Oooh...this is getting really creepy. I can understand why many of the people who read the manga were indignant at this being cut out of the first season; it would have contributed so much to the plot! And I think Kuroshitsuji needs that dark element as a reminder that the butler is a demon, not a person who is in love with Ciel/ only wants to be his friend. Demon butlers aren't fluffy pet animals, oh no.
Nevertheless, this episode wasn't as drama-filled as the others. Half of it was about Ciel being sick, but I suppose the second half really made up for that, because ooh, I was starting to shiver a little bit because there was something incredibly eerie that I couldn't put a coherent thought to during this entire episode.
The thing is, Joker has no choice but to obey Father. It's as though he's bound in, well, a contract. In a way, he's indebted to Father for saving him and his comrades from the workhouse, and even though Father just did that in order to manipulate them, Joker still feels that he owes something to Father because that's all he had really wanted. He clearly doesn't agree with many of Father's principles, but now, he's a servant of sorts to Father and must be at his beck and call. It's a bit complicated of a relationship for me to explain. Joker doesn't really like Father, but he feels gratitude to him and due to this, even if Father does horrible things, he has no right to question that and because of the debt he feels he needs to repay, Joker will follow all of Father's orders.
Some of the animation in this episode was questionable, or maybe I'm just a bit confused. Firstly, did Agni have a voice change or was the screen supposed to be focused on Prince Soma? I had to rewatch that segment several times and I'm still not sure what's going on, which makes me think it was indeed some sort of animation error. And then, as I think was mentioned before in this thread, is Peter a ventriloquist or did they just forget to animate him speaking? Ah, well, hope it's back to normal next time.
Uhu, dolls have always been a bit creepy to me so I thought that those children were dolls at first, and I thought, well, the circus that they're performing at the dinner can't be that bad, can it? When the first performer fell, I had this pretty neutral expression on my face because I expected that she might just break into a few wooden pieces at the worst.
Then I saw the blood and several different horrified thoughts ran through my head at once. This isn't a real occurrence, but I mean, even in the fantasy world, that's one child that will never be returned safely to her parents; one child that won't be saved. The same applies for those two eaten by the lion. I don't know; for some reason, those scenes really impacted me. It's not real, it doesn't even look like it's happening in real life, but...just imagine, your children gone missing and it turns out that they've been killed as entertainment for some old deranged guy.
Ah, and speaking of Father! He's certainly much more complex than a crazy person. I think he believes that what he is doing is truly good, but the problem is that he's so insane that he doesn't see what's really going on. His idea of what will please people is far from what sane people would consider entertainment.
Lastly, that ominous scene at the very end, with Ciel looking at a reconstruction of what happened in his past...ooh, I'm a bit apprehensive now. It's clear something very, very terrible happened to him there, probably an experience that hasn't been revealed in true detail yet. There's not much that can faze Ciel. But this goes back again to my post when we discovered Ciel has asthma. Sebastian may be a very powerful demon, but he cannot expel his master's asthma because even that is beyond his control. And that force is perhaps one of the more dangerous ones. The same goes for Ciel's memories and what he sees when he looks at the reconstruction of the arena. Sebastian can't pin those flashbacks down with a silver fork and this is where he's truly helpless. This is something he can't defend his master from. But how much, how much does he really care, unless these memories have the potential to destroy Ciel? |