“Signal Butler”

Mimi: Ahhh, the dark atmosphere from episode 1 returns! In this episode, Ciel and Sebastian go to Alois’ mansion where they are having a costume ball party. All the side characters pop up, including the Indian curry-crazed prince from S1, and they participate in the event. However, Sebastian goes off on his own to investigate the mansion and has a small talk with Claude over who is really the one hell of a butler.

Then we have Alois. Yes, Alois! All of his scenes are simply the best parts. While everyone is out at the party, he’s fixing himself up with a dress and wig. He’s also treating his maid horribly again and makes her strip off her dress for him. Later on, he poses as a drink server at the party and purposefully spills one on Ciel. He insists on helping Ciel clean the stain off and drags him to a dimly-lit room where he basically goes in creepy-mode (licking Ciel’s ear and touching his face). Alois ends up stealing his eye-patch and runs off with it; by then, Ciel is figuring out who he is. He tries to chase after him, but he stumbles around a bit because he’s hearing voices from the past of Sebastian, Claude, and Alois speaking to each other in episode 1. Managing to get over it, Ciel runs out of the mansion and finds Alois in the forest. Their butlers appear by their side, and they declare war on the spot. Alois simply wants Ciel and intends to harm his friends, and Ciel and Sebastian obviously won’t stand for that!

Alex and I watched this together, and we were pleased for the most part. The only thing we didn’t like was the occasional focus on the side characters acting totally silly at the ball. The atmosphere that begins to build up around Ciel and Alois gets interrupted by them too much, but other than that, great episode.

“Female Butler” and “Terrorist Butler”

Mimi: I stalled on blogging this because the third episode didn’t show a change in direction, so it was a bit uninteresting to watch. It still focused on Ciel and Sebastian as they solved a case about an older woman who used a combustion method to kill newly married couples. A character from S1 also makes an appearance, Grell Sutcliff, and Alex had to fill me in a bit about who the heck he was. He ended up helping out Ciel and Sebastian, but boy was he weird, weird, weird.

So how does episode 4 turn out? I’m happy to say that it is much better! While it is pretty much still about another case for Ciel and Sebastian, the focus is hardly on them and instead turns to a lot of side characters. Ciel and Sebastian are on a train where their mission is to rescue hostages and stop a kidnapper. However, there are a lot of weird passengers who are either suspicious or just really eccentric. We have a kidnapper who’s plan is to set off bombs, an archeologist, a priest, a killer, an odd Japanese couple, a man obsessed with reading the train’s timetable, a loud-mouthed guy dressed up like a detective, random noblemen, and Claude quietly sitting by himself somewhere. What we have is a lot chaos and great characters that make this episode very entertaining to watch.

It turns out that when Sebastian encounters the kidnapper and learns about his motives concerning the bomb, he has to make sure that the train doesn’t stop at the next station so the breaks won’t trigger it. He changes the path of the train (by throwing forks at a lever), but it ends up on a broken track that is headed to go over bridge, which would most definitely kill everyone. In other events, the wife from the old Japanese couple is passing out riceballs, and she and the detective-looking guy get ill after eating them. The passengers simply freak out thinking that it’s “cholera.” And eventually, the killer escapes where ever he was contained, holds Ciel hostage, and faces off against Sebastian on the roof of the train.

That’s a lot of problems!! And the best part of it all is actually seeing Sebastian pull it all off by himself, rescuing every single passenger (except the bad dudes) by literally stopping the train with his hand (after throwing bomb out), and even by providing the medicine to treat the sudden stomach illness spawned by those riceballs. And something else very amazing happens! Claude and Sebastian meet each other after all the chaos! It sure is about time. Claude actually invites Sebastian to investigate Alois by giving him “a pass for the gates of the Trancy House.” I’m glad that this is finally moving somewhere with the new characters.

At any rate, episode 4 was very well executed for just a Ciel & Sebastian adventure. I hope the that next episode won’t disappoint now.