives you a feeling of a full-length detective movie, Sherlock Holmes style (oh yeah, have I mentioned that one of the guests at the party was a newbie novelist coincidentally going by the name of “Arthur”? Yeah, more amazing ass-pulls from Ms. Toboso). In fact, we don’t even get reminded of Sebastian’s demonic abilities all that often. I mean, sure, his pretty cool guy act is always there, but it’s not like we see him prancing about at the supersonic speed carrying out his young master’s orders as if he’s gonna get a fucking medal for it every goddamn minute of the anime. It somehow seems much more subtle than before. It’s like “Hey, you say this guy is a demon, right? So why doesn’t he… OH. Oh. I see. That’s why” kind of approach. Or, I don’t know, maybe all the weird shit that’s happening in this series must be really rubbing off on me, so I just don’t really register it anymore.

I live by that rule. Sadly, sometimes it fails me big time =(

Well, no matter the hassle, by the end of the second OVA the truth is getting elegantly revealed to us: we find out that the murders, as usual, were not what they seemed, that everything went just as planned, and that Ciel still can do pretty despicable things when he tries to keep his noble ass out of an unreasonable amount of trouble. Oh yeah, and guess what? They hold the funeral for Sebastian at the end as well, everybody’s crying their eyes out, lamenting about what a great guy this Sebastian was, and then Undertaker just steps in and says: “Uhuhuhuhuh, he’s, like, alive, or something”, and everyone, stupefied for a minute by the concept of an alive person actually not belonging in the coffin, rushes to dig the guy out, PDQ at that. So much for obituary conventionalities and demon butlers dying on-screen.

You said it, Undie.

The art-style is great, as usual, with some rough edges here and there (well, they’re too minor to actually spoil the watch anyways). The soundtrack is doing justice to the atmosphere: sometimes it’s ordinary aristocratic-like, Kuroshitsuji-styled chamber shit, and sometimes it sounds rather like chaotic sketches for a music box, that used to belong to a schizophrenic kindergartener with a thing for setting everybody else’s toys on fire… In other words, it’s not bad, but nothing to frantically search for a download of either.

Have some more screens:

Before the devil knows you’re dead… Sure…

Startled faces take one.

Startled faces take two.

Mostly, “Book of Murder,” just like its predecessor, “Book of Circus,” is true to the source, with almost unnoticeable additions to fill in some blanks in the story. I know, someone might find it boring for an adaptation to copy a manga practically to a T, but to me it’s still better than making shit up after you run out of original material. So these OVAs be real nice, that’s my final verdict.

Gee, it’s four in the morning, the end of June,

I’m writing this shit now to get back in tune.

I don’t know what this tune’s supposed to be, though,

I just got turned down by another employer

I heard your efforts will always amount

To some stuff if you try

Well, is there something to try for?

At least I’ve watched something nice.

And Shadow_of_the_Hedgehog came by with a boomin’ headache

She kept Skype running ‘till late,

But there was no one there.

Should I go to bed?

But honestly, though, I do understand that my employment issues are not doing me any favors now, which is why I’m half-assedly trying to transform these passive aggressive feelings into creative energy by writing reviews. I never forget I’ll also always have my boyfriend to support me, no matter the situation, but, I guess, I just lack the general feeling of completeness, of knowing what I want, and that’s the major turn-on for my OCD bouts.

Well, no. Actually, one thing I do know for sure – I’m pretty satisfied with this here adaptation of the Phantomhive Manor Murders Arc. In my Russian review of “Book of Circus” I was wondering, whether or not the director Noriyuki Abe’s gonna surprise me once again and make these OVAs to be as good as the aforementioned TV-series. Well, I guess, it’s about damn time I say he didn’t let me down. Yes, Abe, kudos to you. You’ve managed to stay flipping cool once again!

Boy, is it really the time to hit the mattress now? To my horror, I’m not sleepy at all.

Ah… so familiar: speaking in a different language so the suckers wouldn’t get a word. They could have tried doing it with a less horrible accent, though…

I still don’t understand how they managed to get away with NOT TURNING this scene into a big fujoshi-service moment. It’s Kuroshitsuji, after all!

Some nice visuals over here.

…is a fucking lie as well.