Trivia: Emerald Witch Arc and more! (Part 1/2)
As I did a compilation like this for Season 4, I decided to do one for Season 5 too! :)
I already put all the information from this post on the wiki btw! (Please remember to use the new wiki which gets properly updated and will continue to surpass the old one info-wise~ :))
This time, tumblr won't let me put everything in one post, so it's a two-parter^^'
Spoiler note: The below trivia points include spoilers for the entire Emerald Witch Arc/Season 5, but I was careful to hide spoilers for everything beyond it.
Emerald Witch Arc trivia
The Emerald Witch Arc "is not a story about the oldest magic that is still left in the depths of a forest but a story based on the historical shift that occurred in the early 20th century with the help of the latest scientific weapons." It is also a story "about children who are at the mercy of adults."
During the TV airing, there is a commercial break after Sieglinde introduces herself in German. Afterwards, she introduces herself again in Japanese, and the rest of the episode continues without any more spoken German. Mr K commented that viewers should imagine that this shift comes from a perspective change: from Ciel's POV (pre-ad break) to Sebastian's (post-ad break).
It was screenwriter Hiroyuki Yoshino's idea to incorporate the brief flashback of Sebastian giving Ciel warm milk with honey for the first time.
Yana could only think "wow, this looks a lot more gruesome in color than I expected" when she saw the "miasma"-scene in color for the first time. The scene got a lot of attention when the corresponding manga chapters were released, and the editor-in-chief even asked her if it was "okay to do this to a good-looking character?"
Mr K pointed out that the Urðarbrunnr, which Sieglinde mentions in her incantation in Ch90/S5E3, is a wellspring beneath the world tree Yggdrasil. Per his words, when they were in the cauldron, Ciel and Sebastian were given water "from" the spring "that is said to keep the world tree alive."
Mr K said the Werewolves' Forest could have been used as a testing place for mustard gas "until the time came." (The synthesis of mustard gas was perfected by the Germans in 1886, but the gas was not used in warfare until World War I.)
Sieglinde's "magic elixir" is sodium hypochlorite. As it's also used for disinfection, Mr K joked the cauldron might smell like a "swimming pool."
An otherworldly swimming pool?
The extra scene in S5E4 of Sebastian pulling the bedsheet from under Sieglinde is a self-homage to the similar scene in Ch1/Ep1.
Oscar makes a "puff-puff" sound when he inspects Anne. Mr K said that it is a sound that will be familiar to players of Square Enix games. (It "is an onomatopoeia that conveys a woman's breasts being rubbed in someone's face" and was "first coined by Akira Toriyama, creator of Dragon Ball and lead artist of Dragon Quest, both of which featured it." Dragon Quest is a video game series published by Square Enix. "Puff-puff" is included in and referenced by various other games too.)
The "A horse?" surprise is a nod to the "A deer?" scene from Ch18. (The "Who is that?" scene from Ch140 is a nod to it as well.)
Wolfsschlucht is only inhabited by soldiers and researchers.
Yana knows that panzers (and toxic gas) were used in warfare only much later in time. She still included a panzer because she wanted it to be the arc's "final boss." When her assistants remarked that the final boss is not "a person," she replied that "the butler is not a person either, so there is no problem."
The panzer is a "cartoonish arrangement" of the Sturmpanzerwagen A7V, the first operational German tank. It was modified in response to the preconceptions of modern laymen and was purposefully not accurately depicted.
The climactic fight in the Werewolves' Forest was rather strenuous to draw because everything was still done manually at that time: The lace and decorations on Sieglinde's dress had to be hand-drawn, and when Ciel wore it during the fight against the panzer and the infantry, it was so much work that Yana and her assistants even cried.
Because they had no 3D technology for weapons and panzers back then, Yana made a paper infantry which she placed around a milk carton panzer. She then photographed this arrangement as a reference for her art. (Because Yana used milk cartons to help her visualise the Campania too, she remarked that "milk is great.")
Yana liked the added lines for Wolfram's drill sergeant so much that she "cackled" when she received the script. The sergeant's "abusive language" reminded Mr K of the movie Full Metal Jacket.
