Kuroshitsuji event "Sono Shitsuji, Kyousou - Akai Valentine" report
Popping out of nowhere because I needed to write at least this report XD;
More updates about my personal life *might* come "later".
As you might know (or not), yesterday (January 31st) there was a Kuroshitsuji event in Yokohama. Since I was blessed enough to be able to attend, I figured I might share the contents with you all XD; I actually took notes during the show, because there's no way I could remember everything, but obviously I can't list all the jokes and stupid things they said (which formed 90% of the show, lol), so it's mostly the overall contents. Anyway, since they released a DVD for the previous event, I guess this one will make it to DVD too, so one day everybody will be able to enjoy it fully! :D
EDIT: They already updated the official website with news about the DVD release XD; It will be out on June 23rd ^^
The event was very funny, except for the announcement about the anime's second season, which was definitely NOT funny, not in the least -_- You might already know about it if you read spacexat's post on the Kuroshitsuji community, or the news might have already spread elsewhere XD; If you don't know yet, well, I'll talk about it too.
Warning: Today I reread the post, so I fixed most typos and such :D Though still, I'm not a native speaker, so don't expect my English to be perfect... Of course, there are spoilers regarding the ending of the anime, so if you don't want to know don't read. There are no spoilers regarding the manga, though.
Sono Shitsuji, Kyousou - Akai Valentine
(That butler, maddening noise - Red Valentine) <--translation
The event was at Pacifico Yokohama (which is, guess what, in Yokohama! 8D). I'd never been there but it's a very cool place. You can see the ocean, Odaiba, and it's very green and, well, it's cute, like Minato Mirai and Yokohama indeed. Anyway, as soon as I got there I could see where the hall was right away, because it was full of very suspicious girls wearing gothic-style clothes. You could just tell who was going to the event XDDD
Unfortunately, when I got to the hall the curry pan + chocolate set was sold out -_-;; I managed to get a pamphlet (right before they sold out) and a towel, and I took some photos of the expo panels, that you can see here (the light was terrible though), and of the musical poster, that you can see here. Actually, they gave us leaflets with that pic later, so I guess I'll just scan it next time, the quality will be definitely better.
I met up with spacexat, who also came to the event, but we had to part soon because we had to line up according to the number on our postcard. While waiting in line two Japanese girls who were in front of me asked me if I could speak Japanese, and we started chatting XD; I don't really know why Oo; I was kinda dressed in a butlerish way, so maybe they thought I was genre-savvy enough and I might know Japanese? Anyway, I admit I thought Japanese Kuroshitsuji fans woud be more "closed", but they were quite nice! Also, it was interesting to ask what they thought about the manga/anime etc, because I mostly know the Western point of view and I'm not really sure about the Japanese one... But apparently, it's not very different! They're wondering too whether what happened in the latest chapter was real or an act XD (I won't go into details not to spoil anybody, who read it will understand) And if the new boy who plays Ciel in the musical will be skilled enough to pull it off, and so on.
Going back to the event itself. We were actually controlled when we entered, I mean, we had to show an ID and they would actually check if the name was the same as on the postcard. So yeah, too bad for all the people who bought tickets on the auctions hoping that wouldn't happen ^^;; (apparently there were people reselling their tickets despite the warning about the ID)
When I was inside the hall a girl asked me if I was next to her (maybe she saw my ticket?), and since I was, we went to look for the seat together and we chatted a bit. ...And the girl in front of us turned around and gave us some food souvenirs from Fukuoka (her hometown) Oo; Yeah I'm surprised... So many nice people! I'm also VERY suprised that they actually started talking to a foreigner... They don't usually assume (or even hope) that you know the language. Did my clothes somehow speak "I know Japanese, talk to me!"? Or are Kuroshitsuji fans just very curious? **; (Sorry, I know this is basically unrelated to the event itself, but it never happened to me so far that Japanese people would start talking to me, so I'm really shocked - in a positive way of course - ^^;;)
Ok, and now... the actual event! XD
It was very nice that they had a maxi screen, I was in the back but quite in the middle and I could see really well thanks to the screen :D
First thing was obviously the cast introduction, which they called "Ai no kokuhaku" (confession of love) because the cast members would enter, make a love declaration to the audience and introduce themselves.
Cast members were: Daisuke Ono (Sebastian), Jun Fukuyama (Grell), Kouji Yusa (Lau), Hiroki Touchi (Bald), Yuuki Kaji (Finny), Satoshi Hino (Ash, that is the angel/"white butler"), Noriaki Sugiyama (William), Hiroki Yasumoto (Agni), Tatsuhisa Suzuki (Druitt), Shinnosuke Tachibana (Soma).
Plus... Junichi Suwabe (Undertaker)!!! He was hidden inside a standing coffin and came out after the others had introduced themselves. There's no need to say that the hall went "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH" as soon as he appeared 8D I was so happy too! I really like Suwabe, so I thought it was a pity that he wasn't in the cast! By the way, everybody had casual clothes except for Suwabe, who was wearing Japanese traditional clothing (basically a hakama), and Ono, who was nicely dressed as a butler, of course XD Also, Suzuki was all in white because apparently he got letters by fans "complaining" that his clothes weren't "white enough" to be Druitt, so he wanted to fix that XD (this fueled a joke with Hino who lamented that he was supposed to be the "purest" one, lol)
Other funny highlights... Suzuki saying that Fukuyama, as soon as he saw him, dived his hand inside the front of his shirt (that was quite open) and touched his nipples XD;;;; And also, Sugiyama was apparently very nervous (like he always is in front of people) and he introduced himself before the host (Hisanori Yoshida) actually called his name XD Of course everybody made fun of him.
As for the "love confessions", well, nothing that needs to be thoroughly talked about. But it was really funny to see the seiyuu acting live, *especially* Fukuyama, Suzuki and Suwabe (ya know, because of their charas' voices XD). Fukuyama was SO in high spirits from the beginning to the end of the show... I just love his Grell X°D
Also, Ono took the time to explain us that dressing as a butler doesn't necessarily require spending a lot of money. He said he got the whole dress for about 20,000 yen (which means that the clothes are actually HIS and not that they made him dress up on purpose, I guess... lol), and he bought the gloves in "BZZZBZBZZZBBZBZZhands" for 400 yen (that is Tokyu Hands of course, with useless censoring X°D). By the way, I HAVE those gloves!!! In November they had this fair in Animate, where you'd get bonuses if you bought Kuroshitsuji stuff wearing either white gloves, a top hat or a china dress. I swear I couldn't find normal, plain white gloves for cheap prices anywhere, so I ended up going to Tokyu Hands, were I found these - supposedly - gardening gloves that looked exactly like butlers gloves X°D (I still wonder who in the world does gardening with gloves like that..... maybe Sebastian? 8D) Anyway, since the price is the same and they look identical, I guess it's really those gloves! Lol, I'm kind of happy that I'm not the only one who bought "gardening" gloves for butlerish purposes X°D
(If you're wondering, these are the infamous gloves. I took this pic after going to Animate in November XD They're size-free and look better on men, though)
After the introduction they divided the cast into teams and started a quiz. Of course, do not expect it to be something serious... **
The teams were as follows: Tenshinranman ("simple and innocent") team -> Suzuki & Kaji, Uragiri ("traitor") team -> Hino & Yusa; Shiyounin ("servant") team -> Ono (lol despite being the protagonist) & Touchi; India team -> Yasumoto & Tachibana; Shinigami team -> Fukuyama & Sugiyama & Suwabe.
