Black Butler 5

Yana Toboso – Yen Press – 2011 – 10+ volumes

I have grown slowly addicted to this series since the rough start in volume one, but I wasn’t a big fan of the “curry battle” story that started last volume. The characters were a little too silly, and the comedy elements of this series are definitely not my favorite thing. Plus, the premise, how Sebastian desperately needs to make good curry, was also too light for my taste, where Sebastian’s skills are traditionally used to solve murders, rather than find missing persons indirectly by shaming them in a cooking battle.

On the other hand, seeing Sebastian work so hard at something he knows nothing about is wonderful. Soma’s zaniness is dialed down quite a bit in this volume, and Soma helps Sebastian on the hopeless task of beating Agni in a straight-up battle of curry mastery to gain a royal warrant. Sebastian knows nothing about curry, but of course he needs to come up with a way to beat someone with the “hands of God,” a master at the task.

You know, maybe what bothers me is that this is straying into Yakitate Japan territory, but is doing so with a sinister demon instead of a cheerful kid, and isn’t as funny.

Anyway. It’s still pretty great. Sebastian is obviously not used to failure, so he uses his special speed and knowledge-gathering capabilities to make Soma eat bowl after bowl of curry to perfect his seasonings, the body, et cetera. Seeing him pretend to be humble as he dishes up serving after serving of curry, mastering one thing right after the other without really getting the hang of what makes it good, was fantastic. As was Ciel’s smug comments on the sidelines, hoping to see Sebastian fail at something.

While most of the humor falls flat, everything about Sebastian is executed perfectly. I’m not quite sure how to describe it, but he’s just a little too perfect without being smug, completely humble while doing extraordinary things, and really knows how to quell disaster handily. I’m not sure how he does it. It is funny, but it’s also more than a little unsettling, and I think that’s what pushes it over the edge for me.

Sadly, there really isn’t a whole lot of Ciel in this volume, and it’s the Sebastian/Ciel interactions, Ciel’s bitterness paired with Sebastian’s bizarrely evil caregiving, that really make this series enjoyable for me. This volume was pretty good, but not quite as good as the stories before it.

Thankfully, I read volume six before this one (I lost my copy of this one and didn’t realize it until I had read six), so I know that Ciel and Sebastian both come back with a vengeance in the guise of circus performers next volume. Maybe that was part of why I didn’t enjoy this one as much, too. The circus story is really fantastic, much better than the curry story.