neither rivals nor allies

[kaigou]

First, for context: read phoebe_zeitgeist's The Second of our Reign at AO3 (Ciel/Sebastian, rated M for adult situations), or for gen, read Anorexia (the catfood overdub). For gen, read Phoebe's gleefully geek-law draft for The Phantomhive Cases: CERTIORARI TO THE HIGH COURT OF MINOS, or a bit of her comment!fic, both of which I really hope don't end there (and can see end up being intertwined, come to think of it).

And then, the discussion, gacked from PZ's post/replies, but repeated here in case anyone else can think of additional examples, counter-arguments, or other insights. It starts with Phoebe's reply to my review (posted on her journal, since AO3 doesn't give that option to non-members). Trimmed some where we regressed into flailing fandomness. (You can read the original on Phoebe's journal, if you want it unedited.)

Phoebe: They have so much fun being Ciel and Sebastian! Their official authors gave them multiple canons that are essentially curtain!fic, and these are characters who never get curtain!fic, not even from fans, let alone from canon. And so many glorious hints that can be extrapolated from, and what have to be deliberate inconsistencies to allow for getting around any bits of canon one doesn't find desirable! I still can barely believe the source even exists, it's such a match for all my private weirdnesses.

...is this actually a perfectly ordinary, stereotypical pair of characters in the broader anime/manga universe? I've seen and read just enough now to be used to some of the more common tropes: the beautiful villains with tragic pasts; the hot sociopath paired with, or obsessed with, the beautiful idealist who loves humanity; the nice, faintly ineffectual-on-the-surface guys who're brilliant and deadly in pursuit of their true agendas, but without ever losing their sweetness and awkwardness in any other situation. I haven't seen Ciel and Sebastian anywhere else, or at least, not in ways that are right upfront in the text, and don't need to be constructed from implications in canon; but that could be because I haven't seen or read very much. Have I missed dozens of instances of the same dynamic, do you think? Or is Kuroshitsuji genuinely doing something one doesn't see in every other work for this slice of the audience?

Kaigou: I don't [much] into shoujo and [never into] Clamptastic worlds, so there may be corners where you could find another Ciel or a Sebastian. But I can't think of too many where you'd find both (in fact, I'm drawing a complete blank). Sure, you can find one of them -- Ciel's trope has some parallels with Edward Elric's, or possibly with Sasuke's, in the whole "dead parent and now angry about it (revenging or just stopping any chance of repeating for someone else)" -- and there are certainly a plethora of demons and yokai running rampant through japanime. But both of them, together? Complete blank on any other instances.

For one, a character like Ciel rarely gets a foil as truly wicked or devious as himself -- I think most authors believe a foil should be an opposite, not a mentor. (Sebastian is a rival only in a rather oblique sense, I think.) So the foil is more often like Elizabeth, or Sakura, or Winry -- someone relatively innocent in the worst of the ways of the world. Or more like, experienced in some of the world's darkness but well-meaning enough that she (almost always a she) can continue to be a beacon of goodness, while the hero struggles with his inner darkness.

Which is one way that Ciel radically deviates from nearly everyone else in his trope-category: he doesn't seem to struggle at all with his inner darkness. He knows it's there, took its measure, and carries on, using it or ignoring it as he sees fit, but rarely -- if ever! -- angsting over ir. Any more than I'd angst over owning, knowing, and using a gun: it's a tool, even if I'm never ignorant of its ramifications, it doesn't weigh me down in some existential sense. Ciel is dramatically pragmatic in ways that I think I've only ever seen in what's-his-face, in Code Geass.

Sebastian, of course, could be nothing but cardboard -- the handsome (divinely so, one might say) and extraordinarily capable Marty Stu. He comes from a long line of multitasking butlers all the way back to the inevitable princess' butler in Gundam (aka whots-his-face who worked for Relena and could de-crypt secret govt missives, fly three types of planes, and knew seventeen languages). What makes Sebastian different isn't his premise or his presentation, it's his motivation -- not only that he has one, but that it's diametrically opposed to Ciel's. In that Ciel wants revenge, and Sebastian wants... dinner. Sebastian is an ally who is also a stated, known -- and yet unknown -- antagonist.

I think the reason Kuroshitsuji blazes a different path has little to do with the character designs or premises -- young orphaned lord, demonic butler, lots of loli -- but in what it allows its characters to be: Not Good.

