Second one was really hard, honestly think it would’ve been better to redraw the face first myself but my left eye currently wants to explode
I may delete this post and just make a long compilation post later because I have a million of these. A lot of the reverse, too, where I want to try to bridge the horse-face gap years between his super early larger-eyed character design and his current one. …Maybe I’ll just make this the edit compilation post.
My edits are on the right side, a varying degree of effort was put into each of these:
Now, the anime (again, varying degrees of effort):
Ones that already have their own posts:
Been meaning to make my own character design references for the characters, but i struggle a lot with some bodily issues of mine. Maybe one day… so here’s my draws of just Sebastian and Vincent for now, tucked all the way down here:
I think Sebastian’s balloon shaped head is iconic to his look and sometimes I fantasize about sending Yana fan mail in order to tell her so
And now lastly, some edits other people have made, which I like…..
I’ve been meaning to say this, because I always *think* it but it always feels like I’d be going on too much of a tangent: when people ask “if he doesn’t want to eat Ciel’s soul then what would he want with it?”, I want to point out how that’s never how it works in western media.
I don’t even know where it comes from to be such a common trope in anime and manga. Whenever WE talk about selling your soul to the devil it just means you’re going to hell, and I’ve wondered if Yana knows that or she thought demons eating souls was so universal that it’s a given that Ciel understood that Sebastian receiving his soul = him getting to eat it. But that’s not what happened in Faust or how they work The Testament of Solomon. Why haven’t I ever seen anybody acknowledge this before ❔❔
This is a tangent too, but in western media it’s usually at a crossroads where you meet the devil. I think about that when Layla/Vega says her line, “what are you going to do at this juncture?”
I wonder if Sebastian will find him beautiful? I can see Sebastian’s turn going next and landing on beauty, and going into that. Or saying the whole story is romantic
Long speculation post
I did initially find it odd for Sebastian to say “You see now, hm? God is not coming to save anyone.” Because it seemed out of character from what we’ve seen of him thus far, when it comes to pious people. So (for now, at least) I’ve been speculating that the initial demon was Sebastian, but something murky happened toward the end, or it was a different demon the whole time and Modri’s memories have been messed with in order to inject Sebastian’s traits into the narrative when he was initially acting human (for the sake of spooking Ciel). I don’t think that waiting until the end has come to fruition before he discloses the terms of his payment is out of character for Sebastian because he did the same to Ciel, but forcing a contract onto a girl unknowingly is out of character and completely disregards the justification Sebastian has for his behavior.
Repeatedly, we’ve had characters that mirror/act as a foil to Sebastian who have white hair. This guy in the flashback having white hair may either be finally bringing that to the forefront by giving even Sebastian himself white hair, OR it is just yet another character following that trend.
Whatever the case may be, if there is another demon, I think it was one of the voices in Modri’s room. The one who recognized Sebastian by smell or the one that laughed at how serious he looks. I’m calling it being Blavat, if it isn’t Sebastian, bc I already had that in my drafts and that demon potentially being aware of Sebastian kinda reinforced that idea.
(Blavat also chose Violet, and we still don’t know why Modri sprayed Sebastian with blood)
But back to Modri, here’s an idea for potential shenanigans:
Sebastian lands on Beauty and uses it to flatter Modri and attempt to get in his good graces, without needing to lie. The feelings he expresses for Modri’s tale of passion is actually how he feels about Ciel in turn, but that is covert admission.
Ciel does not see it this way. He listens to the story and catches on to how quickly Sebastian moved on after just having eaten another soul he admired for all of 3 days, noted how the ‘Sebastian’ in the story said that he’d be coming back for desert*, and how Modri chanced after him to enter a contract even as he knew he would be eaten in the end. So he believes Sebastian to still have an interest in forming a contract with him, and Modri could still fall to temptation. Of course He’ll probably see this as disgustingly pathetic too, maybe not as disgusting as Sebastian’s behavior, but it would be clear to Ciel that Modri is doing this because he wants to and not in honor of anyone else (even the Lord) or else he would not have fallen to temptation so easily.
I still think there’s a good precedent for Sebastian doing Heathfield routine, and Ciel not buying it lol. Maybe there’ll be other tricks the hotel will pull to strain the relationship and force Sebastian into disobedience and incompetence, unbeknownst to Ciel.
** You had chapter 220’s cover subtitle saying “The best ingredients are saved for last” (or my version, “the best ingredients are beyond the dinner”) which may have been foreshadowing this conflict as well as my interpretation where I thought that the company at the table surpasses (in nourishment) the food itself.
I think Ciel is probably a descendant of exorcists, and that is why we’re seeing Modri taking an oath to be a dog hunting the creature of hell, like Ciel is the watchdog fighting the evils of the underworld to protect the innocent. I think the family ring plays a part in this, like an arranged marriage. And that’s where Romeo and Juliet comes back into play since it’s been brought up a number of times (reaper arc, murder arc, right before the gwa).
Even the plan the Sebastian/the demon came up with resembles Romeo and Juliet: Anna was supposed to fake her death and elope with her love, but in the end practically everyone died. Romeo and Juliet is, very famously, mislabeled as a “romance”. This could work to give the audience a rude awakening, but I prefer the prospect of Sebastian getting one too. I do think that he romanticizes their relationship quite a bit. It keeps being suggested in the current arcs, not to mention Yana’s note about Sebastian’s behavior in season 2.
