manga: Black Butler Vol 1

Ciel is a 12-year-old Victorian earl with an eye-patch and a mostly-incompetent-but-entertaining staff, and a butler with seemingly superhuman housekeeping skills. Which is basically the plot of the first half of the volume, which was entertaining enough, but not overly interesting, and pretty much fanservice . Then we got to the second half, where we have angst and demonic contracts and battle cutlery, and then things were more fun in the Kaori Yuki way, but way less demented. I think I almost feel my time was wasted with the first half, despite the entertainment offered by Ciel’s cute-obsessed fiancé.

Oh, and Victorian England now has cell phones and jeeps. And there’s about…the normal manga understanding of law and society. (Autonomous 12-year-old lord. All I’m saying.)

I’m not sure it’ll be a grand obsession or anything, but the second half of the volume shows promise, and I’m all for supernatural butlers dangling upside-down from chandeliers whilst using cutlery as weapons.