Ciel’s actions start attracting attention in the search for the missing transfer student.

——

Ciel’s little faux pas blows over pretty quick, but the prefects aren’t about to forget his curiosity. As Ciel and Sebastian go around interviewing various students and teachers, they come to similar conclusions: that Derrick Arden was supposed to be an exceptional student at just about everything, that no one knew what exactly he was so good at, that the principal orchestrated his dorm transfer, and that the principal’s orders were absolute and not to be questioned. Several other students seem to also have been moved from their dorms to the purple dorm, which is supposed to house a collection of strange students. Finally, Ciel decides to drive Derrick Arden out of the dorm by throwing a lantern through a window to start a fire that will cause all students to exit the building and gather in the garden where prefects will do roll call.

I’m really glad Kuroshitsuji has started getting down to business with the Derrick Arden plot. They’re starting to inch closer and closer to the main secret behind this whole arc, if not a tad slowly. What seems to be a common occurrence with this arc is that the plot moves along at a slow pace. One could make the argument that the abundance of pages, compared to weekly series, gives the authors free reign to expand the details, but in this case it might be better to utilize the added pages in a different way. For example, we understood after the first few people Ciel interviewed that the principal is the big shadowy figure in charge of mysteriously transferring students. Instead of confirming this fact several more times, that space could have been used for other purposes.

However, in the chapter’s favor, a lot of detail was put into the subtle movements of the prefects as they moved about on their own, especially Violet. Ciel’s motives might be well hidden, but his actions have so far attracted a lot of attention. It would be foolish of us to think the prefects hadn’t noticed, so having them move around in the background adds a sense of peril to Ciel’s mission. Having him hurl the lantern to cause the fire was great—you know, when we ignore the fact that he just purposefully endangered the lives of a number of students living in an old building at a time when fire alarms and extinguishers hadn’t been invented yet.

GO Rating: 3/5

[KissManga]