Black Butler is my favourite anime/manga. It's a funny but dark and mysterious show/manga filled with likable and memorable characters and is very consistent in it's quality. The story is engaging, even in the filler moments, every character has something to like about them, the animation in the anime is fantastic and it's just overall a fantastic franchise. Now, take everything positive I just said, and throw it out of the window because this movie just spits in the face of all of it.The acting is somewhat OK, but I say somewhat for a reason. They turned it into a weird drama love story mix which just doesn't work because Black Butler was never a love story to begin with. They completely ruined Ciel. They turned him into a girl and made her pose as a boy. What a joke. Sebastian looks stupid. Sebastian has none of his charm that he had in the manga and anime which comes off as extremely jarring. I would say more, but just watch it yourself to see what I'm talking about. Actually, don't. It's better for this movie to be forgotten.

I should point out at the outset of this review that I've never seen the anime or read the manga version of BLACK BUTLER; I only watch live action movies as a rule (although I make an exception for Studio Ghibli) so I came to this completely new. I suppose the film it most resembled for me was DEATH NOTE, another live action adaptation of a popular anime, but compared to DEATH NOTE, BLACK BUTLER is a huge disappointment.I suppose this isn't a bad film per se; rather, it's simply not very good. It's a predictable tale about a young girl fighting crime with a demon butler at her side. There's a whole Faustian thing going on here (again), but the story line is so slow and mannered that I was twiddling my thumbs and waiting for something interesting to happen. In addition, I found the leading characters unremarkable and unlikeable, and the efforts to depict the butler as some kind of 'cool' guy fall flat; I thought he was a posturing ponce.The plot takes a long time to get going and involves the usual stereotypes about betrayals and twists and an evil megamind planning to unleash a deadly virus on the public. The story is augmented with average CGI effects, neither particularly good nor particularly bad. There's a teen/young adult feel to the whole thing that made me feel like I was too old to be watching it at times. As for the action, it's slick and heavily stylised, incorporating way too much slow motion for my liking. BLACK BUTLER is certainly an inventive and fresh-looking film, but one I felt distinctly 'meh' about.

Kuroshitsuji is one my favorites anime and manga and I did like the movie. It is obviously not even nearly as great as the manga and the anime are but I think it wasn't a truly bad movie; tough I have to say the reason for me not to be disappointed was that I wasn't expecting much... In fact I was expecting to totally hate it. I think if you're not a fan of the anime and/or the manga you're going to like it; if you are, then you have to watch it with an open mind. In my opinion it's nearly impossible to pay tribute to such a great story, as Kuroshitsuji is, in a single movie but the people involved in the creation of this one made a good try. I specially enjoyed the effort of the actor who played Sebastian and most of the action scenes; specially the Rin's one (OK, OK, I loved that scene... please don't judge me). Judge for yourself but I think you're not going to regret giving it a chance... Just don't expect the awesomeness of the original story and of all of the characters... the manga is so good it sets the bar too damn high, be reasonable before judging. PS: Pardon my English.

Please forget the opinions of manga fundamentalists. To quote the Black Butler, "their opinions slightly fuel my wish for killing". They are not alone on this world and these movies are made for more general public who do not have encyclopedic knowledge of the respective fictive universes. So their fundamentalist dismissals of movies based on this argument are totally off the mark.I have seen the Black Butler movie for the very first time and I have kinda liked it. Of course, there is an incredibly complex storyline that makes the Japanese stories hard to follow for us, the plain West village folks. It might be a hard thing to swallow for some but it is worth it.The story is actually a near future sci-fi fantasy crime movie. Even though this might seem to be bizarre, it is actually very cool. The plot is somewhat familiar for the Westerners as it builds on the West culture. The uneasy relationship between the "master" and "servant", that is somewhere between the love and the hate is also very interesting. The "master" might seem spoiled and much more powerful "servant" might seem cold and cynical, but the ending is really powerful.Forget the critics. This is very "above average" drama, a crime movie and a somewhat bizarre love story. Pretty much unforgettable experience. And yes, the opening sequence is one of the most amazing combat scenes I have seen: If you meet a well dressed butler with a butter knife asking politely for something, you should not laugh at him. You should not!