Mr K pointed out that, although Ciel "arrogantly" encouraged Sieglinde to retrieve the bullet from Wolfram, he failed in a similar situation several years before. (see Ch139)
After the release of Ch105, the manga staff got a lot of enquiries about whether Undertaker's cryptic words referred to Vincent and whether Undertaker had resurrected him. (Ch129 revealed their true meaning.)
In the official English translation of Ch107, Ciel orders Sebastian to turn "that artless urchin" into a lady. In the Japanese original, he calls Sieglinde a "shrew" (じゃじゃ馬, Jajauma) as a nod to The Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare.
Nina's statement that she "just received a large order of costumes for a singing group" was a hint for the Blue Cult Arc. In the anime, a piece of one of these costumes is displayed when she says this.
Yoshino wrote into the screenplay that Ciel's "Lady Robin" disguise should be briefly shown when Sebastian mentions it. He did that because he knows about the dress' immense popularity. (There was an "unusually" high demand for Ciel in that dress although he only appeared in it for about 15 minutes. Numerous requests were made for licensed illustrations, merchandise, overseas DVD covers, etc.)
To meet Queen Victoria, Ciel wears his Order of the Garter uniform. Emperor Naruhito became a member of said order almost exactly a year before this episode aired (Naruhito received the order on June 25, 2024, and the episode aired on June 28, 2025).
While she watched S5E13, Yana remarked that it really shows "Ciel's terrible 19th-century male values."
MAISIE's lyrics were based on the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood. (To Mr K, Sieglinde is meant to be Little Red Riding Hood, the Emerald Witch Education Project the Big Bad Wolf, the village crone (who forgot her mother's love in favor of research) the grandmother, and Ciel and Sebastian are the huntsmen.)
The finished opening video amazed Yana (despite her having seen the storyboard beforehand). She thinks that everyone who loves anime should see it, not only those who know Kuroshitsuji, and that people will want to know about Kuroshitsuji when they see the Season 5 opening.
The ending's dancing sequence is a nod to the Ch100 cover, with Ciel even wearing his clothes from that cover. (The ending also includes a nod to the Ch94 cover.) Ciel dances with Finnian, Mey-Rin, and Baldroy in the order in which he employed them.
In the ending, Rachel, Vincent, Angelina, and the members of the Noah's Ark Circus come apart as differently-colored flower petals. Though no one is shown before the blue petals appear, they are meant to belong to a specific character (Ch129 spoiler!) nonetheless.
Yana is very happy with the ending video because it is so "in tune" with her work. Further, when she first received the song's demo, Yana immediately thought of the scene in which Sieglinde meets Queen Victoria and says with a determined look on her face, "For the people of the world, I promise you I shall do my best." (Ch108)
Public School Arc trivia
(All gathered from this article)
Yana picked the setting because she admires old English public schools like Eton College and Harrow School.
That she "found instances of former students saying the public school experience was very painful, or that public schools are essentially jails, and the students are prisoners" during her initial research for the arc only deepened her fascination with public schools.
Researching the English educational system was, though interesting, rather confusing and rough for Yana as it is very different from the Japanese one.
Yana came up with the four dormitories after she read that "the students with the highest marks on an academic exam were placed in a separate boarding house." This made her think, "Wouldn't it be interesting if instead of just the book-smart boys getting their own house, the ones gifted at sports and art also got their own houses?"
Red House was inspired by the "handful of movies [Yana] watched about public schools for [her] research, in which a ton of the characters acted big because of their money and family status." Yana also noted that while "it would be nice if [people's] efforts and talents were enough to earn [them] recognition, but that's not how things work in reality." Because she wants to "depict the bad parts of people like that" in her manga, she created Red House to place such characters in it for the Public School Arc.
Her concept for Red House was also "exceptionally high birth = boys who have been tutored in Latin and other traditional stuff since they were little, boys who've had experiences like going on a trip just to appreciate art, etc." As Weston College is an expensive school, all students are "little rich boys," however.
Yana thought that because Book of the Atlantic turned out so well in her eyes, Kuroshitsuji's anime adaptations were done and over. She was, thus, both extremely happy and surprised when she was approached seven years later about an anime continuation. The realization that this was truly happening only kicked in when she met the anime staff.