They had big buttons in front of them and a scoreboard on the back of the seats (that were heart-shaped). The first part of the quiz was "the first who answers (correctly) wins", so of course they had to press the button and answer. It looks simple. But....... 8D
This quiz corner was called "Sebastian daisuki DEATH" (Sebastian I love you DEATH/desu/you already know the pun by now), because indeed, the questions were about Sebastian. (And by the way, they all started with "Kuroshitsuji to ieba, Sebastian", that is kind of like "when speaking of Kuroshitsuji, Sebastian [is the first/obvious thing that comes to your mind]". Indeed, Kuroshitsuji IS Sebastian. Darn anime second season... But let's not worry about that now)
The first question was: "How tall is Sebastian?"
All the seiyuu started to press the buttons one after the other and say stupid and funny things (mostly random/barely connected to each other). A particularly "errrr" one was when someone (maybe Suwabe?) said "12 centimeters!" and someone else replied "isn't that the size of something else?" XD In the end, Ono correctly answered "186 cm" (of course, HE knows it XD)
The second question was: "How many times did Angela whip Sebastian?"
Again they started to say random things, among which Fukuyama said "after a few times he started to like it!" X°D Also, the host kept on repeating that they had to say the number of times ("kai" in Japanese), so everybody started to utter random sentences that finished with -kai (not the "kai" for "times" though) XD And when someone tried to actually answer seriously and the answer was wrong, they were like "lol, if you try to be serious and get it wrong it somehow sounds worse than when you say nonsense" XDDD In the end, the correct answer was "20 times", though I don't remember who said it Oo Anyway, to prove it, they showed the whipping scene, and NUMBERS would appear in a corner X°DDD (the seiyuu were also laughing and commenting during the scene)
The third question was: "How many times did Sebastian say 'yes, my lord'?"
Same nonsense as earlier. I don't remember who said the correct answer, but this was "20 times" too. Ono commented that "Oh, I thought it was more! It means that in some episodes he actually never said it". Which also makes sense, since he only says it when Ciel orders him something, and it doesn't really happen continuously. Anyway, to prove it, they showed us all of the "yes my lord"s (with numbers in a corner) and hilarity ensued, because seeing them one after the other did sound quite obnoxious XD Also, during the slideshow Ono was making weird moves and dramatic poses, lol.
First quiz corner finished!
The second quiz corner was called "Aishou wo bacchiri DEATH" ("perfect compatibility"). In every team one member had to guess something about the other and write it down. If he managed to guess, they won the points.
The first question was: "If you were a woman, what would you give as a present to the man you like? (no chocolate)"
-In Tenshinranman team Kaji had to guess Suzuki's answer. He answered "a kiss", but the right one was "money" XD; (Suzuki apparently thought of Kaji instead of "a random man" and said "he looks like he might use some money", lol)
-In Uragiri team Yusa had to guess Hino. He drew a woman (from the neck to the breasts) with a ribbon on her breasts, which was meant to mean "body" XD The right answer was "a handmade cake, or myself", so he actually guessed right!
-In Shiyounin team Touchi had to guess Ono. He wrote a list of ika (squid) dishes... because... HE (Touchi) loves ika X°DDD Ono was actually quite romantic and wrote "a heartfelt letter".
-In India team Yasumoto had to guess Tachibana. He wrote "myself, with a skirt shorter than usual" XD Tachibana actually answered "(myself wearing) a necklace with a chain attached to it", which is actually "worse" than what Yasumoto wrote... XDDD
-In Shinigami team Fukuyama and Sugiyama had to guess Suwabe. Fukuyama wrote "atashi" (a very girly way to say "me", which is also the pronoun Grell uses, by the way) and Sugiyama "kimono", because he said he saw Suwabe wearing traditional clothes quite a few times, so he thought he might like to dress in a kimono for his loved one if he were a girl (such deep considerations, lol). Suwabe wrote... "atata", which er, doesn't really mean anything (it sounds like martial arts, you know, Hokuto no Ken).. XD;;
Well, that wasn't an easy thing to guess! The second question went a bit better: "When you meet a woman for the first time, what is the first thing you look at? What is the first thing you're interested in?" The pairs were inverted, meaning that who had guessed before was the one to be guessed this time.
-In Shinigami team, they had to guess Sugiyama. Fukuyama wrote a big "eyes", and Suwabe wrote "aura" ("because he's pure", according to him) and drew a... kinda ugly female head below it X°D Sugiyama answered "eyes", so they actually got it right!
-In India team, Tachibana wrote "feet" and guessed it. Apparently Yasumoto said it in some radio... By the way, they kept on writing "jo aagya" next to their answers XD
-In Shiyounin team, Ono wrote "ika", thinking that Touchi might have written that just for fun. ...But instead, he wrote "the dark part hidden deep in the heart (darkness)" 8D; Somehow, Ono managed to convince the host that ika could be considered a "hidden part inside of someone", and he actually got points for the answer! X°D
-In Uragiri team Hino wrote "legs (zettai ryouiki, which is "absolute area" and basically means the part of nude leg that you can see between the clothes)", but there was a misunderstanding in that Yusa had thought he had to guess Hino, so he wrote "an 88cm D-size cup" thinking about him XD; Hino's real answer was actually "legs", and Yusa's was "hips", so they got no points, though they complained because Ono had gotten away with ika X°D
-In Tenshinranman team, Suzuki wrote "he pretends he's looking at the breasts but he's actually looking at the ass" XD; Kaji's correct answer was "legs - zettai ryouiki hurrah!", and.... since he wrote the same exact thing as Hino, following Ono's questionable ika reasoning they managed to get some points for that! X°D
There was supposed to be a third round, but since they ended up wasting more time than expected on this they had to cut it short and jump to the next part (a full hour had already passed at this point). To make up for this, they randomly decided that who managed to clear the next game would get 900 points (they were getting about 20-50 points per answer before this) XD
The game was called "Tablecloth taiketsu, Sebastian ni naritai DEATH" ("Tablecloth challenge, I want to become Sebastian DEATH"). Basically, a member from each team had to pull a tablecloth off a table without making the dishes fall.
Sugiyama managed to pull it off quite perfectly! Tachibana failed, Ono too (he was quite dejected, being Sebastian's seiyuu, lol), and Kaji failed badly XD; Hino succeeded, and since Uragiri team had more points than Shinigami team they won and got as a present some Kuroshitsuji goods, like the chocolate, curry pan and other random stuff. ...Which they couldn't eat right away because apparently the staff had glued the items together so that they wouldn't fall when they brought them on stage XD;
Next corner was "Nama afureko daikoufun DEATH" ("Live dubbing is very exciting DEATH"). As you might guess, they were going to dub a scene live. But not normally.. they would change the lines on the spot to make them funny.
