Book Review: Black Butler Volume 2 by Yana Toboso

Black Butler, Vol. 2 by Yana Toboso
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Volume Two of Black Butler opens up to a simple, normal day in the Phantomhive household, with Sebastian and the everyone else trying to get the house nice for some guests that were coming over the next day. Of course, with a whole bunch of shenanigans happening around the house, and with Tanaka drinking his tea, how can the party go off without a hitch?? It's up to Sebastian to put the party together and make sure it looks really nice for the party tomorrow.

And then the investigation about the famous killings around Whitechapel, which, to tell you the truth, oddly facinated me, mostly because yes, it happened in the Victorian Era (1888, to be exact) and also because I wondered what got into this Jack the Ripper's head when he killed those sex workers...anyway, I liked that they went around, trying to find out who did it, even went to see the Undertaker, who had to have a laugh before he even answered the question. When Sebastian made him laugh (how, I wanna know), that's when the Undertaker told Ciel what happened to the sex worker's body parts. After hearing the grim answer, Ciel told Sebastian to round up a list of suspects that could be doing all of the killing, and the person they thought was doing it was the Viscount Duritt.

So they went to one of the Viscount's parties (more of, they had to sneak in the party to catch him in the act) and, well, Elizabeth was there...so you know Ciel (dressed as a girl) had to run off each time she saw him. Ciel did have a moment alone with the Viscount, only for him to get knocked out by some drugs and then had to be blindfolded by the Viscount to be sold in a auction. But thank god Ciel called on Sebastian to save him, because the next morning, JACK THE RIPPER STRIKES AGAIN.

How???

Well that's a really good question...

Because while they were looking again, they found another one of Jack's supposed victims and went to Whitechapel to see if they can finally catch the one called Jack the Ripper...only to be stunned to find out that it's actually a grim reaper named Grell...and MADAME RED?! I was shocked to even read that (though I've seen the anime and it shocked me then as it shocked me now). Grell appearing as her true self has to be my favorite part of this manga, and her with her death scythe is pretty damned cool.

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