The Japan Cricket Association informed Yana about the Bodyline tactic which inspired Ciel's "Over-the-Edge Tactics." If they had not done that, "Ciel might have used even more ungentlemanly and ridiculous methods to wrest his victory."
Yana was thrilled to know that Masashi Ishihama would storyboard the opening as he is one of the animators she admires the most. She was "deeply moved both when [she] received the storyboards and when [she] saw the final video." Yana also loved Oka Okazaki's works beforehand and was happy that he was involved with the season's ending.
Character trivia
The signet ring Ciel wears belonged to Vincent. (Vincent wore it when he died.)
Sebastian does not wear a butler's real uniform: When Yana began working on Kuroshitsuji, she was only able to gather a small amount of information on the formal attire of butlers and, thus, decided to modify it to her liking and in accordance to her drawing capabilities at that time. In-universe, Sebastian is wearing the wrong clothes because he vaguely recreated what he believed a human butler wears.
Unfortunately, because of the manga's success, many people mistakenly believe that Sebastian's uniform is the actual formal uniform of a butler. (Mr K called Sebastian a "criminal" because of that.)
Sebastian has a "bad personality" and, thus, often waits until the last moment to save Ciel. Though he did this multiple times throughout the manga (e.g. the kidnapping in Volume 1), he genuinely did not foresee the situation with the Witch's Curse.
According to Mr K, the Witch's Curse might have only affected Sebastian's "human skin," which he wears as a "temporary disguise" to conceal himself from and endure the world, but not his demon-self.
Because Ciel ordered him not to use his supernatural powers openly (see Ch62), Sebastian has taken to simply working very quickly: Instead of teleporting, he "just" runs very fast. Instead of conjuring dresses out of thin air, he "just" sews them very swiftly. Etc.
Sebastian's true form is not solid, but a kind of malleable, shifting dark slime or tar. (Because she has to draw Sebastian's "tar" so often, Yana created a special digital brush for it, which she named "duruduru" after one of the words she used to describe this aspect of Sebastian when she discussed it with her team.)
Yana planned Finnian's backstory since before Ch1.
Finnian has no qualms or hesitation in choosing Ciel over Sebastian.
The tsuba of Tanaka's katana has a motif of two eagles, based on the double-headed eagle on the Phantomhive family's crest.
Yana has expressed her desire to draw "the story of how Tanaka became a butler someday."
Wolfram is younger than any of the previously introduced butlers in Kuroshitsuji. (Agni is 31, meaning that Wolfram is 30 or younger.)
In Ch101, Vincent says that Diedrich is actually "very gentle at heart" and dependable. Mr K and Yana have added to this, pointing out that Diedrich attacked and killed his own countrymen to protect Ciel and that his compassion prevents him from cutting ties with or ignoring "troublemakers."
Mr K confirmed that Oscar (and Wilde) were named after Oscar Wilde.
He also confirmed that Chlaus is Italian.
Mr K jokingly referred to the village crone as "the chairman of the 'Wolfsschlucht' theater company."
The concept for the village crone was "a village of customs—an old woman who says ominous things at the entrance to the village." Yana added that, in-story, Professor Sullivan herself must have created her character with that concept in mind. Because she was a researcher, Sullivan was likely very "obsessive" and "meticulous."
The design of Sieglinde's father was based on the German chemist Fritz Haber, the "father of chemical warfare."
In the manga, Ludger is briefly shown in Ch98 for the first time. However, only his back and chin were depicted then to trick readers into thinking that he is a still-thin Diedrich. Because Ludger speaks in the manga, "the illusion" would be broken in the anime; after all, the different voice actor would spoil that he is, in fact, not Diedrich. To keep the farce, Diedrich replaces Ludger in that moment in Season 5.
The design of Ludger's shoes was slightly changed—one of the three stripes was removed—for copyright reasons.
Screenwriter Yoshino joked that he felt like "Nina has appeared in the anime many times before." The remark made Yana laugh. (Nina's appearance in Season 5 marked her anime debut, though her creations have been included in the anime since the beginning, as she, i.a., designed the "Lady Robin" dress.)
Continued in Part 2