The first group (everybody but Ono and Hino) re-dubbed a few scenes from the Hamlet special episode, and it was quite funny. They kept calling themselves with their real names and not the charas' XD; After that, Ono and Hino re-dubbed a fight scene between Sebastian and Ash, but it wasn't so funny... Ono asked him "what do you remember about new year's night" and he started yelling, with growing strength, "Mizuki Nana!!!!" (as you might know, this year she appeared in the super-famous musical show "Kouhaku", which is broadcasted every new year's night; it's unusual for a seiyuu, so it was a big honor for her). The last one was a re-dubbing of the Sebastian VS Grell fight scene by Ono and Fukuyama. That was funny enough, though at some point what they were saying was a bit too pointless (like "Grell" asking Ono if he remembered what he ate the day before... and he answering "no").
After this the host asked the seiyuu a few random things and made comments. For example, since they showed the part (in Hamlet) were Lau is groping Undertaker's "boobs", he joked that "incredibly, this time Suwabe-san was the uke!!" X°DDD (you might know that Suwabe, in the countless BL CDs he's voiced so far, is always the seme XD) Suwabe replied "it can't be helped UU" and Yusa said "but I only went up to B! ...Ah, sorry for being a Showa man" (B is a jargon for "petting", while A is "kisses" and C is "sex", but it's not really used anymore, so he basically said "sorry for using old words"). They also made a joke about some drama CD series Ono is in, in which he voices a butler.. EDIT: akillarian was kind enough to provide a link with info! XD Apparently, it's a drama/monologue series in which you just listen to the character talking and wanting to kiss you (and I guess making kisses noises all the time... I can see why they'd make fun of Ono, though he's not the only one who voiced in it of course X°D). Also, every once in a while someone would make jokes about Yasumoto and Germany (as you might know, he's famous for voicing Germany in Hetalia) XD Oh, and they harassed Sugiyama because he succeeded in ad libbing, lol.
After this, the seiyuu went away and.. there was a live performance by Taku Iwasaki and a tenor (whose name I can't remember)! They performed "La Gardenia" and had scenes from the anime flowing in the background in the meanwhile. The scenes mostly showed Sebastian and Ciel together, and sometimes they showed ambiguous scenes when the song was talking about kissing or something like that XD;;; (lol, I don't think it was intentional, but the song is in Italian, and I'm Italian, so yeah.. 8D; By the way, the tenor's pronunciation was really good! As was his voice, of course) Iwasaki also performed an instrumental piece. According to what Ono said, it was "Si deus me relinquit" (I don't know who taught him the pronunciation, I only understood the Latin title when he said the translation **''), but since it was piano only it was different than the original version, so I can't really recognize it... It was very beautiful, though! They showed the last scene from ep 24 during that piece.
Next we had some waiting time in which we were shown a slide show of random pictures (I think this time it was official anime illustrations... You could hear some very low fangirling when they showed pics with Sebastian and Ciel. Especially when they showed the one with Sebastian in bed with Ciel and the other charas as chibi in the air... XD; But fangirls were otherwise pretty silent, I guess they just don't want to be obvious XD;), and then it was picture drama time!
I'd read about the picture drama in Toboso's diary, so I was looking forward to it (I'm always looking forward to anything drawn by her). Basically, Kuma (Toboso's editor) wrote the scenario and she drew a number of pictures (about 30), then the seiyuu would dub it live. The theme, of course, is Valentine's Day.
I'll summarize it. The title is "Anata mo kore de shouten DEATH" ("And with this, you're going to pass away too [DEATH]")
It started with Grell trying to prepare some chocolate that would make Sebastian fall in love with him. William arrives and scolds him because he apparently robbed quite a few shops to get the chocolate he needed. They start to fight, and other charas start to arrive (always suddenly entering from a window XD;) and meddle. Sebastian is investigating the attack of the chocolate shops, Druitt wants to save the "beautiful woman" (aka Grell), Agni and Soma too arrive because they want to get the "woman", Ash keeps on blabbering about "impureness", Bald and Finny are just random, Lau tries to hit on Grell too... Grell, surrounded by men "fighting for him" (though they're just kind of randomly arguing), ends up summoning the Valentine fairy, which is Undertaker with a pink kind of heartshaped scythe and fairy wings... He uses magic and everyone is suddenly in love with Grell, even Sebastian. (And they also randomly eat curry pan to advertise it XD;) They argue again until Grell is suddenly, err, PREGNANT. (We're shown Grell with a mama belly *_*;) He also wonders who's the father, lol. We hear the first cry of a baby, and then William appears, and... it was only a dream! Will had hit Grell and he'd just fainted right away and dreamt everything XD;
Some of the pictures were quite... er, someone might say "interesting", someone "disturbing" XDD There was a quasi-kiss scene between Sebastian and Grell (of course it was the latter's imagination) and also a Grell with big shoujo eyes XD (not to mention fairy!Undertaker) Also, there was a scene where Agni said Soma might have glass shards (from the broken window) stuck here and there, so he would need to do "kunka kunka" (uuh yeah I think it was "kunka kunka") to him to cure him... Which is kind of, er, an onomatopoeia that should be like "heavily sniffing", though the way Agni said it sounded like something violent (and of course ambiguous) XD; And, Sebastian watches and starts to take notes... "Oooh I see, Agni-san is always so reliable and helpful, once again I can learn something from you! I need to take notes... The next time bocchan gets shards of glass stuck in his body I will do KUNKA KUNKA to him too..." X°DDDD (it's like, the word doesn't have an exact meaning, it just sounds... yeah...)
...After this crack, the mood suddenly turns dark. We see Sebastian inside some kind of ruined room (spacexat inferred it might be the Phantomhive house. It makes sense, indeed), in front of a table on which is a chocolate cake (with a little top hat decoration on it). He muses, saying that he made the cake out of habit although it's not necessary anymore, because now he doesn't have duties nor a mansion or a master to protect. He then crushes the cake and keeps speaking, saying that many years were supposed to be a blink to him, and that he had forgotten how time could pass slowly, and well, he's bored because he doesn't really have anything to do. Then he walks away in the mist/snow (whatever that was) and says "...Watashi wa akuma de hitori desu kara" ("because in the end I'm alone"/because I'm a demon and alone", your usual pun).
