Ciel initiates his counter attack.

——

After inviting Prince Soma to enroll in the school, Ciel enlists him to aid his investigation of Maurice Cole. In typical Soma fashion, he proceeds to irritate and stalk Maurice (on an elephant, no less) until finding substantial proof of Maurice’s falsehood. Ciel then summons Maurice to the art room and confronts the pretty boy with proof: a stack of reassembled flower-shaped cards that Maurice sent to his underlings to cover up his deceits. Instead of accepting Ciel’s suggestion to talk it out with the prefects, Maurice sends in a team of goonies to do unspeakable things to Ciel—but Greenhill and Edward arrive in the knick of time to save him. Ciel then reveals his trick: he had attached an incredible number of strings to the back of each painting in the art room—strings that connect across campus to the gazebo, where Redmond and the prefects listened to the entire debacle. Redmond fires Maurice and the other prefects lovingly proclaim the tearful Ciel as a model student of the school, while Sebastian hangs out the window with a look of utter disgust on his face.

Ciel really knows who his allies are. Soma has proven by now, time and time again, how valuable he is as an ally (despite his silly and frivolous personality that clashes so much with Ciel’s). The fact that Ciel has become reliant on Soma—even going so far as to get him directly involved in his personal investigation—is a nice development for Ciel’s character. It’s a sign of how much he has grown throughout the course of the series.

I really enjoyed the humor at the end of the chapter. The conclusion of the Maurice Cole mini-arc has been supremely satisfying and Ciel’s method of winning over the prefects have given the reader a sort of conspiratorial delight. Having the readers play the all-knowing spectator to Ciel’s own deceit is an extremely entertaining aspect of the series. And Sebastian’s face on the last page of the chapter is the epitome of priceless.

While I love the creativity of Ciel’s revenge and receive guilty pleasure from watching Maurice be humiliated; this chapter does not fulfill my expectations. The plot feels like a nagging itch on my side. I know something should happen, but there hasn’t been much evidence of an underlying plot for a while now. Instead, the focus has been on petty revenge and the mysterious P4—to the point that it beginning to resemble the popular shojo, Boys Over Flowers. Though, my restlessness may be due to the long wait between chapters; I’m assuming something will happen in the next chapter. Despite its shortcommings, this week’s chapter has been thorougly entertaining—with hope for interesting development in the future.

GO Rating: 3.5/5

[KissManga]