Black Butler
aka 黒執事 aka Kuroshitsuji
2014
Written by Tsutomu Kuroiwa
Based on the manga created by Yana Toboso
Directed by Kentaro Otani and Keiichi Sato
Demon butlers, terrorist conspiracies, gender-hiding revenge plots, English-Japanese hybrid toy baron nobles, and an alternate world with only two spheres of influence is the setting for a murder mystery that soon balloons into a wild tale that could only be a live-action manga tale. And, yes, it is. Kuroshitsuji (黒執事) – aka Black Butler – features a demonic butler named Sebastian who aides his master in her revenge quest in return for the permission to devour her soul once it’s completed. Despite the overly-complicated world building, the resulting film is entertaining and fun, delivering a cool story without biting off too much and feeling like everything is rushed.
Black Butler takes a train into gender confusion land. We first run across Ayame Gouriki held captive by human traffickers. After the action sequence is finished, she rips off her wig to reveal shorter hair beneath. It’s not until a scene or two later (like 20 minutes into the film) that I figure out she’s pretending to be a man named Earl Kiyoharu Genpo. Which means in her first appearance, she’s a girl pretending to be a boy pretending to be a girl. Like Connie Chan or Polly Shang Kuan, there is a zero percent chance that anyone would think that Ayame Gouriki was a male, which makes the scenes even more confusing.
Shiori is under disguise because her whole family was wiped out by a traitor. She survived only by promising her soul to the demon Sebastian, who posed as her guardian servant, and Shiori posed as the illegitimate son of her father, named Kiyoharu Genpo. Why the illegitimate son has the same last name as the dad is best unanswered. She keeps up the ruse while trying to track down who hire the hitmen who slaughtered her family, and while running her family’s very successful toy company. Sadly, the toy company doesn’t factor into the plot as much as it should.
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