What is interesting is that, while Kuma did the whole scenario for the gag part, Sebastian's speech in the last serious part was actually written by Toboso herself (she just wrote it in her blog after the event). Apparently, Kuma told her that "I don't really understand your Sebastian, so I can't imitate him. I just have the feeling that he's kind of mean". (Meaning that she wrote the speech because he couldn't understand the chara enough to "use" him in a serious way) So I guess we might take it as "a glimpse" inside Toboso's mind about how Sebastian would react after Ciel's death? (though I don't know if she made up *all* of the speech or was asked to "make him act that way")
After the picture drama, the show reached the end. The cast made their last comments, and Ono actually made quite a long comment, like "I'm very happy that I've been able to voice Sebastian so far, because I could also make many great experiences, like releasing a chara single, doing events etc etc". He also removed his left glove and showed that he had black nail polish and Sebastian's symbol drawn on the back of his hand! XD He said he'd asked Toboso to draw it earlier, lol (she wrote on her blog that she used eyeliner and, since she didn't remember the exact design without her notes, she wrote in it "chanseba" instead of the usual letters XD "Chanseba" is apparently something Ono says often. Yeah, it's "Seba(s)chan", that is "Sebastian", reversed, in case you didn't notice). He looked very proud of it X°D Also, when he talked about that he referred to Toboso as "Tobocchan". I think this is something new, because she even titled her latest blog entry "They called me Tobocchan" X°DDD (she's also been called "Tobossan" apparently).
Another detail I was forgetting: near the very end, someone asked Ono "So you ate Ciel's soul. ...Did you make it hurt, in the end?" and Ono was silent for a second and then just started to whistle with a 'who knows' air and said nothing X°D (and they were like "he's totally feigning ignorance/he doesn't want to answer!")
And with this, the funny part is over. Everybody was probably wondering "and the announcement about the anime?" If you already know, you might understand why they put it last. It would have ruined everybody's mood -.- (it was already mood-ruining as it was, when I got out I was half-happy and half-shocked/pissed)
They basically said that they would make an announcement and then showed this trailer for season 2. The trailer showed a butler, who looked VERY similar to Sebastian except for eyes, glasses and hairstyle, with a young bocchan (I can't tell his age, I guess around Ciel's age or a bit older), blond with light eyes, who looked kind of, uhm, kind of emo? (at one point he was like sitting at his desk and laid his head on the desk in a somewhat depressed way) We weren't told whether the butler is a demon or not, but most people assumed he is.
I can't really remember the full trailer because I was too shocked and it couldn't "stay" in my mind **;; I don't know if it's England, the young boy is called Alois Trancy (アロイス・トランシー, can't remember the title as a noble) and will be voiced by Nana Mizuki, and the butler is called クロード・フォースタス (Claude Faustus?) and will be voiced by Takahiro Sakurai (who even appeared as a special guest in the event). They didn't really say anything about the setting, only that this butler's "catchphrase" is (referred to his young master) "watashi wa anata wo 'aku made' musaboritai", which is like "I want to devour you until the very end" (as a pun, it becomes "I'm a demon and I want to devour you", though the "de" is a bit strange in that position... I mean, shouldn't it be "watashi wa aku made anata wo musaboritai"? Otherwise it sounds kind of weird..). Which is further proof that the guy is a demon.
But here I wonder... Did Sebastian start a new fashion? I mean, demons found out that it's funny to take a boy as a master and "bring him up" before eating his soul? ...Isn't this a bit lame? Not to mention the main problem: HOW can they do a second season without Ciel and Sebastian???
I mean, ok, we have the ending to the first season, in which Ciel (supposedly) dies. Some people say that if they take back his death this would ruin the beautiful ending. I, too, think that it was a beautiful, bittersweet ending, BUT it was actually set after a series of nonsense crap involving an angel burning down London, a macabre emo zombiesh Queen Victoria and a giant demon-dog that transforms into a (naked) man. Still, when I think about the ending, I just pretend the rest didn't exist. In short, I watch the anime and only keep in my mind what I like about it.
...This means that, in my opinion, even if they started a new season with Ciel alive and a crappy reason for him to be, it still wouldn't be much crappier than most of the original plot of season one, and personally, I would just consider the ending to seas 1 as a beautiful "standalone" ending (well, it's not connected to the manga either, so I can only appreciate it as a standalone anyway), not connected to the start of seas 2. I wouldn't really consider the scene "ruined". But I really *cannot* accept something called Kuroshitsuji that does NOT have *the* kuroshitsuji, aka Sebastian, in it. I wouldn't really like Sebastian with a master different than Ciel (not because of shipping reasons, just because), and I think they might want to avoid that not to make the fans angry, but still... I'm not gonna watch seas 2 if it's really a random Kuroshitsuji-inspired demonbutler+youngshotaboy anime.....
Also, the other charas? Are they just going to be friends with the new guys? That wouldn't make much sense... But would they really throw away a full cast?
Anyway, going back to the event. Even if everything looked somewhat ambiguous, also because Sakurai himself said that he doesn't know much about the plot either as of now, it DID clearly look like the two guys will be the new main charas, and nobody mentioned Ciel and Sebastian, but Ono "passed" his gloves to Sakurai and pretended to cry and be depressed until the very end of the show, so yeah... I also personally think that they want to use very famous seiyuu to try to have an appeal to fans. Some people *did* rejoice when Sakurai was announced. ...But some people were just shocked. The girl sitting next to me, like me, was just stock-still and didn't even clap her hands. And I've been told some people were actually crying :/ So this means everybody understood the same thing, from what we were shown and told... Also, Ono's last speech, thinking about it now, could have been intended like somewhat of a farewell speech. Suwabe too said something on the line of "Please look forward to Undertaker from now on, though I'm not sure how and how much he'll be involved".
In November they had a poll in Animate, during a Kuroshitsuji fair, in which you could vote for your favorite character but you couldn't choose Sebastian or Ciel. I thought it was because otherwise everybody would've voted for them and they wanted to know which *secondary* charas were popular, but could it be that it was also related to this piece of news?
Anyway, the second season will be airing starting from July. I guess we can only wait for new info and HOPE that they're just trying to deceive us or scare us or I dunno, maybe they want to see the fans' reaction before giving more info, so that they can change something if needed?
This is so annoying... The event was so enjoyable, and then this announcement, like a cannonball... I was looking forward to the anime, because even if they didn't animate the circus arc (which I would like to see, indeed), if the original story was interesting and/or at least funny, I'd have watched it just because. I like to see the charas (the charas I know and love, not mary sues) interact, so I can just dismiss the plot if needed (the manga is what I read for the plot anyway). But this... I expected everything BUT this.
Ok, I could rant to no end about this, so I'll stop here. For now.
I hope you enjoyed reading about the seiyuus' dorkiness, though the anime info might have left a bitter aftertaste in your mouth -_-;
(I'm wondering what Toboso thinks about this, but remember that she can't really do much about it, so she might just do like many mangaka do, that is "yeah... watch the anime! it's good! they put lots of efforts in it! and it makes my manga more popu- *cough*. anyway, watch it please!")
EDIT: About the DVD release. They already updated the official website! The DVD is due to come out on June 23rd :D
PS: I haven't mentioned it above, but yeah, it was sad that Maaya Sakamoto wasn't in the cast, though it looks like they only wanted men, so well... Also, Ciel wasn't really talked about much, and when he was he was errr, dead 8D;; I guess it's all part of the seas2 plan?
