Hmm...maybe I should make the first post special...but, after considering about all the other trash that I've wrote in blogs/forums scattered in the dark corners of the Internet, writing about something I know a great deal about seems to be more appropriate...at least I have tons to say on the subjects. ^_^

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Ok...= =
I suppose that if I put everything I know about every anime that I want to write about then the post will be too long...so I will only do one anime per post. =(>_<)=
 
Before I continue, there is one word I want to explain here...はらぐろい - I don't know the English word for this... we don't even have the Chinese word for it, so we just use the Kanji of it... basically it means a person who looks cute/benign/etc but is actually mischievious/evil on the inside. Some good examples should be...hm... Lelouch (Code Geass), Yagami Light (Death Note) , Allen (DGM) - WHAT?!...well, he is one...concluded from later chapters of the manga..., Kyouya Otori (Ouran), etc...
 
*** In Kuroshitsuji, Sebastian is considered ... はらぐろい... (haraguroi?)

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Title: (JP)Kuroshitsuji
        (EN)Black Butler
Media: Manga (27 chapters so far)
           Anime (1st episode aired in Japan this October)
         
The manga of Kuroshitsuji has a total 26 chapters at the moment and has been going for a bit more than 2 years, since it is serialized monthly. I have read some scattered chapters of it in the anime magazines, but I had no intention of following it back then because I didn't think the plot suited me...too much "shojo" things in it although it was in the shonen category. But since this October's new anime series really don't have many new series that are interesting or of great quality, I had no choice... *sweats* but I have to admit that the art of Kuroshitsuji is really good. The mangaka didn't follow the manga mainstream (led by mangakas such as CLAMP I think) of drawing characters of really exaggerated proportions - her art style is a bit similar to that of the earlier DGM series.
 
So I thought it would be a good idea to read the manga first, just to get a general idea of what the manga is about, and...*sweats again* I became absorbed after a few chapters... I suppose my interests change?...anyway, the plot is quite...um...はらぐろい, and so are many characters...in fact, the one thing that makes this series so interesting is that the characters in it are basically divided into the two groups - silly and はらぐろい...of course there are some mild characters...
 
Each manga chapter features on one story, though a battle between Sebastian and the Shinigami is has taken the space of a whole book...and a little more of Ciel's past and Sebastian's secrets are revealed in each chapter. The background is set in England, so Toboso (the mangaka) must have had an enjoyble time drawing all the costumes...= = she stated that that was one big factore for her drawing the manga...another was that she has been wanting to draw a story about a butler every since she became a mangaka...though the idea had been rejected several times..
 
One thing about Kuroshitsuji is the use of puns throughout the whole manga. Toboso sure did make good use of her language...Japanese is really well suited to punning!...*sweats*  and that's how she slips in secrets about the characters of the plot. For instance, when Sebastian says "Bokuwa akumatsu shitsuji tsusukara"(I am nothing but a butler, which he says quite often...) the word "akuma" means both "butler" and "demon" so that kind of implies his identity. Also, when the Shinigami (appeared later in the manga) said to Sebastian that "kuretsumo shitsuji tsushi" (at least I am a butler), "tsushi" has the same pronouciation as "death" in JP...
 
Sebastian
People have been talking about Sebastian ever since the manga became popular, and before him, a character named Yoite from another series, Nabari no Ou. There are significant similarities among Sebastian, Yoite, and Mukuro from Katekyo. And since Katekyo is the oldest of the three mangas, someone has suspected that the mangakas of the other two series have been copying...though this was proved to be untrue... it's just that the three mangakas' styles are a bit alike, though Katekyo seems more shonen. (Kuroshitsuji and Nabari are both shonen, but...some people mistake them as shojo when they didn't follow the whole series... *like me...= =* )