Kuroshitsuji – 12

Summary

As Elizabeth slowly turns into a doll, she recalls her childhood with Ciel. She used to play with him happily, but remembers the day he came back after his long disappearance very distinctly. A quiet, sorrowful demeanor replaced the once carefree happy one, so now Elizabeth’s only desire is to make Ciel smile again.

At the top room of the tower Ciel arrived in during the last episode’s cliffhanger, he finds Sebastian waiting for him. As an army of dolls invade the room, Sebastian bursts out in song. Listening to his tune, the girls all stop and dance. One by one, Sebastian breaks all their necks somewhat comically. The doll-man tries to stop them from leaving, explaining that he will turn Ciel into a doll for his master with the blue diamond ring he’s wearing, but Sebastian erupts into a song again and jumps out of the window with Ciel in his arms.

Safely released on the ground, Ciel slaps Sebastian in anger for escaping before they could save Elizabeth. Sebastian explained that the contract supersedes any command Ciel gives, so he saved his life instead of saving Elizabeth. Ciel puts the ring on his finger, and declares he’ll just have to save them both.

Pluto’s howls lead everyone to a tower surrounded by a moat, and Grell finally realizes Pluto is less than human and not quite a dog. As Sebastian carries Pluto towards the tower, his collar glows bright blue and forces him to transform into his giant dog form. He runs into the house, and Sebastian allows him to go ahead so that he can guide them (or introduce them) once they catch up.

Quite in shape, everyone arrives at the top together to find a doll-making workshop, with Elizabeth resting in a chair in the back of the room. Ciel rushes to her side, and she looks up at him with a slightly plastic looking face. She notices the ring he’s wearing and seems happy that he’s pleased with her ‘gift.’ Bound by wires, her body lifts into the air and a giant ax lands into her arms. Against her will, she begins violently swinging and attacking Ciel while Sebastian helps him dodge. Grell lazily clips his fingernails on the sidelines until Sebastian asks sweetly for a favor, so he skillfully cuts the wires attached to Elizabeth in exchange for a few words of praise.

In response, the doll-man attaches his wires to everyone all at once, but Sebastian stumps him with a question about what he’s made of. He thought he was human, but has been noticing a problem with some weird stuff coming out of his ears occasionally… Sebastian uses Grell as a stepping stone and knocks the hay out of the doll-man’s head with the giant ax. Elizabeth wakes up and begins to return to her normal state, expressing her desire to celebrate Ciel’s birthday before she falls asleep in his arms.

In tatters, the doll-man hobbles to the door and opens it to introduce the guests to his master before falling to the ground one last time. They enter a moonlit room to find Pluto in his giant form lying obediently at the foot of a chair facing away from the door. Ciel asks the person sitting in the chair why he was turning the young women into dolls. The man in the chair reveals that he knows some shocking and private information about Ciel’s past, involving how he was tortured and kidnapped. Ciel rushes to the front of the chair to see the face of the man who knows that kind of secret information, but finds only a shabby man-sized doll, with another much smaller doll resting in its lap.

The small doll makes a horrifying face, and jumps out of the room to escape. Sebastian notes that he’s unable to stop it because whoever is controlling the doll is nowhere in this location, and is controlling the doll from very far away with the large amounts of wire hidden in the room.

Sebastian offers to take revenge for Madam Red, but Grell escapes hastily. Ciel says it’s fine, since he doesn’t want to allow Elizabeth to smell the scent of blood. At the police station, the young officer realizes today is Ciel’s birthday while he investigates a case, but his superior tells him he’s unlikely to be happy about it. The young officer wonders if there’s ever been a child who wasn’t pleased it was their birthday. Clearly he needs to do a little more investigating.

At Ciel’s mansion, everyone throws a small birthday party for him, and Sebastian serves everyone cake. Despite not wanting a party, he allowed it to happen since it was Elizabeth’s wish. As he bites down on his cake, he discovers Sebastian baked the blue diamond ring into the slice that he was served. Sebastian promises to protect Ciel, and anything that belongs to him, which apparently includes the heartfelt gift from Elizabeth.

Meanwhile, the small creepy doll runs through snowy London streets, onto a familiar bridge. Our old friend Angela grasps the doll as it runs towards her, replacing its dying words with her own, and crushes it in her hand before throwing it into the freezing river below.

Preview

First Thoughts

The silliness continues this week as we come to a temporary ending to this filler arc. There’s not much serious development to talk about, except for of course Angela’s reappearance and her mysterious knowledge of Ciel’s past. Somehow they were also able to make me slightly more sympathetic towards Elizabeth and her selfless efforts to make Ciel happy again. Good luck trying. I’m left wondering sometimes about her maid, Paula. Every other butler or maid in the series has some odd connection with the supernatural, but so far all Paula has is a supernatural love for jingle bells. She also let Elizabeth get captured and didn’t burst in miraculously to save her, so her demon connections may be lacking, but it’s too early to write it off as impossible just yet. If you haven’t built a healthy distrust for maids and butlers now, your fan-girl vision is probably just blinding you.

By far the best news in this episode was the preview for next week. As a late Christmas present, I’ll get that episode’s review out as quickly as possible. It looks like the remainder of this Angela-filler will take place after the Indian arc is finished.