Ciel is more shoujo than shonen, in that he's gray (and shonen seems to be okay with letting the protag look gray so long as he's not really gray), and that kind of ambiguity is strong in the shoujo force. But having the hero also totally isolated... that's shonen, not shoujo. If this were true shoujo*, Sebastian would be the trusted and loved retainer who sacrifices his all for his loved little lord, who's really just Misunderstood.

(*Although this does show up in shonen, in a few cases, but it's definitely more common that by mid-point in the story, our hero/ine has collected a group of like-minded or at least somewhat supporting friends, whose own motivations remain murky -- if they're even acknowledged -- and usually somewhat subsumed under the author's wish to not bother with secondary characters, so they end up just becoming "something that exists to help the hero/ine achieve goal A or goal B". While those exist somewhat in Kuroshitsuji, the secondary cast is mostly dominated by characters with known, or implied, anti-motivations. The opium-using uncle/friend/whatever he is, who definitely has his own agenda... same as, well, nearly all the other adult characters. If anything, Kuroshitsuji also inverts this path, in that the staff -- who appear to be fully loyal and no-other-motivation-than-to-help, if badly -- are eventually revealed to have their own backstories and thus their own motivations for what they get out of Ciel and/or Sebastian. In other words, the staff are also, really, working on a basis of enlightened self-interest. They don't exist solely to help the hero/ine out of some vague sense that protags exist to be helped.)

What they've done, and what intrigued me so much in the manga (and that for all its other flaws, I do think the insanely brilliant retconning second season did get right, as far as spirit of the story) is twist things around in terms of bad and good. They've put the usual villains in the hero role, but they're not villainous in the sense of the usual maniacal laughter and reveling in villainy, or anything so crude as that. We can sympathize with their goals -- to avenge, to be fed -- and definitely not empathize with their means.

There are tons upon tons of "uncertain allies" stories -- where it's two rivals unwillingly pairing up together. The usual "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". What's different here is that Sebastian has no irons in the fire. He doesn't -- even makes it patently obvious -- particularly care about the outcome, except insofar as it impacts him directly -- if his outcome is reliant on Ciel's outcome, then that the extent of his concern. I think you hit it on the head when you defined them both (in the story) as acting in enlightened self-interest. Two rivals are supposed to, by genre definitions, become true allies by the end. Ciel and Sebastian are too enlightened, and too self-interested, to ever reach that level of trusting comfort -- which is why they aren't rivals, either. Neither is truly competitive enough, in their own right (I think) to be bothered unless it were something of great import driving it all.

What gets me about the internal flip going on here is that normally, the protag (especially in shonen) is driven by a passionate, almost excessive (and almost always incredibly unrealistic -- cf Edward Elric, Alan Walker, Naruto Uzumaki, etc) passion. They care so damn much that they're driven towards impossible heights, and we spend their series holding our breaths, waiting for them to fall from such heights.

Compared to them, Ciel is the experienced tight-rope walker, strolling along a thin cord a hundred feet above the ground without a rope, and what thrills us is that he doesn't seem to even care, let alone even notice, the dangers. He never misteps; when he comes dangerously close, Sebastian is his only safety net... and Sebastian is a safety net who may, or may not, come, given Sebastian's own disinclination to act beyond his own interests.

Any other shonen (or even shoujo) story I can think of, the safety-net character (like the multi-capable butler, or the magical frog mentor, or the all-powerful if snarky teacher) may be doubted by the hero/ine, but s/he is never doubted by the audience. The audience is always certain that the mentor/teacher has genuine affection, if some irritation, for the hero/ine. In this case, I don't think it'd be too much to say that Ciel is possibly the only one with utter faith in Sebastian's binding to the contract. Too many times it's seemed like Sebastian will pull back, only to (seemingly) change his mind and be there in the nick of time -- and we see those moments only as the audience; Ciel isn't privy to those.

Phoebe: ...to hit one point of many, more or less at random, I hadn't realized until you said it that this -- Any other shonen (or even shoujo) story I can think of, the safety-net character (like the multi-capable butler, or the magical frog mentor, or the all-powerful if snarky teacher) may be doubted by the hero/ine, but s/he is never doubted by the audience -- is a species of a trope that's as common to American media as anywhere else, and has always made me froth at the mouth no matter where or how it appears. That business where a protagonist has angst over the motivations and loyalty of someone whom he or she has no real reason to doubt, and every reason to trust, and worse, where he or she refuses to discuss the issue with the friend or lover or colleague or follower our protagonist suddenly is suspicious of, has always made me want to jump through the screen, or through the pages of a book, and throttle the idiot doing it. Nothing makes me lose any sense of connection with a character faster.

