Black Butler (anime)

The first anime adaptation of Kuroshitsuji.

Tropes used in Black Butler (anime) include:

• Abnormal Limb Rotation Range: The Dolls.
• Alternate Continuity: Starting at episode 7, the anime no longer follows the manga.
  • Several of the cast's anime renditions are also quite different in character from their manga counterparts.
• Butterfly of Death and Rebirth: All over the place in episode 20. Fitting, considering Lau's story and the fatal blow to both the Phantomhive company, which may or may not recover, and the deaths of Lau and Abberline.
• The Doll Episode: One of the anime fillers.
• Filler: Many episodes were anime-original because there weren't that many chapters of the manga at the time.
• Foreign Language Theme: "I'm Alive!", the first English ending theme.
• Ghost Amnesia: The ghost of King Edward has this.
• Hair Color Spoiler: Ash Ash has purple eyes and white hair. Who else has white hair and purple eyes? Angela. Angela is an angel. Therefore, when The Reveal happened, it wasn't much of a surprise.
• I Didn't Mean to Turn You On: Undertaker in the anime loves the feeling of the moisture leaving his body. Unbeknownst to Grell, who tosses him in salt and keeps him buried neck-down.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Subverted. In the first episode, Sebastian borrows a page from Sweeney Todd in dealing with a Corrupt Corporate Executive. However, he is later seen alive, though injured.
• Light Is Not Good: You know something's wrong when the demon butler is easier to see as heroic than the angel in the series.
• Lost Him in a Card Game: In season 1, Ciel loses a game of chess, and Sebastian, to the ghost of King Edward and his little brother Richard. Their contract isn't broken over a silly game of chess, and Sebastian soon returns when it's most beneficial.
• Moral Myopia: It seems that, to Ash/Angela, everyone but him/herself is impure. When s/he kills indiscriminately, alters memories and bangs pretty much anything (including Pluto), it's all good. But little girls who might someday become impure adults? Make 'em into dolls. Does an undyingly loyal Battle Butler Mannequinn dare break? Dump it. Cultists who followed your every word? All useless. The otherwise loyal queen who dares cling to her husband's body? Leave her to die. That kid that wants revenge because you personally ruined his life? SNUFF HIM OUT!
• Old-Timey Bathing Suit: In episode 7.
• Our Angels Are Different
• Overtook the Manga
• Playground Song: During an arc, Drocell the puppet-working-for-a-serial-killer keeps playing and singing London Bridge is Falling Down. His prey is young, beautiful girls that he turns into living dolls; the song is used to control said dolls and determine what materials to construct them from. Despite being male, he's kind enough to make an exception for Ciel.
  • Season 1 seems to love the song "London Bridge is Falling Down". The tune shows up all over the place.
• Shout-Out: Episode 7 has a few nods to the Sherlock Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles.
  • The famous painting The Isle of the Dead, by Arnold Böcklin shows up as a landscape.
• Stealth Pun: In one episode in the first season the rest of the staff are trying (and failing hard) to get a photograph of Sebastian. They plan ways to set up the shot and distract Sebastian on a scale model of the house marking Sebastian's position with the figure of a black sheep, which is Kuro Hitsuji in Japanese.
• Super-Deformed: The first ending has the characters portrayed in this style.
  • Tanaka gets to the point of it being a Lampshaded, Running Gag.
• Too Kinky to Torture: Sebastian, Grell, and Undertaker.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: Burning down London for purification? Okaaay.
• Verbal Tic: Drocell's "I reasoned".
• Villain Decay: Grell the shinigami went from being one half of Jack the Ripper and the murderer of Ciel's aunt to a non-threatening goofball with safety scissors and a crush on Sebastian.
  • The same could also be said about the residents of the town in episode 7 of season 1. At first, they're chaining people to walls to be mauled by dogs and following all sorts of weird, creepy rituals. Later, Sebastian and Ciel come across them...in swimsuits, doing some kind of organized exercise routine
• Whip It Good: In Episode 20, Angela pleases all the fangirls by whipping Sebastian.