Black Butler: Emerald Witch Arc

I've been a fan of Black Butler for as long as I can remember and this is one of the best narrative arcs so far. If I had to judge based solely on that, my rating would be an 8 or higher. However, I can't get behind how the studio is handling a project that deserves so much respect. The visuals are often stunning, but if you look past embellishments, does the animation actually have much quality? The scenes are often lazy, the movements are not fluid or sometimes not shown at all and replaced by still frames. It often almost seems like they barely animatedmanga panels. Even though some scenes are really well executed, they don't make up for the overall problem. I'm not usually the type to nitpick on these details, I can enjoy even below-standard animation, but Black Butler deserves (finally) a good adaptation, especially this arc. And I don't think this studio is handling it well enough.

I need to preface - I absolutely adore Black Butler, so basically this review is me gushing about how much I loved it >w< To start with, I feel Cloverworks did a wonderful job adapting the manga. It stayed very true and accurate story wise, and delivered the story in a very wonderful way. They did much justice to some of my favorite parts of the manga, so I was estastic with this season. (this arc specifically is one of my favorite arcs of the manga). On to the next, the animation for this season was crisp and clean as always. Truly, Cloverworks' animation is atreat to look at for me. They accentuated certain parts of the story with the animation and really enhanced the overall viewing experience. ~ this needs its own space: The OP &amp; ED for this season were so well done I was going crazy. I watched them all the way through every episode it's so great ~ My only complaint was the recaps. I feel Cloverworks may have overestimated how many episodes they needed for this season and had to make do with the recaps, OR they did it on purpose so the episodes would end on certain points. Either way, at least recaps are skippable so I didn't really mind them too too much. Anyways, Black Butler is so awesome &lt;3 I really hope we get Blue Cult (season 6) cause it's such a good arc, and leads into some crazy stuff too :)

Sigh. I am basing this review off of my experience from reading the manga and watching it become "alive" through animation. This is one of my favorite arcs in the manga, but the anime adaptation really disappointed me. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed watching the show, but there were too many little things that really began to bug me as I continued watching the show. The most obvious downfall of this arc, which is even obvious in the manga, is that this arc is very short. You could argue that the number of chapters for this arc is similar to others, but trulythis arc is one of the shortest, and is followed by one of the longest. And this is what really irks me, but I'll explain later. The first red flag for this anime were the lengths of the opening and ending songs. Almost exclusively, these songs only account for three minutes of the twenty four minute run time. But for this season, they total to four minutes, on twenty three minute epsiodes. Now this may not seem like a big deal... but it becomes a problem later on when the show continuously makes these time shortcuts throughout the series. For example, in episode nine, the recap is almost five minutes of previous episodes content, and with the four minutes of op/ed and minute of ending content, the episode really only had fourteen minutes of actual content. It makes watching the show so much less enjoyable. Second, the animation. Don't get me wrong, it was beautiful. But the story boards were exact copies of the manga panels, like I kid you not, for example, episode nine, followed the same panels of chapters 100 and 101. To a T. At this point what is the point of the adaptation if nothing is being changed, if there are no new additions to it. An anime that does not use its won storyboards and shamelessly uses the manga as a base for each scene can never surpass the original work. Like why even animate it at that point? Ugh. it bothers me so much because I genuinely love the story and this arc, but the anime didn't bring anything to the table except my frustration. And now this is what really gets me. Because the content for this arc was so small, the anime team decided to use so many recaps that it easily bores the audience (who just watched the episode the previous week). Furthermore, this destroys the rewatch value because who would want to rewatch recaps? especially if you just watched the full episode previously (also I could just read the manga, it takes way less time and has the exact same effect as watching the anime). I wish the anime was either eight episodes (aka shorter with less recaps) or that they included some of the next arcs content and ended in a cliffhanger. And this is what actually angers me. Because I do not see it possible to animate the next arc into just 12 episodes due to the amount of content that needs to be covered (the arc itself is only around twenty chapters, with a massive cliffhanger that makes moving to the next arc almost seamless) Ugh anyways, I still liked this arc of the story, but the shameless recaps and longer op/ed as well as the poor storyboarding disappoints me.

I can’t believe that, out of all the Spring 2025 seasonal anime, I’d end up placing Black Butler: Emerald Witch Arc on the podium, mostly because Witch Watch is a second cour series. Honestly, this just shows how weak this season was overall, because Emerald Witch itself is quite inconsistent. The premise was strong. As someone who is an anime watcher only, it felt like we jumped right into the action, supposedly picking up from the second half of the Public School Arc. The setting was intriguing, the mystery had potential, and Sullivan and Wolf were excellent additions to the cast, especially since by this point,the main Phantomhive group feels a bit stale, with their personalities already fully established. Both the opening and ending themes stood out too. They didn’t sound like typical anime songs, but they fit the show’s atmosphere perfectly and left a strong impression. However, despite the strong start, the middle portion of the series struggled badly. The heavy use of recaps dragged the pacing down, making it feel like nothing more than filler. It honestly seemed like they only padded the runtime to tie this arc with Public School Arc for a combined 24-episode run, possibly to fulfill voice actor contracts or to squeeze more money from Japanese viewers via Blu-ray releases. Realistically, the story could’ve been wrapped up in just 10 or 11 episodes. I vividly remember one episode that had about nine minutes of recap, plus three to four minutes of opening and ending credits, leaving less than 10 minutes of actual new content. Expecting fans to wait a full week for that feels insulting. Even worse, it wasn’t just a one-time recap episode as they kept repeating the same recap scenes for six or seven episodes in a row. If they were going to be this lazy, they could’ve at least gotten creative by having different characters narrate the recap to offer new perspectives. The mystery itself was well-crafted, and I liked how they put Ciel and Sebastian into a "handicapped" position, which was a refreshing change of pace, but the resolution felt too rushed. The explanation made sense, but what followed afterward felt underwhelming, leaving me thinking, “That’s it?” The whole arc landed in a very mediocre spot for me. What ultimately saved the show was its final stretch. The animation, dialogue, voice acting, and atmosphere were all outstanding, reminding me just how good Black Butler can be when it focuses on its strengths instead of wasting time with unnecessary recaps. In the end, Emerald Witch Arc was a mixed bag: a strong beginning, a painfully weak middle, and a fantastic ending.