I love how people are joking that our!Ciel is The One Who Shall Not Be Named, when in reality
Claudia
is.
Because okay sure we know her name, unlike our!Ciel’s, but damn if we ever find out about anything else when it comes to her in the plot.
She’s looming behind the truth of a big part of the main plot, or at least that’s the impression Sensei is giving me (oh yeah I’ll bet you anything that she’s very significant), but no real mention yet about anything besides her name.
sensei when
our!Ciel we know everything about and we have followed but don’t know his name.
Claudia, we know her name but almost nothing else.
There are so many other characters that I want to know more about, like Francis, Undertaker, the Shinigami’s, Meyrin and Baldo. I want to know what makes them who they are!!!
Since Mey is Chinese, I’m guessing her arc will also be related to whatever Lau & Ran Mao’s arc we’ll be getting? Just guessing though.
As for the recurring Shinigamis, like Grell and the others, there is no guarantee but I’m guessing that when we learn about how the organization works exactly (and what’s up with those superiors), we might find out about some elements of their past.
Finally, for Frances, UT, Tanaka, Claudia and even Vincent I’m guessing this will be more or less addressed through the same discussions/answer moments and since this is main plot material, it can’t be helped that Sensei is taking her time.
I mean, we have Othello who made a comment that might be implying he met Claudia when she was a little girl 50 years ago + Othello knew UT as a Shinigami, so I think he’ll be doing the honors at some point during this arc, maybe giving Ciel a few answers, which will hopefully lead him to ask for more to anyone who might be aware of what UT did after his desertion.
These people, besides UT himself (in case he may not feel like talking, as we saw in ch141), are most likely Tanaka and Frances, that is at least what seems to be making the most sense (considering they also both knew Claudia) and anyway they are fishy too, at least as far as the current narrative goes.
=> Tanaka because he joined the Phantomhive family when Claudia was the Watchdog so he is bound to know quite a lot about her death and some circumstances behind Vincent’s death too…
So it’s not like Sensei can avoid to eventually answer all of this. TBH though, I just wish the pacing wasn’t so… slow.
I mean, I get building the plot and wanting to focus each volume around certain developments but :// well, this is killing me. 3 years on this arc and we still don’t know how the blood transfusions came to be, how real!Ciel is so perfectly undead and if UT is truly alone behind the sect. Amongst other things.
The hopes I have is that once we get past the chess game between the twins, we will find out about the Phantomhive family, Claudia and UT, but until we’re there, 20 pages/a month is haaaard because it’s making the wait so much longer.
I can’t blame Yana though: since Claudia was made to be so mysterious ever since volume 8, giving answers about her is very probably giving out big big hints towards the main plot and the target of Ciel’s revenge (to us and to Ciel himself), so she gotta build it up as much as she finds it necessary.
Recently I wrote this post about Bardroy and the ‘code’ about how Bardroy asking about collecting wages is really a code between him and Sebastian. This code not only told Bardroy what he was to do next, it also calmed the moment and helped to protect the other servants.
When I was working on the post, one question that I kept wondering was how much Bardroy knew exactly about the situation. Was this code something worked up in advance or did he come up with it on the spot? If it was something that Sebastian and Bardroy had come up with previously, it brings up the question whether or not that Bardroy is privy to a bit more information than the other servants. I’m not suggesting he knows everything because I don’t think that he does, but it’s possible that he knows a bit more.
Of the three servants of Bardroy, Mey-Rin, and Finnian, we only really know much about sweet Finny. Bardoy and Mey-Rin’s backstories have been left mostly in the dark. It appears that Mey-Rin was some sort of assassin sent to kill our!Ciel at some point.
She also said later on to Agni that she hadn’t been allowed to wear dresses and skirts before becoming a maid.
Bardroy had been a soldier.
He even appeared to be the only survivor of some sort of battle, but we don’t know much more about him.
However, in times the servants have needed to act when Sebastian wasn’t around, like back in the circus arc, it was Bardroy who took charge. This could be because he’s the oldest with the most battle experience. In fact that makes sense, but there’s also a chance that Bardroy does have a bit more of an idea of what is happening.
There’s a similar situation in the manor murders arc. There are multiple times that Bardroy is seen taking a bit of a leadership role. Again, I don’t think Bardroy knew everything, but he was the one that quickly explained a wet (and supposedly dead) Sebastian as being the result of a leak.
Of course, this would be logical in this situation. At the same time, Bardroy was providing a reasonable explanation for Sebastian’s wet state without drawing any suspicion towards Sebastian.
There’s also one other thing that I find interesting. Look at these panels where the servants were ‘found.’
Do you notice anything different about Bardroy? In both the scene with Mey-Rin and Finny, our!Ciel is present and looking at them – and we know for a fact that our!Ciel chose Finny. It could have been the same for Mey-Rin, although we have no idea at this point. We do not see our!Ciel when Sebastian is looking at Bardroy. It could just be the angle. After all, we can only see Sebastian’s head meaning that if our!Ciel was beside Sebastian, he wouldn’t be tall enough to be seen. At the same time, it was a conscious decision to draw that scene from that angle. What if our!Ciel wasn’t there? Perhaps Mey-Rin and Finny were our!Ciel’s choices, but Sebastian was the one who chose Bardroy.
I recognize there’s a lot of speculation here, but I can’t help but wonder. How much does Bardroy really know?
I’d have assumed he’s in his late 60s or early 70s, if it hadn’t been for the short story “With father!”.
The thing is that Vincent calls Tanaka “Jiiya“ (Engl: ‘old man’) which is the way small children of a noble family affectionately call their old male servant and Tanaka calls Vincent “Bocchan” which is the way servants affectionately call the young (small) son of their master. So… say Tanaka was in his 50s when Vincent was a child, this would mean that he’s in his 80s now.
80s.
80s…!!???? Σ(ﾟДﾟ)
Bonus info:
The order in which the servants joined the Phantomhives is
Sebastian: Alright, there were two lookouts, but I took them down.
Ciel: I didn’t hear a single thing.
Sebastian: First rule of battle: Don’t ever let them know where you are.
Bard: WOOO-HOOO!! [deafening gunfire] I’M RIGHT HERE! I’M RIGHT HERE! YOU WANT SOME OF THIS? YEAH, YOU DO! COME ON! COME ON! [explosion]
Ciel: That unfortunate soul that keeps getting rattata and pidgey. Most likely spent a crap ton of money getting lures and incense.
Sebastian: He literally just follows Ciel around to make sure he doesn’t get dehydrated and sunburnt. Rolls his eyes a ton because he doesn’t get the point of the game.
Finnian: That one person who hatches all the 10k eggs in a matter of days. He gives nicknames to all of his pokemon.
Elizabeth: She likes to show off all the cute pokemon she has but at the same time she has a whole team of 1000+ cp pokemon and controls about 20 gyms.
Bardroy: Also has bad luck with catching pokemon but he is that guy that has a 1000+ cp Raticate.
Mey-rin: Goes through 20 pokeballs to catch one Pokemon.
Soma: Feels the need to stop at every single last pokestop there is.
Undertaker: That one player that waits nearby while someone tries to take out a gym and once they finally take it down, he ends up claiming the gym with a 30 cp Magikarp. Also hardcore Team Instinct.
midnight-in-town 