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African American Butler
9 years ago
Today, in our serie "what you like is kinda shit" : BLACK BUTLER (at least its first two chapters)
I've never had any interest in reading Black Butler, really, for the same reason I never had any interest in Sword Art Online for example : from afar it looks incredibly generic. But I've seen pretty pictures of it so I decided to give it a try, yaknow. Cos fukkit. I got nothing better to do except for all the better things I have to do. Like, yaknow, trying to actually draw comics instead of reading comics. I don't have the motivation for it right now, I need ENTERTAINMENT. So entertain me, Black Butler. Compel me, make me want to read you : what is it I'm supposed to want to see ?
NO CLUE. I have no idea. There are one dimensional characters doing stuff. Apparently that's supposed to hold my attention. I mean are you fucking serious what the fuck where's the FUCKING NARRATIVE HOOK.
Okay, LET'S COMPARE :
In Case Closed or Metantei Conan or whatever it's called (Detective Conan in France), the hero's abilety and personality are shown quickly : He's good at deduction ! He's rather athletic ! He's vain and likes the attention the previously cited quality bring him ! He's in love with a girl but doesn't have the courage to tell her ! She gives him shit for being vain and they go in a theme park. Sadly, MURDER HAPPENS (it's okay, he was a dick) (probably). Here's another chance to establish what the manga will be, fleshing out the tone, fleshing out the characters. The hero's inquisitive mind gets the better of him and after he solves the murder, he leaves his girl to follow two suspicious dudes that he noticed but they get a hold of him and prove his suspicion correct since they try to murder him with a new drug their organisation created. Except it doesn't kill him, it rejvenates him, he turns back into a kid ! And with this body he now has to track down the people that tried to kill him.
All of this is a single chapter.
Here's Black Butler's first two chapters :
The butler does things to accomodate his master's wishes, which are : "get ready for a guest", "gimme food", "teach me how to dance". Apparently the butler can do everything. The other servants beside the butler are only here to be worthless idiots and make the butler shinein comparison cos he fixes their messes. Also the master has a fiancée but he doesn't really seem to think of her as anything but an annoyance. And he makes toys or something.
... There's nothing there. That's about as accurate a plot synopsis I can give. Hell, I've bashed Tokyo Ghoul for being aimless but at least it had me intrigued for a while. But here there is NO intrigue in these first two chapters, there’s hardly a narrative thread connecting all of this together. A kid runs a manor with few servants, but out of all of them only the dashing butler is greatly talented, all the others are numbnuts. It sounds like a comedic setting, right ? But there's no real comedy beyond "oh look how clumsy they are, look how awesome the butler is at fixing all their mistakes, innit funny / interesting ?"
As a comedy, the jokes ALL fall flat. ALL OF THEM. It's just shitty humor like "oh no ! Someone fell !" or "ahah, look at that serious guy being annoyed by the silly hat he's forced to wear !" My god, the cringe is real. But it can get worse. Cos at least these jokes are easy to understand, not funny, but comprehensive.
Some of them I had to interpret myself to understand what the comedic factor was. A character praise the butler on his supposed intelligence, it cuts to a small picture of a study room which we only know is a study room cos it's written since the picture itself only shows a messy set of books. If the books were nicely organized but had spiderwebs and dust on them, i'd understand that the butler isn't as cultivated as it would seem. But having discarded books around means they've been used, at least once, sooooooo... Watdafuk am I supposed to understand. I'm not sure if it was a joke ! I'm not sure if it was just the comic agreeing with itself ! Either way it's so sloppy that it becomes worthless.
This is perfectly representative of the sort of things the first two chapters are full of. The fact that I don't laugh at the jokes is subjective, I mean they suck but I dunnow, some retarded four year old kid with a tumor out there might laugh (and hopefully die due to the shock the laughter inflicted on his body cos FUCK THAT KID IT'S NOT FUCKING FUNNY). Sucking on a technical level tho, that's less subjective. The art is not awful, it's just standard, it has that shojo-manga flair where it is obvious that the artist doesn't want to draw backgrounds and guess what : it leads to confusion when you're suddenly supposed to notice something in said background. It's also paced awkwardly, you jump from one character having an emotional moment (which is cheesier than my DICK by the way) to a character announcing her goal of comedically dressing up the very same guy having an emotional moment. All in one page, so that the transition from one element to the next is super jarring.