More updates about my personal life *might* come "later".
As you might know (or not), yesterday (January 31st) there was a Kuroshitsuji event in Yokohama. Since I was blessed enough to be able to attend, I figured I might share the contents with you all XD; I actually took notes during the show, because there's no way I could remember everything, but obviously I can't list all the jokes and stupid things they said (which formed 90% of the show, lol), so it's mostly the overall contents. Anyway, since they released a DVD for the previous event, I guess this one will make it to DVD too, so one day everybody will be able to enjoy it fully! :D
EDIT: They already updated the official website with news about the DVD release XD; It will be out on June 23rd ^^
The event was very funny, except for the announcement about the anime's second season, which was definitely NOT funny, not in the least -_- You might already know about it if you read spacexat's post on the Kuroshitsuji community, or the news might have already spread elsewhere XD; If you don't know yet, well, I'll talk about it too.
Warning: Today I reread the post, so I fixed most typos and such :D Though still, I'm not a native speaker, so don't expect my English to be perfect... Of course, there are spoilers regarding the ending of the anime, so if you don't want to know don't read. There are no spoilers regarding the manga, though.
Sono Shitsuji, Kyousou - Akai Valentine
(That butler, maddening noise - Red Valentine) <--translation
The event was at Pacifico Yokohama (which is, guess what, in Yokohama! 8D). I'd never been there but it's a very cool place. You can see the ocean, Odaiba, and it's very green and, well, it's cute, like Minato Mirai and Yokohama indeed. Anyway, as soon as I got there I could see where the hall was right away, because it was full of very suspicious girls wearing gothic-style clothes. You could just tell who was going to the event XDDD
Unfortunately, when I got to the hall the curry pan + chocolate set was sold out -_-;; I managed to get a pamphlet (right before they sold out) and a towel, and I took some photos of the expo panels, that you can see here (the light was terrible though), and of the musical poster, that you can see here. Actually, they gave us leaflets with that pic later, so I guess I'll just scan it next time, the quality will be definitely better.
I met up with spacexat, who also came to the event, but we had to part soon because we had to line up according to the number on our postcard. While waiting in line two Japanese girls who were in front of me asked me if I could speak Japanese, and we started chatting XD; I don't really know why Oo; I was kinda dressed in a butlerish way, so maybe they thought I was genre-savvy enough and I might know Japanese? Anyway, I admit I thought Japanese Kuroshitsuji fans woud be more "closed", but they were quite nice! Also, it was interesting to ask what they thought about the manga/anime etc, because I mostly know the Western point of view and I'm not really sure about the Japanese one... But apparently, it's not very different! They're wondering too whether what happened in the latest chapter was real or an act XD (I won't go into details not to spoil anybody, who read it will understand) And if the new boy who plays Ciel in the musical will be skilled enough to pull it off, and so on.
Going back to the event itself. We were actually controlled when we entered, I mean, we had to show an ID and they would actually check if the name was the same as on the postcard. So yeah, too bad for all the people who bought tickets on the auctions hoping that wouldn't happen ^^;; (apparently there were people reselling their tickets despite the warning about the ID)
When I was inside the hall a girl asked me if I was next to her (maybe she saw my ticket?), and since I was, we went to look for the seat together and we chatted a bit. ...And the girl in front of us turned around and gave us some food souvenirs from Fukuoka (her hometown) Oo; Yeah I'm surprised... So many nice people! I'm also VERY suprised that they actually started talking to a foreigner... They don't usually assume (or even hope) that you know the language. Did my clothes somehow speak "I know Japanese, talk to me!"? Or are Kuroshitsuji fans just very curious? **; (Sorry, I know this is basically unrelated to the event itself, but it never happened to me so far that Japanese people would start talking to me, so I'm really shocked - in a positive way of course - ^^;;)
Ok, and now... the actual event! XD
It was very nice that they had a maxi screen, I was in the back but quite in the middle and I could see really well thanks to the screen :D
First thing was obviously the cast introduction, which they called "Ai no kokuhaku" (confession of love) because the cast members would enter, make a love declaration to the audience and introduce themselves.
Cast members were: Daisuke Ono (Sebastian), Jun Fukuyama (Grell), Kouji Yusa (Lau), Hiroki Touchi (Bald), Yuuki Kaji (Finny), Satoshi Hino (Ash, that is the angel/"white butler"), Noriaki Sugiyama (William), Hiroki Yasumoto (Agni), Tatsuhisa Suzuki (Druitt), Shinnosuke Tachibana (Soma).
Plus... Junichi Suwabe (Undertaker)!!! He was hidden inside a standing coffin and came out after the others had introduced themselves. There's no need to say that the hall went "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH" as soon as he appeared 8D I was so happy too! I really like Suwabe, so I thought it was a pity that he wasn't in the cast! By the way, everybody had casual clothes except for Suwabe, who was wearing Japanese traditional clothing (basically a hakama), and Ono, who was nicely dressed as a butler, of course XD Also, Suzuki was all in white because apparently he got letters by fans "complaining" that his clothes weren't "white enough" to be Druitt, so he wanted to fix that XD (this fueled a joke with Hino who lamented that he was supposed to be the "purest" one, lol)
Other funny highlights... Suzuki saying that Fukuyama, as soon as he saw him, dived his hand inside the front of his shirt (that was quite open) and touched his nipples XD;;;; And also, Sugiyama was apparently very nervous (like he always is in front of people) and he introduced himself before the host (Hisanori Yoshida) actually called his name XD Of course everybody made fun of him.
As for the "love confessions", well, nothing that needs to be thoroughly talked about. But it was really funny to see the seiyuu acting live, *especially* Fukuyama, Suzuki and Suwabe (ya know, because of their charas' voices XD). Fukuyama was SO in high spirits from the beginning to the end of the show... I just love his Grell X°D
Also, Ono took the time to explain us that dressing as a butler doesn't necessarily require spending a lot of money. He said he got the whole dress for about 20,000 yen (which means that the clothes are actually HIS and not that they made him dress up on purpose, I guess... lol), and he bought the gloves in "BZZZBZBZZZBBZBZZhands" for 400 yen (that is Tokyu Hands of course, with useless censoring X°D). By the way, I HAVE those gloves!!! In November they had this fair in Animate, where you'd get bonuses if you bought Kuroshitsuji stuff wearing either white gloves, a top hat or a china dress. I swear I couldn't find normal, plain white gloves for cheap prices anywhere, so I ended up going to Tokyu Hands, were I found these - supposedly - gardening gloves that looked exactly like butlers gloves X°D (I still wonder who in the world does gardening with gloves like that..... maybe Sebastian? 8D) Anyway, since the price is the same and they look identical, I guess it's really those gloves! Lol, I'm kind of happy that I'm not the only one who bought "gardening" gloves for butlerish purposes X°D
(If you're wondering, these are the infamous gloves. I took this pic after going to Animate in November XD They're size-free and look better on men, though)
After the introduction they divided the cast into teams and started a quiz. Of course, do not expect it to be something serious... **
The teams were as follows: Tenshinranman ("simple and innocent") team -> Suzuki & Kaji, Uragiri ("traitor") team -> Hino & Yusa; Shiyounin ("servant") team -> Ono (lol despite being the protagonist) & Touchi; India team -> Yasumoto & Tachibana; Shinigami team -> Fukuyama & Sugiyama & Suwabe.