And you're right: it's something that's striking by its complete absence here. Whatever his reasons for it, and whether or not he's right to do so, Ciel never has any serious doubt about Sebastian's loyalties or capabilities -- except, in the first anime series, during the period in the final arc where they have their big temporary breakup. And even that's mild as these things go. It's one of many things about the series that makes me happy and comfortable with these characters, but it's a big one: if Ciel went around having angst about oh-no-demon-can-I-trust-him I'd probably have bailed three episodes in. And like pain that isn't there, I didn't even notice until you mentioned it, and thereby reminded me of the pain so constantly there in so many other sources.

...They're not allies, and it's important that they're not allies. ...I think this ties into the way they spend the entire first series, and much of the second and of the manga as well, looking at each other. Allies stand side by side, metaphorically, and look mostly to their shared objectives and only secondarily to each other. When the primary focus is each other, whatever the relationship is, it is not that of allies.

Kaigou: I can forgive the "distrusting the teacher" plot device in cases where, in the character's shoes, I could see believing the same -- only if it's a failing on the character's part, not the teacher's. That is, Edward has justifiable fear (for a bit) of his teacher's anger given how he's messed up -- so although it's pretty obvious shortly after Izumi's introduced that she wouldn't ditch him, even when angry... it's believable that he, given his own frustration and inner darkness and self-disappointment, would project the same onto her. In other cases, though, it's just a freaking plot device to keep the protagonist in the dark (isolated from a source of information). Curiously, Naruto rarely slips down that road, which is one thing Kishimoto gets right; Naruto is just too bull-headed to even recognize when he's being dissed. I mean, look at him and Sasuke, after all.

CP and I discussed this for a bit the other night, and we came up with a few that come close (but not quite a cigar). There's Shinji and the two main/secondary characters in Evangelion, but Shinji for the majority of the series borders on useless. Even I know Shinji was emo before emo was cool, and I haven't even seen Eva. (CP has, hence the suggestion.) There's also Natsume and Nyanko-sensei (from Natsume Yuujinchou), except that by halfway through the first season, they've really become good -- if irascibe and constantly-arguing -- friends. By the third season, they're not even bothering to hide their mutual trust and alliance; the issue of the Book of Friends is merely a pretext, now.

Another suggestion was Renton and Holland, from Eureka Seven. Those two remain somewhat at odds through almost the entire series. The standing between them is never quite certain; it shifts unexpectedly for reasons that are opaque until you get more backstory. And, as CP pointed out, each stands to gain from the other, so there's enlightened self-interest. But I say it's still not a true analogue, since although Renton wants something from Holland, he's ignorant until almost the end that he has anything that Holland wants, in return. Between that lack of knowledge, and their relative positions/experience in their world/situation, Renton is considerably lower in power than Holland. If Renton were aware of his power over Holland, in equal amounts to Holland's power over him, then we might have an analogue.

Which I think is part of the crux, between Ciel and Sebastian, that although their powers are rooted in different things/areas, their dance is very much of two equally powerful entities. One scene from the anime that really draws this out beautifully is when (3rd ep, I think) Ciel is kidnapped, and his inner narration explains that the contract allows him to call Sebastian to him at any time, any place. Cut to Sebastian, whose inner narration expands on this, explaining that the contract allows the demon to find the human, because it's preventing the human from getting away. Both see the same thing -- the contract's geo-location action -- in light of their own benefit. Ciel for Sebastian to rescue him (be his safety net), and Sebastian for knowing that Ciel can never escape his final outcome. Twist it one way, one is the powerful one. Twist the other way, and the table's turned in re power. Put both side-by-side, and it's a perfect balancing act.

The aspect of enlightened self-interest also makes for ambiguity, which is another thing I can't recall much of -- only Eureka Seven (with its opaque character histories) and the first season of Natsume Yuujinchou really play on this, though political subplots like in Twelve Kingdoms do somewhat well with dubious alliances, which is a cousin to this. That is, when Sebastian expresses care for Ciel during an asthma attack, is there genuine/growing kindness there, or is it only the care you'd show for a precious possession that you don't want ruined before its time?

