First impressions: Kuroshitsuji II – ep 1

[narcasse]

I preface this by saying that genkischuldich challenged me to watch this and warning that he may not get what he bargained for.


Funnily enough I wasn’t terribly annoyed by this episode to the point where my response could be defined better as apathy. There’s the potential for something interesting to develop from the initial setup but once Sebastian turned up that potential seemed to be tossed to the wayside in lieu of the degeneration of the series that occurred in the first anime.


Briefly then:

Alois doesn’t annoy me half as much as I’d been anticipating. In fact while his behaviour is bizarre it’s bizarre to the point that it clearly demonstrates that he’s had a mental breakdown of some kind. It doesn’t come off as aping that supposedly ‘cute’ random behaviour that’s usually lauded in Sues but rather as irrational and unpredictable acting out on instinct in a way that doesn’t actually mesh with his surroundings.

Likewise Claude’s behaviour especially with his little tap dancing routine strikes me more as bizarre and potentially non-human rather than hugely silly. His dancing to unheard music would also tie in with the supposition of his being one of the fair folk who can mimic human behaviours to a point but also behave in subtly ‘off’ ways every now and again which only make sense to themselves.

I presume that Alois’ abduction may have had nothing to do with the fair folk at all but that the deaths in the village may have occurred as part of a pact between his father and Claude to recover him. The deal being something along the lines of securing Alois’ return at the cost of Alois’ father’s life. Though Claude being one of the fair folk might for reasons only explicable to him choose to let father and son spend some brief time together before Alois’ father was a) literally eaten, b) had his soul stolen/was changed into one of the fair folk or c) anything else besides.

Alois’ need to capture Ciel may then be due to a desire to trade Ciel, as an already damned soul, for himself to pay off his debt to Claude. Of course if Claude assists with that then he may reap twice the reward anyway because Alois has already demonstrated that he can’t simply survive by himself and may have developed a pathological need for Claude anyway.

The initial scene in Alois’ cobwebbed bedroom suggests that while his return home was accomplished there was no further provision for his future made as part of any deal between his father and the fair folk. In fact it’s through this deal of his father’s that Alois may have discovered that it was possible to make a pact with Claude in the first place.

Claude’s formula of turning day into night, sugar into salt, saints into corpses, and dark blue into gold certainly spells out a transmutative slant to his powers. The first three sections give darkness, barrenness and death as his mandate but I can’t quite make out a negative connotation of the last part as yet. It could potentially refer to blood but from what little lore I can recall I’ve heard no mention of the fair folk’s veins showing up as golden, unless it’s a reference to his own eye colour in which case it’s a statement of his transformation of human to fair folk.

I’m not entirely sure if I’d like to see an all out battle between Sebastian and Claude mostly because anime Sebastian is rarely anything approaching demonic so it would be a disappointment but also because if Claude is one of the fair folk the rules would be so completely different that they shouldn’t even be interacting in the same context let alone able to actively engage in combat against each other.


Having had a brief look at fan info just for name spellings so far I have noticed that it’s been stated in at least one place that Claude is a demon which would disappoint met greatly but then since the first anime irritated me no end I wouldn’t be surprised if this own goes down a similarly disappointing route. If Claude were one of the fair folk I really would like to see that developed and his inhumanity brought out in small but oddly bizarre incidents. I’d also like to see him not necessarily fight Sebastian but at least engage him in some kind of argument where his jarring, subtly ‘off’ nature comes to the fore. All that said, this being Kuroshitsuji II the odds of anything of the sort happening is pretty slim unless the entire production team have been replaced by changelings who have an eye for a good storyline.

Comments

[ladyassassin27.livejournal.com]

I quite like Alois and his erratic behavior and while Claude doesn't really impress me much, I suppose his character can be worked on as the season progresses, considering the trailer seemed to suggest that the new season would be entirely about these two.

And I like you're theory about Claude being one of the Fair Folk, because demons suddenly deciding that the best way to capture souls is to become butlers is a bit odd to say the least.

Sebastian turned up that potential seemed to be tossed to the wayside in lieu of the degeneration of the series that occurred in the first anime.
Sadly you are right, the second episode confirms it, I found this blog entry and apparently the whole episode is just nonsense and Sebastian, Ciel and Lizzie are just going about as if the first season didn't happen, which would make some sense if this season had no relation to the previous one, but since it does, it's all just gone to hell.

[reichsfreiherr.livejournal.com]

Having watched the second episode now and seeing as the preview of the third seems to suggest that Grell will make a return I’m wondering if Alois and Claude will just be reoccurring background villains for the season and end up underutilised. Of course if there’s an overarching plot with Grell trying to process Alois who ought to have died a long time ago, forcing Sebastian to team up with Grell to achieve the same end result then that could be interesting.

I heard something during the initial furore about the second series about Alois being adducted by fairies but I’m no idea how accurate that piece of information was or if it was simply conjecture. Still, I do hope that Claude isn’t just a demon.