Imagine if in Disintegrity I had Larsen start weeping after he came and in the very same page Zee slapped him out of it (around page 95-100, don't remember exactly which). It wouldn't feel like it mattered at all, it wouldn't feel like Larsen was genuinely distressed. And even if it does turn into a joke, the punchline (or slapline really) being placed in a seperate page is there to slap the reader out of it as well. Some modicum of thoughts is required when organizing the pages and panels.
Let's compare some more ! In Case Closed, the first chapter soon starts presenting the character throught the use of journals and TV shows that the character pass by and gloats over because they praise him. So you get both an idea of his ability and his character in a single funny little scene.
In Black Butler, exposition comes up like a wild Pokemon. You're suddenly treated to a bubble that explains stuff. For no reason. It just appears. It's not necessarily relevant to the current scene, it doesn't mesh in any way with what happened before or after, it's just there cos the writers think you need to know but couldn't be arsed to weave the info into the action. "Oh by the way here's what the master's compagny does, keep that in mind cos it's probably going to matter eventually. Okay, now let's get back to the totally unrelated whatever that is going on."
What can I say. It's just badly writen. But if there's no real hook, the visuals are badly put together, the comedy fails, at least the characters must be interesting enough to carry it, right ?
AHAH YOU FUCKING FOOL of course not. There's nothing to them. The master is a stoic no-nonsense kid. The butler is perfect in every possible way. The fiancée is an ADHD ridden girly girl who likes cutesy stuff. Everyone else is basically Rob Schneider. In these first two chapters, that's all there is to them.
There is nothing to hold onto. It's fucking awful. Again, perhaps it gets better, perhaps the author(s) improve drastically as it goes on... I don't know. I don't care. Whatever, I was entertained ripping through this garbage, I suppose I should be glad I got that out of it at least.
I've never had any interest in reading Black Butler, really, for the same reason I never had any interest in Sword Art Online for example : from afar it looks incredibly generic. But I've seen pretty pictures of it so I decided to give it a try, yaknow. Cos fukkit. I got nothing better to do except for all the better things I have to do. Like, yaknow, trying to actually draw comics instead of reading comics. I don't have the motivation for it right now, I need ENTERTAINMENT. So entertain me, Black Butler. Compel me, make me want to read you : what is it I'm supposed to want to see ?
NO CLUE. I have no idea. There are one dimensional characters doing stuff. Apparently that's supposed to hold my attention. I mean are you fucking serious what the fuck where's the FUCKING NARRATIVE HOOK.
Okay, LET'S COMPARE :
In Case Closed or Metantei Conan or whatever it's called (Detective Conan in France), the hero's abilety and personality are shown quickly : He's good at deduction ! He's rather athletic ! He's vain and likes the attention the previously cited quality bring him ! He's in love with a girl but doesn't have the courage to tell her ! She gives him shit for being vain and they go in a theme park. Sadly, MURDER HAPPENS (it's okay, he was a dick) (probably). Here's another chance to establish what the manga will be, fleshing out the tone, fleshing out the characters. The hero's inquisitive mind gets the better of him and after he solves the murder, he leaves his girl to follow two suspicious dudes that he noticed but they get a hold of him and prove his suspicion correct since they try to murder him with a new drug their organisation created. Except it doesn't kill him, it rejvenates him, he turns back into a kid ! And with this body he now has to track down the people that tried to kill him.
All of this is a single chapter.
Here's Black Butler's first two chapters :
The butler does things to accomodate his master's wishes, which are : "get ready for a guest", "gimme food", "teach me how to dance". Apparently the butler can do everything. The other servants beside the butler are only here to be worthless idiots and make the butler shinein comparison cos he fixes their messes. Also the master has a fiancée but he doesn't really seem to think of her as anything but an annoyance. And he makes toys or something.
... There's nothing there. That's about as accurate a plot synopsis I can give. Hell, I've bashed Tokyo Ghoul for being aimless but at least it had me intrigued for a while. But here there is NO intrigue in these first two chapters, there’s hardly a narrative thread connecting all of this together. A kid runs a manor with few servants, but out of all of them only the dashing butler is greatly talented, all the others are numbnuts. It sounds like a comedic setting, right ? But there's no real comedy beyond "oh look how clumsy they are, look how awesome the butler is at fixing all their mistakes, innit funny / interesting ?"