In the anime, that ambiguity is set up for misinterpretation, intentionally, such that it's manipulating the audience (and very well, I think): by letting actions -- normally associated with affection/caring -- play out without comment, Sebastian becomes a character whose perspective matters. After all, he's showing (at least his actions could appear to be showing) some affection for Ciel, and I find we tend to empathize most with characters who care for that which we also care for (the protagonist). When Ciel finally kicks his own ass out of his two-episode angst-fest and orders his staff to kill the manor's devil dog, Sebastian rewards Ciel by returning to his side. I use "reward" quite specifically, because I think we're meant to see it as a reward.

(Note: oddly, the story doesn't seem to necessarily valorize Ciel's actions, although it clearly empathizes with Ciel's motivations. When he gives an order as cold as the one for murder, frex, his staff doesn't react as though he's Doing the Right Thing and they're impressed (or glad to be enlightened or throwing themselves headlong into following along) -- they're taken aback, a little upset, emotional, and not-so-subtly unhappy with the action. The usual "we do this because it's for the hero" is twisted against itself, to become doing evil because that's the hero's path. Which me, I think is freaking genius, but that could just be me.)

Regardless, it's still a messed-up reward, in that it's a cold-blooded order for murder (whatever extenuating circumstances there may be, it's still Ciel ordering someone's death sentence). Ciel isn't rewarded for showing human kindness, or extending a magnanimous hand; he's rewarded when he becomes more ruthless, more dispassionate, maybe even more cruel: he gets Sebastian back, and we're very much meant to see Sebastian's return as a good thing. Even if that means Ciel moves farther away from his own humanity -- it moves him closer to the character who (from the perspective of neutral show-not-tell) appears to care for him the most. Or, shall I say, who wants the most from him, which in Kuroshitsuji may be the same thing, anyway.

Thoughts?

Comments

[phoebe_zeitgeist]

Oh, thank you! I am so happy you're doing this. And now I get to obsess some more (as if I weren't doing that anyway).

One of the striking things to me about the first anime series (which is what I found first, and therefore imprinted on) -- and the reason I found myself chasing down a quote from what turned out to be That Hideous Strength about how comrades don't look at each other¹ -- is that its overall emotional structure is that of a courtship novel. When we first meet our protagonists they're clearly both interested in each other and more than a little wary of each other; their reactions to each other can easily be read as analogous to the simultaneous peacocking and defensive display of not caring at all that we see from any two people who find each other too attractive to ignore without being sure what they're going to do about it yet. As the series progresses the denial and careful emotional distancing vanishes (and damned quickly, too): by the time we're a few episodes in Ciel is clearly issuing orders for the sheer pleasure of seeing what Sebastian will do with a situation, and Sebastian is just as clearly designing his performances for Ciel's private benefit. (The joke about the chocolate in the curry arc. The whole business with Noah's Ark in the ice fair episode, where Lizzie and Sebastian each try to give Ciel something from his pre-catastrophe world, only Lizzie's Ark is something Ciel has already dismissed as a bad forgery, while Sebastian carves an Ark from ice and then sends Ciel for a ride on it. The private war over Talbot's camera, for that matter. And on, and on.) They may try to avoid letting each other see how fixed their gazes are, but unless they're actually fighting enemies, when they're together anybody who isn't them might as well be furniture that happens to have somehow been given the gift of speech.

Until Aberline, and his death. Which still tracks courtship-story structure by being the occasion for the climactic fight, the big blow-up or misunderstanding or revelation that threatens to part a courtship-novel couple. And sure enough, our couple here decide they have been dreadfully deceived in one another, don't talk about it (and for good reasons for once, it's not as if these two would ever talk about this kind of thing), have no obvious avenue by which to defuse the tension, and go storming off in counterproductive fits of rage. Over which they are miserable until they are able to demonstrate to each other that they're worthy and everything the other thought them, and can reconcile.

Which Ciel and Sebastian do, strikingly, by actions that reaffirm their essential darkness. As you say, on Ciel's part it's that order for Pluto's death; on Sebastian's, that he comes back and what brings him back. Which twists the courtship trope into all sorts of interesting shapes, emotionally, but doesn't change its formal structure, which hurtles right along to the final, climactic expression of formal commitment. In a classic courtship novel, that would be the offer of marriage and acceptance of that offer; here it's Ciel's death and the offer of his soul, but it's doing the same thing structurally. (And while the series has certainly established all it needed to for us to read Sebastian's acceptance of that soul as an acceptance of dinner, I think it can also be read as a marriage metaphor.)