They had big buttons in front of them and a scoreboard on the back of the seats (that were heart-shaped). The first part of the quiz was "the first who answers (correctly) wins", so of course they had to press the button and answer. It looks simple. But....... 8D
This quiz corner was called "Sebastian daisuki DEATH" (Sebastian I love you DEATH/desu/you already know the pun by now), because indeed, the questions were about Sebastian. (And by the way, they all started with "Kuroshitsuji to ieba, Sebastian", that is kind of like "when speaking of Kuroshitsuji, Sebastian [is the first/obvious thing that comes to your mind]". Indeed, Kuroshitsuji IS Sebastian. Darn anime second season... But let's not worry about that now)
The first question was: "How tall is Sebastian?"
All the seiyuu started to press the buttons one after the other and say stupid and funny things (mostly random/barely connected to each other). A particularly "errrr" one was when someone (maybe Suwabe?) said "12 centimeters!" and someone else replied "isn't that the size of something else?" XD In the end, Ono correctly answered "186 cm" (of course, HE knows it XD)
The second question was: "How many times did Angela whip Sebastian?"
Again they started to say random things, among which Fukuyama said "after a few times he started to like it!" X°D Also, the host kept on repeating that they had to say the number of times ("kai" in Japanese), so everybody started to utter random sentences that finished with -kai (not the "kai" for "times" though) XD And when someone tried to actually answer seriously and the answer was wrong, they were like "lol, if you try to be serious and get it wrong it somehow sounds worse than when you say nonsense" XDDD In the end, the correct answer was "20 times", though I don't remember who said it Oo Anyway, to prove it, they showed the whipping scene, and NUMBERS would appear in a corner X°DDD (the seiyuu were also laughing and commenting during the scene)
The third question was: "How many times did Sebastian say 'yes, my lord'?"
Same nonsense as earlier. I don't remember who said the correct answer, but this was "20 times" too. Ono commented that "Oh, I thought it was more! It means that in some episodes he actually never said it". Which also makes sense, since he only says it when Ciel orders him something, and it doesn't really happen continuously. Anyway, to prove it, they showed us all of the "yes my lord"s (with numbers in a corner) and hilarity ensued, because seeing them one after the other did sound quite obnoxious XD Also, during the slideshow Ono was making weird moves and dramatic poses, lol.
First quiz corner finished!
The second quiz corner was called "Aishou wo bacchiri DEATH" ("perfect compatibility"). In every team one member had to guess something about the other and write it down. If he managed to guess, they won the points.
The first question was: "If you were a woman, what would you give as a present to the man you like? (no chocolate)"
-In Tenshinranman team Kaji had to guess Suzuki's answer. He answered "a kiss", but the right one was "money" XD; (Suzuki apparently thought of Kaji instead of "a random man" and said "he looks like he might use some money", lol)
-In Uragiri team Yusa had to guess Hino. He drew a woman (from the neck to the breasts) with a ribbon on her breasts, which was meant to mean "body" XD The right answer was "a handmade cake, or myself", so he actually guessed right!
-In Shiyounin team Touchi had to guess Ono. He wrote a list of ika (squid) dishes... because... HE (Touchi) loves ika X°DDD Ono was actually quite romantic and wrote "a heartfelt letter".
-In India team Yasumoto had to guess Tachibana. He wrote "myself, with a skirt shorter than usual" XD Tachibana actually answered "(myself wearing) a necklace with a chain attached to it", which is actually "worse" than what Yasumoto wrote... XDDD
-In Shinigami team Fukuyama and Sugiyama had to guess Suwabe. Fukuyama wrote "atashi" (a very girly way to say "me", which is also the pronoun Grell uses, by the way) and Sugiyama "kimono", because he said he saw Suwabe wearing traditional clothes quite a few times, so he thought he might like to dress in a kimono for his loved one if he were a girl (such deep considerations, lol). Suwabe wrote... "atata", which er, doesn't really mean anything (it sounds like martial arts, you know, Hokuto no Ken).. XD;;
Well, that wasn't an easy thing to guess! The second question went a bit better: "When you meet a woman for the first time, what is the first thing you look at? What is the first thing you're interested in?" The pairs were inverted, meaning that who had guessed before was the one to be guessed this time.
-In Shinigami team, they had to guess Sugiyama. Fukuyama wrote a big "eyes", and Suwabe wrote "aura" ("because he's pure", according to him) and drew a... kinda ugly female head below it X°D Sugiyama answered "eyes", so they actually got it right!
-In India team, Tachibana wrote "feet" and guessed it. Apparently Yasumoto said it in some radio... By the way, they kept on writing "jo aagya" next to their answers XD
-In Shiyounin team, Ono wrote "ika", thinking that Touchi might have written that just for fun. ...But instead, he wrote "the dark part hidden deep in the heart (darkness)" 8D; Somehow, Ono managed to convince the host that ika could be considered a "hidden part inside of someone", and he actually got points for the answer! X°D
-In Uragiri team Hino wrote "legs (zettai ryouiki, which is "absolute area" and basically means the part of nude leg that you can see between the clothes)", but there was a misunderstanding in that Yusa had thought he had to guess Hino, so he wrote "an 88cm D-size cup" thinking about him XD; Hino's real answer was actually "legs", and Yusa's was "hips", so they got no points, though they complained because Ono had gotten away with ika X°D
-In Tenshinranman team, Suzuki wrote "he pretends he's looking at the breasts but he's actually looking at the ass" XD; Kaji's correct answer was "legs - zettai ryouiki hurrah!", and.... since he wrote the same exact thing as Hino, following Ono's questionable ika reasoning they managed to get some points for that! X°D
There was supposed to be a third round, but since they ended up wasting more time than expected on this they had to cut it short and jump to the next part (a full hour had already passed at this point). To make up for this, they randomly decided that who managed to clear the next game would get 900 points (they were getting about 20-50 points per answer before this) XD
The game was called "Tablecloth taiketsu, Sebastian ni naritai DEATH" ("Tablecloth challenge, I want to become Sebastian DEATH"). Basically, a member from each team had to pull a tablecloth off a table without making the dishes fall.
Sugiyama managed to pull it off quite perfectly! Tachibana failed, Ono too (he was quite dejected, being Sebastian's seiyuu, lol), and Kaji failed badly XD; Hino succeeded, and since Uragiri team had more points than Shinigami team they won and got as a present some Kuroshitsuji goods, like the chocolate, curry pan and other random stuff. ...Which they couldn't eat right away because apparently the staff had glued the items together so that they wouldn't fall when they brought them on stage XD;
Next corner was "Nama afureko daikoufun DEATH" ("Live dubbing is very exciting DEATH"). As you might guess, they were going to dub a scene live. But not normally.. they would change the lines on the spot to make them funny.