If Ciel’s family has a centuries old covenant with a demon or with an angel (or if it’s blavat, both) where each heir is promised to said demon after their time is up in exchange for what the initial ancestor wished for…. This one might have been the one behind slaughtering the household, as Vincent was aiming to break the cycle for his children, and r!Ciel was tempted and tricked by that demon like Anna was. They were kidnapped instead of killed in order to maintain the infinite food hack. This would parallel Sullivan’s story of the wolves and the emerald witches, who were required by the covenant to bind their feet. In this scenario, maybe Undertaker is actually on Sebastian’s side? Or putting him through trials to test his intentions, like Wolf only being saved by Ciel when he stayed loyal to Sullivan even when she chose to no longer be bound, even if it meant he’d have to lose her himself, because he could not stand the thought of her being killed. He was named Wolf but he wasn’t one of the actual wolves. Sebastian (who may have been the one to already betray his own kind) was summoned and promised Ciel’s soul instead of the demon who was supposed to get the heir. And with Sebastian, he actually fights evil for the sake of the people more than his predecessors did.
I have a stream of consciousness post I did the day the chapter dropped, I’m waiting for my friends to compare the releases for me 👁️
The ending teaser seemed to say something like “God • Demon(s) • Death-God(s); and a half‑life spent at the mercy of (/being tossed around by) them.”
(Japanese doesn’t generally have plural form nouns, so it could be “devils and gods”, but either way I think it’s referring to a demon and shinigami.).
The name Modri seems to mean “blue” and a couple of chapters ago, Yana referred to him as Blue-Faced on Twitter.
In the bottom half of this post I talk about how “romance” keeps coming up, in a way where it’s juxtaposed against a more sinister interpretation of whatever situation or thing is the subject of being referred to as romantic. Here’s a new one
It’s funny that i predicted Sebastian being framed as some molester but it ended up being his doppelgänger here, but he legitimately is rapey with a twisted sense of romance (and is instantly killed, apparently)
I didn’t think we were going to be so on the nose
I actually now think Sebastian is going to be doing this too, I mean we’ve seen him peaking through windows and climbing around to do so a number of times already.
Or this was the pattern completed on its own, I guess, man it happened so fast that it feels like pages are missing
Thank you so much!!!!!
You mean translate the whole thing? I wouldn’t be able to give any better a reading than you could get from Google Translate and an LLM yourself, I just crop and flip and scan with the camera function until I’ve stitched the text together correctly 🥲
The pages describing the process is written in flattering third person, so i suppose it must have been Kuma writing those parts? And then there are a couple of notes here and there from Yana. The pins represent the arcs so far and she says Sebastian’s special outfits are always difficult because his black tailcoat is a given, so she has to figure it out in the details.
The interview with Ono is basically the same as it always has been: he was amazed that they would give a role like Sebastian to me when I was so inexperienced, he was directed to be completely inhuman and never falter in doing so (with one example being how he was told that Sebastian doesn’t need to breathe), to always maintain that same elegant composure. The tidbit I posted before was actually something new to me lol
but this was several years ago now, in his interviews from the recent anime seasons he’s finally started saying that Sebastian’s delivery is supposed to be changing from that totally non human characterization. Though, he really first started saying that in the movie interviews because Sebastian got seriously hurt for the first time.
Here’s Yana message at the end:
Fifteen years ago, in the first volume of the manga, I wrote: "Black sinks deeper than any other color, yet it also stands out more strongly than all other."
Looking back now, it almost feels as though that statement predicted what Black Butler would become.
That I have been able to continue spinning the tale as I wished has been solely thanks to all of you continuing to support me.
And from here onward as well, I would be happy if I may receive your warm support until the end of this ongoing story.
The world is still in the midst of unprecedented turmoil.
I pray that at the end of this dark black world of uncertainty, there will be a time in that future where joys of every color bloom and flourish.
Thank you very much for visiting the Black Butler Exhibition -Rich Black-.
~Toboso
I haven’t run this by anybody yet, for the record— just wrote what seemed to be most accurate after interrogating the machine a bit. It echos sentiments I feel like we’re very familiar with outside of the main text itself, like the Public School Arc’s ED lyrics for instance.
But, obviously, the world being in turmoil is about covid, haha
been trying to purge my blog of some translation stuff, and the meta I wrote based on them by extension, because I misunderstand plenty and I don’t want to make myself out to be any kind of authority (u_u)
so I’ve been deleting and making posts private with the intention to rewrite them, sorry~
I’m still buttmad by the abrupt tone change/bad art combo from 226 and Modri folding completely with no second thoughts, so I’m pretty much expecting something close to this but worse lol: Since I will believe anything Sebastian says about it, Sebastian will just have no memory of it at all. Maybe it’s true maybe it’s not. Ciel will say it doesn’t matter either way, because he never cared about Sebastian’s past, the problem now is that they have to deal with this dude blowing his gasket in front of the queen. The fact that this probably means his life is ruined beyond repair because of all that’s been exposed will not even be acknowledged at all, he will still just think they have to expose the blood farming operation and then he can come home. None of the places Sebastian carried on about in chapter 213 will matter. Anything that might matter won’t matter when we get to it because it will have been 7 years since then. The year is 2034 and Twisted Wonderland has released 100s of more limited time events. If I expect the worst I’ll be happier :~]
Someone selling the 15th Anniversary Exhibition Pamphlet used these photos that include part of an interview with Sebastian’s voice actor, and of course take this with a grain of salt because I just ripped it from google translate’s image transcriber, but I thought this was a funny little anecdote
2087
stormborns
areudirty
tangentwithtanner
turnnoffyourmind