. . . and I did have a point I was going to make when I started, I swear I did.² Only now I've lost the train of thought, and will have to try to find it again after some sleep. But I'm posting this much anyway, in the hope and expectation that when I read it over tomorrow I'll know what I intended to say.

Terrifyingly, this was only one point I meant to make, too. There's going to be more. I can only hope you're not sorry yet.

¹"Those who are enjoying something, or suffering something together, are companions. Those who enjoy or suffer one another, are not. Do you not know how bashful friendship is? Friends - comrades - do not look at each other. Friendship would be ashamed . . ."

²I mean, a point besides saying that in my own internal canon, it's Ciel's final order to Sebastian that tips the balance in Sebastian's mind between eating Ciel as soon as he possibly can and keeping him as some sort of familiar or companion instead. I think he probably had been toying with the latter idea for some time, but couldn't decide whether he wanted to eat his cake or have it. Until that "Carve it into me," which was so magnificent a gesture that losing Ciel to mere hunger became unthinkable.

[kaigou]

AHAHAHA you are so right. I never even thought of that, but it matches perfectly -- especially when I think of Abberline's offer to become Ciel's ally. Abberline is basically The Other Guy. He's the nice one, the one you think should get the girl Ciel, but he doesn't, because girls Ciel likes Sebastian better... but Abberline still manages to throw a spanner in the works, regardless. But the bad boy Sebastian still wins, in the end!

That take on the ending, btw, isn't just in your internal canon. I rewatched this weekend for the hell of it, and that ending is purposefully ambiguous. If there's any way to end things when you're ending an adaptation (and the source material is ongoing), then an ambiguous ending is better than anything definite, IMO. If nothing else, the folks who did the adaptations clearly have fandom's number, between that ambiguous end and their total mind-fuck retcon of season 2. (Which, for the record, I don't consider canon... so much as maybe alt-canon. Like an official AU, with "official" only because it was a big-budget anime. It's like if you spent enough on your fanwork, you'd get some kind of acknowledgement just because your budget deserved the nod. Or something.)

More is always welcome. You can't make me sorry, but you're welcome to try. I DARE YOU.

[phoebe_zeitgeist]

Yes! And to make it even better, the way it's set up makes Abberline's story line work on two simultaneous levels: he's both the Other Guy and, in terms of the classic contract-with-the-devil plot, Ciel's chance at repentance if he wants to take it. (So much so that I've found myself thinking that just as your climactic misunderstanding in a courtship novel typically comes because one party is missing information about the reasons for the other's actions, the misunderstanding here is based on Ciel's lack of information about a mandatory implied term of contracts with demons: to wit, that the demon may not interfere with what he or she can perceive to be a serious shot at repentance and redemption. It's like the grace period to cure a default on a mortgage, more or less; once it's triggered there's really nothing Sebastian can do but wait to see what Ciel decides. In fact, while it's pure dicta, there's something in that unwritten decision about how the question is not properly before the court in this case, but given that the redemption rule has not resulted in any demon losing a soul in the past millennium, and adherence to it can and does cause all sorts of trouble, the Court would perhaps look favorably on an opportunity to rule on whether the need to include that clause in all contracts is still good law.)

But the bad boy Sebastian still wins, in the end!

And once again, we get the lovely spin to the trope, too. Because in your classic romance, the good boy isn't really good. Not for the heroine, and often not for anyone. He's Godfrey Abelwhite from The Moonstone, all public piety and private rottenness, or else (and at best) he's some stuffy, controlling bore. The heroine is right to chose the bad boy instead, because the bad boy is actually the better man (or will be under her civilizing influence, ick), and we're meant to understand that by the end. For the heroine to chose the supposed good boy would be a mark against her discernment, or else show her to be less than virtuous herself.

But Abberline really is a good man, by far the best we see in the series: kind, honorable, ambitious in the service of his ideals, and courageous as hell. Ciel chooses Sebastian because Sebastian is the right choice for him, but that it is the right choice is a kind of proof of how dark Ciel himself has become. And it's a mark of how well the whole overarching story has been handled that viewers who've made it to this point in the series, who aren't even me with my predictable tropism toward witty villains, are ready to see that choice as a happy and proper ending.

AHAHAHA you are so right.