The first group (everybody but Ono and Hino) re-dubbed a few scenes from the Hamlet special episode, and it was quite funny. They kept calling themselves with their real names and not the charas' XD; After that, Ono and Hino re-dubbed a fight scene between Sebastian and Ash, but it wasn't so funny... Ono asked him "what do you remember about new year's night" and he started yelling, with growing strength, "Mizuki Nana!!!!" (as you might know, this year she appeared in the super-famous musical show "Kouhaku", which is broadcasted every new year's night; it's unusual for a seiyuu, so it was a big honor for her). The last one was a re-dubbing of the Sebastian VS Grell fight scene by Ono and Fukuyama. That was funny enough, though at some point what they were saying was a bit too pointless (like "Grell" asking Ono if he remembered what he ate the day before... and he answering "no").
After this the host asked the seiyuu a few random things and made comments. For example, since they showed the part (in Hamlet) were Lau is groping Undertaker's "boobs", he joked that "incredibly, this time Suwabe-san was the uke!!" X°DDD (you might know that Suwabe, in the countless BL CDs he's voiced so far, is always the seme XD) Suwabe replied "it can't be helped UU" and Yusa said "but I only went up to B! ...Ah, sorry for being a Showa man" (B is a jargon for "petting", while A is "kisses" and C is "sex", but it's not really used anymore, so he basically said "sorry for using old words"). They also made a joke about some drama CD series Ono is in, in which he voices a butler.. EDIT: akillarian was kind enough to provide a link with info! XD Apparently, it's a drama/monologue series in which you just listen to the character talking and wanting to kiss you (and I guess making kisses noises all the time... I can see why they'd make fun of Ono, though he's not the only one who voiced in it of course X°D). Also, every once in a while someone would make jokes about Yasumoto and Germany (as you might know, he's famous for voicing Germany in Hetalia) XD Oh, and they harassed Sugiyama because he succeeded in ad libbing, lol.
After this, the seiyuu went away and.. there was a live performance by Taku Iwasaki and a tenor (whose name I can't remember)! They performed "La Gardenia" and had scenes from the anime flowing in the background in the meanwhile. The scenes mostly showed Sebastian and Ciel together, and sometimes they showed ambiguous scenes when the song was talking about kissing or something like that XD;;; (lol, I don't think it was intentional, but the song is in Italian, and I'm Italian, so yeah.. 8D; By the way, the tenor's pronunciation was really good! As was his voice, of course) Iwasaki also performed an instrumental piece. According to what Ono said, it was "Si deus me relinquit" (I don't know who taught him the pronunciation, I only understood the Latin title when he said the translation **''), but since it was piano only it was different than the original version, so I can't really recognize it... It was very beautiful, though! They showed the last scene from ep 24 during that piece.
Next we had some waiting time in which we were shown a slide show of random pictures (I think this time it was official anime illustrations... You could hear some very low fangirling when they showed pics with Sebastian and Ciel. Especially when they showed the one with Sebastian in bed with Ciel and the other charas as chibi in the air... XD; But fangirls were otherwise pretty silent, I guess they just don't want to be obvious XD;), and then it was picture drama time!
I'd read about the picture drama in Toboso's diary, so I was looking forward to it (I'm always looking forward to anything drawn by her). Basically, Kuma (Toboso's editor) wrote the scenario and she drew a number of pictures (about 30), then the seiyuu would dub it live. The theme, of course, is Valentine's Day.
I'll summarize it. The title is "Anata mo kore de shouten DEATH" ("And with this, you're going to pass away too [DEATH]")
It started with Grell trying to prepare some chocolate that would make Sebastian fall in love with him. William arrives and scolds him because he apparently robbed quite a few shops to get the chocolate he needed. They start to fight, and other charas start to arrive (always suddenly entering from a window XD;) and meddle. Sebastian is investigating the attack of the chocolate shops, Druitt wants to save the "beautiful woman" (aka Grell), Agni and Soma too arrive because they want to get the "woman", Ash keeps on blabbering about "impureness", Bald and Finny are just random, Lau tries to hit on Grell too... Grell, surrounded by men "fighting for him" (though they're just kind of randomly arguing), ends up summoning the Valentine fairy, which is Undertaker with a pink kind of heartshaped scythe and fairy wings... He uses magic and everyone is suddenly in love with Grell, even Sebastian. (And they also randomly eat curry pan to advertise it XD;) They argue again until Grell is suddenly, err, PREGNANT. (We're shown Grell with a mama belly *_*;) He also wonders who's the father, lol. We hear the first cry of a baby, and then William appears, and... it was only a dream! Will had hit Grell and he'd just fainted right away and dreamt everything XD;
Some of the pictures were quite... er, someone might say "interesting", someone "disturbing" XDD There was a quasi-kiss scene between Sebastian and Grell (of course it was the latter's imagination) and also a Grell with big shoujo eyes XD (not to mention fairy!Undertaker) Also, there was a scene where Agni said Soma might have glass shards (from the broken window) stuck here and there, so he would need to do "kunka kunka" (uuh yeah I think it was "kunka kunka") to him to cure him... Which is kind of, er, an onomatopoeia that should be like "heavily sniffing", though the way Agni said it sounded like something violent (and of course ambiguous) XD; And, Sebastian watches and starts to take notes... "Oooh I see, Agni-san is always so reliable and helpful, once again I can learn something from you! I need to take notes... The next time bocchan gets shards of glass stuck in his body I will do KUNKA KUNKA to him too..." X°DDDD (it's like, the word doesn't have an exact meaning, it just sounds... yeah...)
...After this crack, the mood suddenly turns dark. We see Sebastian inside some kind of ruined room (spacexat inferred it might be the Phantomhive house. It makes sense, indeed), in front of a table on which is a chocolate cake (with a little top hat decoration on it). He muses, saying that he made the cake out of habit although it's not necessary anymore, because now he doesn't have duties nor a mansion or a master to protect. He then crushes the cake and keeps speaking, saying that many years were supposed to be a blink to him, and that he had forgotten how time could pass slowly, and well, he's bored because he doesn't really have anything to do. Then he walks away in the mist/snow (whatever that was) and says "...Watashi wa akuma de hitori desu kara" ("because in the end I'm alone"/because I'm a demon and alone", your usual pun).
