Subculture Anime Blog

OP: “Kiss of Monochrome” by SID - Is this visual key or something? Ew!!! Apparently, the band is pretty well known. Sounds too much like something my little sister would listen to though…and I don’t even have a little sister.

Summary:

The butler Sebastian Michaelis wakes his master Ciel Phantomhive as he does every day, then dressing him and confirming what he would like to eat for breakfast. When Ciel tests Sebastian by throwing a dart at him on his way out, Sebastian proves his worth by easily catching it between his fingers. Ciel meets his other servants while in the dinning room afterwards. This includes a boy named Finny, a girl named Meirin, a man named Bard, and an older man named Tanaka. When Sebastian sees that these people are not doing anything productive, he quickly has them get to work. While working on an elegant dinner preparation, Sebastian is interrupted by a call from Ciel in his quarters. Ciel orders Sebastian to remove a certain painting in the house, claiming that he is the head of Phantomhive. With a grin on his face, Sebastian agrees to take care of this. When Sebastian returns to the kitchen, he finds that several things are a mess. This was due to the other servants’ want to help, and perhaps even outdo Sebastian, which ended in obvious failure. As guests will be arriving at the house soon, Sebastian wonders what action he should take. Looking at the Japanese tea cup in Tanaka’s hands, he quickly comes up with a plan.

When the guest arrives at the Phantomhive mansion, he is impressed to see a Japanese style set up outside. Ciel soon begins discussing business with this guest inside, though he puts more focus on the game they are playing than the man’s financial suggestions. When dinner is finished, Ciel and his guest go out to enjoy the Japanese dishes that have been prepared. Meirin makes a mistake in pouring wine for their guest because of her broken glasses, but when Sebastian sees this, he prevents a single drop from falling on the guest by pulling the cover off the large table in a single swoop. Returning to the room inside, Ciel suggests that he and his guest continue their game. The guest takes a chance to make a phone call, and while speaking to one of his acquaintances, he reveals his intent to take advantage of the child Ciel to make easy money. Unknown to him, someone has heard all of this.

While walking through the halls afterwards, the man is frightened at the sight of ghost like images around the surrounding paintings. Further more, he seems to be lost when he tries to open several doors. Even breaking his leg in his panic, the man runs in fear from Sebastian who invites him to have desert. The man soon finds that he has made his way to the inside of an over, making Sebastian wonder if he was so hungry for desert that he went to such lengths to get it. The man begs for Sebastian to release him from the fires of the oven, but he simply closes the door. With this pest now gone from the building, Ciel expresses his distaste while reaching the goal in his game. He also recalls the phrase that states: “Once things are lost, they will never return.” While walking through the halls, Sebastian realizes that they will have to go to further lengths to completely erase the existence of the painting Ciel has ordered to remove. Once upon a time, Ciel had enjoyed his childhood with his parents in the lively mansion.

ED: “I’m ALIVE!” by BECCA - What is this? Japanese english punk rock with female vocals? Pa-leez. I kid. Like the OP, I do like the animation. These two bands just aren’t something I would typically listen to.

Preview: This reminds me of that one time in Nabari no Ou….er, I mean…uh….I didn’t watch that….

Impression:

YES. MAI. LORD. I originally skipped over this show after seeing the pv, which just made the series just seem strange to me. After several suggestions that I should check it out though, I knew there would probably be more to it. Call me very pleasantly surprised, because I enjoyed this episode quite a bit. Coming from A-1 Pictures, the animation and art were both solid. Fans of Daisuke Ono will be in for a treat as well, as he played a very good Sebastian. I’m not exactly sure whether this series is suppose to be a comedy or supernatural mystery/thriller/horror/something else though. Parts of this episode were hilarious, while others were fascinating in a dark way. I loved both Ciel and Sebastian’s foreshadowing through speech, Meirin’s mistakes and fantasies, and especially the oven at the end. Either way, genres really shouldn’t matter in the first place. This series is unique in several ways, and I am now certainly looking forward to seeing more. As far as coverage goes, this isn’t typically one I would write up on each week. So, unless no one else is interested enough to do so (highly unlikely), I will probably use my Thursdays/early Fridays to write about other things.