God, I am so relieved that you said that. Because I know what I saw, and I see it on re-watching, too; but one of the peculiar things about looking around at what seems to remain of the imploded lj/dw/et cetera fandom is that so few others seem to see it. I do understand about being put off by the whole shota thing (I would be myself, after all, if it weren't for the fact that Ciel reads as so much older than his supposed age to me, in that first anime, that it only took a few minutes for me to start seeing the shota-ness as nothing more than a visual convention, to be taken no more seriously than things like chibi forms or giant sweatdrops); but the vehement denial in so many quarters that there was even any subtext has left me with that sense of, Wait, what was I watching? Did I get a special version that nobody else saw, or what? If it had turned out that I was projecting my own favored plotlines and issues onto the text with little or no actual support for it there, I'd be willing to live with that -- I'm grateful for inspiration anywhere I can find it, after all -- but it's still a lot better to know that it's really there, and you can see it too and everything.

-- Ffft, I need to go run errands. More to come. Why, I haven't even gotten to your second paragraph yet! you surely can't think I was done.

[kaigou]

The shota at first did squick me, because the convention is majorly strong with this one. But once Ciel opens his mouth and you see him in action, then there was a disconnect for me, between this much-older-in-tone and younger-in-looks... and eventually I no longer saw Ciel as "just some precocious twelve-year-old"... and then I could see all the subtext because I wasn't so busy doing my best to a) expect it and b) block it.

Curiously, rewatching the second season makes me think that... whots-his-face, Alois, whatever -- is what Ciel would've been had he been written by, y'know, the usual groupthink animation committee process. He would've been far more emotional, far more obviously damaged (and thus expected to be more sympathetic for wearing his heart on his sleeve), and possibly slightly insane. I think the insanity is to amp up the empathy, or at least pity, because if he's insane he can't possibly be responsible for such horrendous decisions as contracting with a demon. Like a loophole for redemption, at least in the viewer's eyes.

But it also stands as major contrast, because Alois and his butler seem to genuinely hate each other, but face-to-face they're far more genteelly/superficially caring than Ciel and Sebastian ever were/are. They're a complete flip -- or more like, they're the existing mold that Ciel and Sebastian broke free from. And when it comes to Alois and his butler, that kind of dynamic I have seen elsewhere (though, again, only amongst the bad guys).

Very good points about Abberline being that rare creature, the second-lead who is genuinely a good guy, and worth picking if you fired the scriptwriter and actually chose the good one. Of course, there's also a cultural element in here, since I've seen my share of jdramas, kdramas, and anime where the second lead really is the better guy, and the main guy is just plain jerkface but Love Conquers Allllll wah wah wah, but I also sometimes do get second-lead syndrome. In western stories, the second lead usually gets a lot more negative markers to remind us he's bad down deep while the appears-bad boy is good down deep. (I guess it's also that jerkfaces seem to be 'romantic' or something, in a lot of Asian storylines, similar to how Stockholm Syndrome via rape was a big hit in the average 80s bodice-ripper.)

[phoebe_zeitgeist]

Aahhhh. So this is one of those occasions when coming at something from a different culture, without much knowledge of the conventions of the culture whose work you're shamelessly glomming onto, gives it a set of effects that the text totally supports, from your frame of reference, but may well be completely accidental from the point of view of the people who produced the work. Which is one of the things I love about encountering work from cultures I don't know (or cities I don't know, or art from traditions I don't know, or whatever) -- they can intersect with one's own cultural conditioning in interesting, unexpected kinds of ways.

Or at least, interesting and unexpected to me. Enough so that I spend a lot of time torn between having angst over the disrespect of responding to work from other cultures without bothering to learn anything about the tradition to which they belong, and how they might be understood by their intended audience, or having angst over losing the naive and home-culture-bound response to them I have if I don't learn anything about where they came from or why. Which, now that I think about it, may be the very illustration of a First World Problem.

All of which is to say, yeah, I probably had much less than the average issue with the shota because I know nothing about it as a genre. It made it relatively simple to be all, 'Oh, please. He's not 13. He's just drawn that way.'

whots-his-face, Alois, whatever -- is what Ciel would've been had he been written by, y'know, the usual groupthink animation committee process.

Hah! And this also explains something that I've been clueless about: namely, where the people who love Alois and talk about how much better a character he is are coming from. Not that anyone has to justify her taste, obviously, but there's been a kind of sub-current to the discussions I've seen that seemed to imply a set of aesthetic ideas and standards I had no conception of, that weren't being explained because everyone but me knew them already. I couldn't quite figure out why more childish and more insane was better, except that it was probably some sort of id thing. Knowing that it is something of a genre convention suddenly makes those discussions make a lot more sense.

