Earl Ciel Phantomhive and his literal hell of a Butler, Sebastian, are sent by Queen Victoria to Germany to investigate a series of mysterious deaths, a werewolf curse, and possible witch involvement!

Oh, Sebastian, your grace and poise, and yes, as always, your cooking and impeccable service to the Earl, we’ve missed you very much. It’s true that we just recently had an unexpected entire season of Black Butler in 2024, in the form of the Public School Arc, and while it certainly had all the characters of a Black Butler anime doing their investigative thing, that whole arc was actually a bit lighthearted for my taste. Fret not, loyal Victorian-age anime fans and gothic friends, for the Emerald Witch Arc is a return to the original form of the Black Butler we know and love, with mysteries and dark mayhem around every corner. Make sure your eyepatch is in place, and lets dive into this!

No matter how chagrined he may be to admit it, Earl Phantomhive is Queen Victoria’s loyal investigative Watchdog, so when she says he’s being sent off to Germany to look into a series of mysterious deaths, that is indeed what’s about to happen. The government and the Kaiser himself refused the Queen’s offer of aid, so somehow sending in the cursed Earl and his Hell of a butler and their servants makes more sense.

First and of course foremost is the language barrier problem, and that is addressed early on in this arc, which is a refreshing change from a lot of Anime that like to try and introduce other countries to their stories, but never even approach the shared-language problem. Speaking and understanding Deutsch is a very far cry from Japanese, but bear in mind, Earl Phantomhive and most of his cohorts are actually English natives, and it’s not as though Sebastian has issues with languages. Fortunately for them, most of the main German characters our Phantomhives encounter actually want to learn a shared language to communicate, and that’s helpful.

And so the Earl and his folk travel to the village of Wolfsschlucht, hidden deep within the Werewolves forest, where they encounter very unwelcoming villagers, and their Lord, Sieglinde Sullivan, and her own butler, Wolfram.

The village is full of mostly women, and they’re all entirely unwelcoming to any and all outsiders, but they seem to be willing to defer to Sieglinde as their de facto leader. She is, after all, the Emerald Witch who is going to come up with the ultimate spell that will somehow fix everything that’s going on with the witches’ curse, the werewolves’ forest, and even the miasma that’s affecting everything out there, too. In order to do that, though, Sieglinde, or Sullivan as the Earl takes to calling her, needs zero distractions to finish her spell research. Her entire life has been focused on this one moment; she’s never allowed to leave Emerald Castle. Indeed, Sullivan’s

poor innocent feet were subjected to the Chinese tradition of foot-binding so that she would be entirely focused on this one monumental task. Which, if we think about it, is a very old-German single-minded way of thinking, in the vein of Mengele and his ilk, and that is in no way a good thing.

Despite Sebastian being a Hell of a butler and Ciel encountering things like demons and Grim Reapers, both are entirely skeptical when it comes to witches’ curses and werewolves, and so even after being warned repeatedly against it, they both decide to go into the Werewolves’ forest to check things out for themselves. And there,e after a brief encounter with a werewolf, Ciel is subjected to the miasma of the forest, affecting him like poison gas quite terribly, so Sebastian has to abandon the investigation and bring him back to Emerald Castle for treatment.

Being stuck inside Ciel Phantomhive’s mind is not a fun proposition, especially when he’s been poisoned and is trying to fight his way back to consciousness and control. We are reminded of Ciel’s not-so-distant past, the tortures his own family and vile others subjected him to, of his demands for the power enough to take revenge on those who wronged him, his willingness to forge a contract with his oh-so-demonic butler, and take a curse upon his very eye for it. But also, Ciel Phantomhive the human, is all of thirteen years old, and who could blame him for being tired, and scared, and just so done with all this utter bullsh*t?

The Earl may have surrounded himself with loyal servants – the gardener Finnian who was an experimental subject himself before the Earl saved him, the house steward Tanaka who knew his family before they were slaughtered, the servant Snake who literally speaks for the various snakes he keeps about his person, the laughable housemaid Mey-Rin in her Coke-bottle glasses, the former American soldier Baldroy who now serves as the chef, even Sebastian himself – but rarely if ever does he show weakness to or in front of them, as a stoic English nobleman would. So to have Ciel, not Earl Phantomhive, sobbing like a little boy and hiding under the covers since he can’t see, is unnerving and concerning for everyone, but not his Hell of a butler. Oh no, Sebastian’s going to fix his Master by being his most beastial, blackened self, and if the Earl is not willing to claw his own way back from the darkness, then Sebastian gets to fulfill his contract and eat whatever’s left of Ciel Phantomhive. Either way, Sebastian wins. And Earl Ciel Phantomhive simply cannot have that.

The whole entire truth of the mystery of the Werewolves forest, the witches’ curse of Emerald castle, even Sullivan’s ultimate spell, turns out to be genuinely devastating in a less than supernatural and more real war-like fashion. The horror of what Sieglinde Sullivan has wrought in her tiny genius is something that Ciel Phantomhive can very much relate to, and her own issues of power and control all very much speak to his similar experiences. Despite Sullivan’s mistaken assumptions of sexual advances from the visiting Earl, the two of them actually have a lot in common, and anyone can admire the reserve of strength left in the girl, even as she determines to destroy Emerald castle and the nearby village, perhaps even the supposed nearby Werewolves forest, for what they did to her, and made her do.

Gorgeously done in the gothic Victorian style Black Butler is now known for, full of horror and the grotesqueries we do to each other in the name of acquiring power, Black Butler Emerald Witch Arc is available for your delectation on Crunchyroll now!