As a comedy, the jokes ALL fall flat. ALL OF THEM. It's just shitty humor like "oh no ! Someone fell !" or "ahah, look at that serious guy being annoyed by the silly hat he's forced to wear !" My god, the cringe is real. But it can get worse. Cos at least these jokes are easy to understand, not funny, but comprehensive.
Some of them I had to interpret myself to understand what the comedic factor was. A character praise the butler on his supposed intelligence, it cuts to a small picture of a study room which we only know is a study room cos it's written since the picture itself only shows a messy set of books. If the books were nicely organized but had spiderwebs and dust on them, i'd understand that the butler isn't as cultivated as it would seem. But having discarded books around means they've been used, at least once, sooooooo... Watdafuk am I supposed to understand. I'm not sure if it was a joke ! I'm not sure if it was just the comic agreeing with itself ! Either way it's so sloppy that it becomes worthless.
This is perfectly representative of the sort of things the first two chapters are full of. The fact that I don't laugh at the jokes is subjective, I mean they suck but I dunnow, some retarded four year old kid with a tumor out there might laugh (and hopefully die due to the shock the laughter inflicted on his body cos FUCK THAT KID IT'S NOT FUCKING FUNNY). Sucking on a technical level tho, that's less subjective. The art is not awful, it's just standard, it has that shojo-manga flair where it is obvious that the artist doesn't want to draw backgrounds and guess what : it leads to confusion when you're suddenly supposed to notice something in said background. It's also paced awkwardly, you jump from one character having an emotional moment (which is cheesier than my DICK by the way) to a character announcing her goal of comedically dressing up the very same guy having an emotional moment. All in one page, so that the transition from one element to the next is super jarring.
Imagine if in Disintegrity I had Larsen start weeping after he came and in the very same page Zee slapped him out of it (around page 95-100, don't remember exactly which). It wouldn't feel like it mattered at all, it wouldn't feel like Larsen was genuinely distressed. And even if it does turn into a joke, the punchline (or slapline really) being placed in a seperate page is there to slap the reader out of it as well. Some modicum of thoughts is required when organizing the pages and panels.
Let's compare some more ! In Case Closed, the first chapter soon starts presenting the character throught the use of journals and TV shows that the character pass by and gloats over because they praise him. So you get both an idea of his ability and his character in a single funny little scene.
In Black Butler, exposition comes up like a wild Pokemon. You're suddenly treated to a bubble that explains stuff. For no reason. It just appears. It's not necessarily relevant to the current scene, it doesn't mesh in any way with what happened before or after, it's just there cos the writers think you need to know but couldn't be arsed to weave the info into the action. "Oh by the way here's what the master's compagny does, keep that in mind cos it's probably going to matter eventually. Okay, now let's get back to the totally unrelated whatever that is going on."
What can I say. It's just badly writen. But if there's no real hook, the visuals are badly put together, the comedy fails, at least the characters must be interesting enough to carry it, right ?
AHAH YOU FUCKING FOOL of course not. There's nothing to them. The master is a stoic no-nonsense kid. The butler is perfect in every possible way. The fiancée is an ADHD ridden girly girl who likes cutesy stuff. Everyone else is basically Rob Schneider. In these first two chapters, that's all there is to them.
There is nothing to hold onto. It's fucking awful. Again, perhaps it gets better, perhaps the author(s) improve drastically as it goes on... I don't know. I don't care. Whatever, I was entertained ripping through this garbage, I suppose I should be glad I got that out of it at least.
"It's just badly writen. But if there's no real hook" yeah, i would agree, though i cant say much about the reading of the manga cos i watched the anime...well, some of it (6 episodes). but even then first 6 episodes was really hard to get into and i cant remember anyone's name or what happened to begin with so i find it pointless to continue to watch it, let alone read it. I feel that tokyo ghoul was better than this which is kind of sad cos tg kind of took a poopy.
But damn when you write, you sure as hell write a lot.
Why even reading ?
Its directed at an audience of teenagers that enjoy pretty faces more so(not that I'm insulting anyone who are adults, and even so fuck it) and though the gags/humor is stale and over used the somewhat story is at least a little bit interesting. I gave up reading it after awhile though cause the edgy-ness was killing me but I don't find it to be a terrible series. I enjoy yana toboso's work a lot and I guess if she like BB she can have it w/e.
You do see character development but if you can't get past chapter 2 then you're not gonna like the series cause its SLOW AS F U C K