By Yana Toboso. Released in Japan as “Kuroshitsuji” by Square Enix, serialization ongoing in the magazine GFantasy. Released in North America by Yen Press.

Sometimes it’s hard not to make your reviews one line. Generally speaking I try to avoid being snarky, and I will be delving into Black Butler here. But basically, “Remember what I said in my last review? That, only more so.” Even more pretty, even more calculating… and even more addicting.

The first chapter is the worst, with yet another ‘the staff of the house is useless and incompetent, so Sebastian must do everything’ chapter that’s supposed to be comedic but instead is merely annoying. Luckily, the staff don’t show up for the rest of the volume, which is instead concerned with Jack the Ripper. The manga takes place in one of those ‘sort of Victorian’ alternate universes, and Jack is just getting started here. Ciel is in charge of investigating, as there’s thought to be a supernatural element to the murders.

Honestly, the plot of BB is just an excuse for having the characters look handsome and cool. Sebastian, of course, looks awesome, and gets to do several impossible things (after breakfast, though). Madame Red, her butler Grelle, and the Undertaker they get information from are all larger than life caricatures, and many panels make it look like they’re stepping outside of reality to pose for Toboso-san.

Things get even worse when their prime suspect turns out to be a Lord with a suspicion of liking young girls a little too much. So naturally, the answer is to dress Ciel up as a young woman. This is once again where my brain turns off, and I stop being drawn in by the grand guignol plot and start going “Oh come on, you just drew that to make all the fangirls squee!” And yes, Ciel as a little girl is cute and adorable and more importantly, oh so abductable. So not only do we get Ciel dressed as a Victorian girl, we get her dressed as such in a giant cage, being auctioned off. As this is a fantasy manga, Ciel’s being auctioned for sacrificial rites rather than just to mere pedophiles. Not that this matters, as Sebastian comes to the rescue anyway.

As if to add insult to injury, they turn out to have the wrong man, so this was all merely fanservice dressing in the first place. As for the reveal of the real Jack the Ripper, it’s not all that surprising (there were a minimal number of suspects), but as always it’s handled stylishly, and there’s some fantastically over the top dialogue in the final scene (which ends with a cliffhanger, natch). They even manage to work-in a modern-day chainsaw and not have it seem stupid… well, no, it does seem stupid. But it fits anyway.

If you read manga for plot and characterization, then you’re in the wrong place. But style? This manga OOZES style from every pore. It gives the reader what they want. And generally, if they’re reading Black Butler, what they want is smirks, gay subtext, a nice helping of horror/gore, and Sebastian being awesome on every page. In that, it delivers. Yes, it’s the sort of manga that seems pointedly designed to SELL rather than to tell a story, but I can think of worse titles to be on the NYT bestseller list for umpteen straight weeks.

By Yana Toboso. Released in Japan as “Kuroshitsuji” by Square Enix, serialization ongoing in the magazine GFantasy. Released in North America by Yen Press.

Black Butler was doomed to be a hit in North America the moment it was licensed. And everyone knew it. Sure enough, it’s at the top of last week’s New York Times bestseller list for manga. It has a handsome bishonen butler on the cover! This is to female readers what maids are for guys, one would imagine.

I think the key to understanding this story is in the author’s notes at the end, where Toboso-san notes that she wanted to draw a cool butler, but had no ideas beyond that. And indeed, one of the strengths of the manga is that the butler *is* cool. If you’re going to brag about your manga with an awesome butler, you better back it up. Sebastian is quick-thinking, clear-headed, fights like a pro, and is basically the butler of your dreams, provided you don’t mind selling your soul.

Unlike the other major butler manga coming out here, Hayate the Combat Butler, this series is for the most part action-oriented, with occasional forays into angsty drama. What comedy there is comes from the rest of the staff of the house, who are all goofy ditzes who could probably have their personalities swapped and you’d never know. Their goal is to be the Greek Chorus, screw things up so that the butler can fix them, and be goofy. They succeed. I’m not fond of them, but they succeed at what they need to do.

As for Sebastian’s master, Ciel, he’s a grumpy loli. Yes, he’s male, but that merely makes him a grumpy male loli (a shota). He’s 12 years old, but his maturity level ranges from 6 to 35 depending on what the plot requires. There is an element of not-quite-yaoi here that I choose to ignore, even though I know it’s a major reason this title is as popular as it is. But hey, if I can read CLAMP I can read this.

Not sure I will continue to read this, though. There is one major problem I had with this first book. It reads like the author is connecting the dots of an evil-butler picture book. Every single plotline is so calculated, so designed to do what it does, that you can almost see each piece slot into place. The revelation of what Sebastian really is, towards the end of this book, is no surprise whatsoever. In fact, nothing here is a surprise. Everything happens the way that it was laid out, and while it looks pretty, there’s nothing that made me go “Ooooh, WOW!”.

It’s a good manga. There’s lots of pretty boys, and fights, and the promise of more evil leering grins in volumes to come. But if someone was to write a manga that would be designed to hit #1 on the NYT bestseller list (and indeed on Japan’s bestseller lists)… well, it would be Vampire Knight. But this would be a close second. If you can get past that, you’ll probably enjoy Black Butler a great deal.