[phoebe_zeitgeist]

But wait! here's one thing I know I meant to say.

When he gives an order as cold as the one for murder, frex, his staff doesn't react as though he's Doing the Right Thing and they're impressed (or glad to be enlightened or throwing themselves headlong into following along) -- they're taken aback, a little upset, emotional, and not-so-subtly unhappy with the action. The usual "we do this because it's for the hero" is twisted against itself, to become doing evil because that's the hero's path.

And one thing I think is brilliant about this is that we essentially see this from Sebastian's point of view, or so it seems to me. We see that the staff doesn't admire it and doesn't want to do it, and I don't think the narrative means for us to admire it as some sort of Right Thing Ciel has to do because he's the leader/protagonist, making the difficult decisions. But we see Ciel coming back to himself there, in all his uncompromising will and bitter intelligence, and he's beautiful, in a kind of pure and crystalline way that he wasn't when he was agonizing over Aberline and the possibility of treating the world and other people in it as if it were all real and they all mattered. And, astonishingly, it actually feels plausible that a demon of incalculable antiquity and experience could find something new and precious in this contractor.

I'm still stunned that they managed to makek that work. At any point, really, let alone over 24 episodes.

[kaigou]

From your reply above: Ciel chooses Sebastian because Sebastian is the right choice for him, but that it is the right choice is a kind of proof of how dark Ciel himself has become. and then from this one: we see Ciel coming back to himself there, in all his uncompromising will and bitter intelligence, and he's beautiful, in a kind of pure and crystalline way that he wasn't when he was agonizing over Aberline and the possibility of treating the world and other people in it as if it were all real and they all mattered

...and I think it's because Abberline halts Ciel in his tracks -- makes him think twice, really -- but the Ciel that's captured us, as an audience, was a very active and engaging Ciel. A second-thinking, uncertain, frustrated, helpless Ciel is right up there with humiliation squick, I find -- because he's just churning his wheels, going nowhere. When he kicks himself back into gear, he's active again, and there's nothing quite so fascinating as a character with active, fast-forward, agency. This is one reason villains are often far more interesting than heroes, because it's the villains who are acting on the world, while the heroes are just defending, reacting, as it were. The villains are doing stuff, for much longer than the heroes, who usually spend most of any story stumbling around just trying to figure out what's going on.

Ciel stumbles a few times before that, but he's always pushing forward -- and then, late in the season, there's two episodes of nothing but crawling. That was enough, and I think the pacing was executed brilliantly: by the time he does pick himself up and start moving again, we're just so freaking glad he's doing something that the something itself is almost an afterthought. CP sometimes repeats an old supervisor's saying: "do something, even if it's wrong", which definitely applies in fiction.

IMO, the one unforgivable action on the part of a character isn't a real-life crime (ie murder or whatever) but a complete lack of action: to be completely passive. And Ciel had been essentially passive for two episodes, so the sharp snap back into activity -- even if it's wrong -- is still a welcome relief. And that's part, to me, of what makes it beautiful beyond any (later) intellectual realization that his choice was quite cruel. (Realistic and pragmatic, as befits Ciel, but still cruel.)

I think, in a way (and I do intend to speak to your bit about the space for redemption/freedom from the contract) this is what calls Sebastian's attention all over again: that clarity of purpose. So much came close to breaking Ciel, but it was Abberline that ironically came the closest. It seems reasonable, knowing human behaviors, that the final straw is one that isn't shaken off quite so easily. But Ciel manages to do it, and that makes him a being of incalculable strength, in a way. Resilient beyond his years and his kind... even if his ultimate resilience is also incredibly cruel. It doesn't really matter whether he's right or wrong; he's doing something and I think it's the 'doing' part that really attracts Sebastian's respect.

[phoebe_zeitgeist]

and then, late in the season, there's two episodes of nothing but crawling.

In fact, that was the only point in the whole series where I completely lost suspension of disbelief and found myself rolling my eyes and wondering what the writers were smoking. The separation made sense, Ciel's emotional crisis made sense, I was fine with all of that; but I could not make myself believe that the Ciel we'd seen for the past 20 episodes or so was so unworldly that he would stand in the middle of a Paris street and issue orders to random passers-by as if they were his servants. Or would not realize that he needed money, even though he handled the affairs of a great company in his daily life and surely had some clue about what cash was for. Or would not think to speak to the hotel concierge about booking passage back to London, what with the whole thing where the hotel staff, unlike those people on the street, do more or less work for him while he's staying there. I still can't think of a way it's remotely plausible, unless for some damned reason he's doing it on purpose.*

So yeah, two episodes of it were more than enough. I can't resent it too much, given how happy the rest of the thing made me, but I still wish they'd come up with something more plausible that would have gotten all the characters to the same place.