What is interesting is that, while Kuma did the whole scenario for the gag part, Sebastian's speech in the last serious part was actually written by Toboso herself (she just wrote it in her blog after the event). Apparently, Kuma told her that "I don't really understand your Sebastian, so I can't imitate him. I just have the feeling that he's kind of mean". (Meaning that she wrote the speech because he couldn't understand the chara enough to "use" him in a serious way) So I guess we might take it as "a glimpse" inside Toboso's mind about how Sebastian would react after Ciel's death? (though I don't know if she made up *all* of the speech or was asked to "make him act that way")
After the picture drama, the show reached the end. The cast made their last comments, and Ono actually made quite a long comment, like "I'm very happy that I've been able to voice Sebastian so far, because I could also make many great experiences, like releasing a chara single, doing events etc etc". He also removed his left glove and showed that he had black nail polish and Sebastian's symbol drawn on the back of his hand! XD He said he'd asked Toboso to draw it earlier, lol (she wrote on her blog that she used eyeliner and, since she didn't remember the exact design without her notes, she wrote in it "chanseba" instead of the usual letters XD "Chanseba" is apparently something Ono says often. Yeah, it's "Seba(s)chan", that is "Sebastian", reversed, in case you didn't notice). He looked very proud of it X°D Also, when he talked about that he referred to Toboso as "Tobocchan". I think this is something new, because she even titled her latest blog entry "They called me Tobocchan" X°DDD (she's also been called "Tobossan" apparently).
Another detail I was forgetting: near the very end, someone asked Ono "So you ate Ciel's soul. ...Did you make it hurt, in the end?" and Ono was silent for a second and then just started to whistle with a 'who knows' air and said nothing X°D (and they were like "he's totally feigning ignorance/he doesn't want to answer!")
And with this, the funny part is over. Everybody was probably wondering "and the announcement about the anime?" If you already know, you might understand why they put it last. It would have ruined everybody's mood -.- (it was already mood-ruining as it was, when I got out I was half-happy and half-shocked/pissed)
They basically said that they would make an announcement and then showed this trailer for season 2. The trailer showed a butler, who looked VERY similar to Sebastian except for eyes, glasses and hairstyle, with a young bocchan (I can't tell his age, I guess around Ciel's age or a bit older), blond with light eyes, who looked kind of, uhm, kind of emo? (at one point he was like sitting at his desk and laid his head on the desk in a somewhat depressed way) We weren't told whether the butler is a demon or not, but most people assumed he is.
I can't really remember the full trailer because I was too shocked and it couldn't "stay" in my mind **;; I don't know if it's England, the young boy is called Alois Trancy (アロイス・トランシー, can't remember the title as a noble) and will be voiced by Nana Mizuki, and the butler is called クロード・フォースタス (Claude Faustus?) and will be voiced by Takahiro Sakurai (who even appeared as a special guest in the event). They didn't really say anything about the setting, only that this butler's "catchphrase" is (referred to his young master) "watashi wa anata wo 'aku made' musaboritai", which is like "I want to devour you until the very end" (as a pun, it becomes "I'm a demon and I want to devour you", though the "de" is a bit strange in that position... I mean, shouldn't it be "watashi wa aku made anata wo musaboritai"? Otherwise it sounds kind of weird..). Which is further proof that the guy is a demon.
But here I wonder... Did Sebastian start a new fashion? I mean, demons found out that it's funny to take a boy as a master and "bring him up" before eating his soul? ...Isn't this a bit lame? Not to mention the main problem: HOW can they do a second season without Ciel and Sebastian???
I mean, ok, we have the ending to the first season, in which Ciel (supposedly) dies. Some people say that if they take back his death this would ruin the beautiful ending. I, too, think that it was a beautiful, bittersweet ending, BUT it was actually set after a series of nonsense crap involving an angel burning down London, a macabre emo zombiesh Queen Victoria and a giant demon-dog that transforms into a (naked) man. Still, when I think about the ending, I just pretend the rest didn't exist. In short, I watch the anime and only keep in my mind what I like about it.
...This means that, in my opinion, even if they started a new season with Ciel alive and a crappy reason for him to be, it still wouldn't be much crappier than most of the original plot of season one, and personally, I would just consider the ending to seas 1 as a beautiful "standalone" ending (well, it's not connected to the manga either, so I can only appreciate it as a standalone anyway), not connected to the start of seas 2. I wouldn't really consider the scene "ruined". But I really *cannot* accept something called Kuroshitsuji that does NOT have *the* kuroshitsuji, aka Sebastian, in it. I wouldn't really like Sebastian with a master different than Ciel (not because of shipping reasons, just because), and I think they might want to avoid that not to make the fans angry, but still... I'm not gonna watch seas 2 if it's really a random Kuroshitsuji-inspired demonbutler+youngshotaboy anime.....
Also, the other charas? Are they just going to be friends with the new guys? That wouldn't make much sense... But would they really throw away a full cast?
Anyway, going back to the event. Even if everything looked somewhat ambiguous, also because Sakurai himself said that he doesn't know much about the plot either as of now, it DID clearly look like the two guys will be the new main charas, and nobody mentioned Ciel and Sebastian, but Ono "passed" his gloves to Sakurai and pretended to cry and be depressed until the very end of the show, so yeah... I also personally think that they want to use very famous seiyuu to try to have an appeal to fans. Some people *did* rejoice when Sakurai was announced. ...But some people were just shocked. The girl sitting next to me, like me, was just stock-still and didn't even clap her hands. And I've been told some people were actually crying :/ So this means everybody understood the same thing, from what we were shown and told... Also, Ono's last speech, thinking about it now, could have been intended like somewhat of a farewell speech. Suwabe too said something on the line of "Please look forward to Undertaker from now on, though I'm not sure how and how much he'll be involved".
In November they had a poll in Animate, during a Kuroshitsuji fair, in which you could vote for your favorite character but you couldn't choose Sebastian or Ciel. I thought it was because otherwise everybody would've voted for them and they wanted to know which *secondary* charas were popular, but could it be that it was also related to this piece of news?
Anyway, the second season will be airing starting from July. I guess we can only wait for new info and HOPE that they're just trying to deceive us or scare us or I dunno, maybe they want to see the fans' reaction before giving more info, so that they can change something if needed?
This is so annoying... The event was so enjoyable, and then this announcement, like a cannonball... I was looking forward to the anime, because even if they didn't animate the circus arc (which I would like to see, indeed), if the original story was interesting and/or at least funny, I'd have watched it just because. I like to see the charas (the charas I know and love, not mary sues) interact, so I can just dismiss the plot if needed (the manga is what I read for the plot anyway). But this... I expected everything BUT this.
Ok, I could rant to no end about this, so I'll stop here. For now.
I hope you enjoyed reading about the seiyuus' dorkiness, though the anime info might have left a bitter aftertaste in your mouth -_-;
(I'm wondering what Toboso thinks about this, but remember that she can't really do much about it, so she might just do like many mangaka do, that is "yeah... watch the anime! it's good! they put lots of efforts in it! and it makes my manga more popu- *cough*. anyway, watch it please!")
EDIT: About the DVD release. They already updated the official website! The DVD is due to come out on June 23rd :D
PS: I haven't mentioned it above, but yeah, it was sad that Maaya Sakamoto wasn't in the cast, though it looks like they only wanted men, so well... Also, Ciel wasn't really talked about much, and when he was he was errr, dead 8D;; I guess it's all part of the seas2 plan?