*The only reason I can think of is that it was a giant, melodramatic fit of rage, not unlike kicking a wall until you break the bones in your feet. Not a good explanation, I grant you, but I still find it more credible than the hypothesis that he's clever and worldly enough to run a company and an underworld, but not clever and worldly enough to either book passage on trains and ships or to find someone other than Sebastian who can.

[hokuton_punch]

... well, I gave up reading Kuroshitsuji fairly early on because I got squicked so my impressions of the series are old and outdated, but I wonder if Integra Hellsing and Alucard might have some of the same dynamic? Integra is not exactly a paragon of moral virtue, and Alucard revels pretty freely in his monstrousness, but they still have a lot of trust in each other.

[kaigou]

I haven't seen Hellsing, but you saying they still have a lot of trust in each other makes me think it's still not the same dynamic -- because Ciel and Sebastian don't seem to have a lot of trust in each other. If at all. Mostly, I think, they put faith in the contract between them (in that it'll serve their own purpose), but they're constantly on guard for being double-crossed. Ciel never completely lets down his guard (as far as I've seen/read in the anime/manga, at least) that Sebastian won't find some way to undermine or be less than perfectly supportive in Ciel's revenge, and Sebastian seems to be constantly on guard against Ciel finding a loophole on the whole soul-eating thing.

The anime is actually less squicky in some ways than the manga -- which does go dark at points, dangerously and very against-genre. But the anime's hardly a walk in the park, all the same. And frankly, despite the inherent darkness in the manga, I don't think it'd be the same story without it; it's such an integral part of what shaped Ciel that any less of a backstory would just seem melo without the drama. Without that, he'd just seem callous when he rebukes another character (in the anime) for being upset that Ciel's not sympathetic -- he derides the other character's pain as trivial. That's pretty cold, but when you know what he went through, suddenly it's not oppression olympics so much as it is someone who's been so brutally damaged that he can't fathom a life where bemoaning a lost servant counts as utmost pain. He's just not on the same scale anymore. He can't sympathize because he honestly can't empathize.

One thing I like about Ciel -- which I also liked about Lelouch -- is that his personal principles are principles, if not the usual honor-bound stupidity. Ciel doesn't do the "handicap oneself to level the field" -- a position I've always found rather dunderheaded, myself -- he believes firmly that any advantage one has towards winning, one should exploit fully. If that means using a demon bound to him to get/use information he couldn't otherwise, this isn't cheating. And it's not cheating because he doesn't expect others to be bound by honor, either -- that everyone should use any and all at their command, to do whatever they can. It's not a mindset I see very often in anime (or live-action, for that matter), and when I do, it's rarely from the protagonist. Only villains get such pragmatic attitudes, which is something I don't quite get. Why must heroes be so honorably stupid?

[hokuton_punch]

Ah, well, you may be right - it's been a bit since I watched or read Hellsing, too, so I don't remember well how much of their relationship relies on the contract rather than personal trust in each other. They're the closest pair I could think of, anyway. XD

Well, as dark as the manga was, I probably could've handled it better if it didn't jump straight from "creepy pedo backstory" to "curry contest" - I think I got a bad case of cognitive dissonance more than anything else. I think I should give it another chance at some point, though; this was a really excellent read. And I do like pragmatic protagonists...

[taithe]

It's 4am right now so thinky thoughts are likely not very thinky. Just wanted to let you know that the comment exchange you posted made me want to pick up Kuroshitsuji again. I dropped it after one of the maid's VAs made my ears bleed and fandom just seemed really unpleasant. But this is interesting, so I may read the manga.

[kaigou]

You watched it in the dub? Oh, you poor thing. I do like the sub voices -- especially Ciel and Sebastian, who really do capture the dry and sometimes cruel distance in their characters -- but the manga is overall more enjoyable (and doesn't end after the equivalent of only 24 episodes, either). Although, granted, the manga seems to be meandering at times, even moreso than the anime, which was at least limited in that it only had one season to meander. At the same time, the manga goes considerably darker than the anime, which probably feared to tread down paths quite that dark. Jsyk.