Ch 140 review: a theory of the timeline of RC’s appearance
I’ve been thinking a lot about answers to these questions:
1. Why did Real Ciel try to kill Prince Soma?
2. Why did Real Ciel leave the “candy in my tummy” threat on Our Ciel’s bedroom wall?
3. Why is Real Ciel acting so supportive of Our Ciel? How can that be the same person who left that threat?
My theory, the short version:
1. Real Ciel’s body and mind are extremely fragile, and he tried to kill Soma because Soma tried to touch him.
2. The message was meant to get Our Ciel to follow Real Ciel to the manor.
3. Real Ciel is trying to manipulate Our Ciel into supporting him with blood.
The long version:
Remember, “Lord Sirius,” whom we can safely assume is Real Ciel, appeared emaciated in front of Violet. He required so much blood that Blavat ran out of his blood type from regular intake and required contributions from Violet.
(Chapter 115 pg 23)
It’s no coincidence that Blavat killed off the last of his followers in Bath directly before Real Ciel started appearing in London. With that last boost in supplies, Real Ciel has enough blood to appear normal for a while.
What does a kid who needs compatible blood do to get more?
He goes looking for his identical twin.
He starts with the townhouse in London, but Our Ciel isn’t there (he’s still investigating the murders in Bath). Instead, he finds Prince Soma.
Prince Soma opens the door and welcomes him inside, thinking he’s Our Ciel. This tells Real Ciel and co that Our Ciel is not home, and he has leeway to set up shop and wait for Our Ciel to come home for a confrontation (as does eventually happen at the manor).
But Prince Soma, unlike the manor servants, notices something is weird and tries to touch Real Ciel.
(Chapter 126 pg 24)
Real Ciel is extremely sensitive to being touched, for two good reasons:
1. His body is physically fragile.
2. His mind is fragile. He endured the same abuse Our Ciel did at the hands of the cultists. Our Ciel lashes out at unwelcome touches, so it makes sense that Real Ciel would too.
So Real Ciel loses it and lashes out at Prince Soma.
I don’t think this is a premeditated murder attempt at all. I think this is a moment of rage for Real Ciel. He can’t stand to be touched and he shoots Prince Soma to make it stop.
At this point Agni has to protect his prince from Real Ciel, and Real Ciel’s guardian has to protect him from Agni.
Now Agni is dead, Soma is out of reach, and Real Ciel still needs blood. He needs to do something to make sure that Our Ciel can seek him out, but the police cannot (because there’s a dead body full of knives in the hall, after all).
So he leaves the message, “Who took the candy from my tummy?”, a message that only Our Ciel would understand, on the wall to make sure Our Ciel will go to the next place he might expect his brother to be: the manor house.
Of course, he’s still enraged, so the message ends up brutally carved into the wallpaper.
Fast-forward to Real Ciel’s arrival at the manor. Just as he did in the townhouse, Real Ciel walks in like he owns the place. This time he’s not discovered (Tanaka notwithstanding), and the servants do not try to touch him (they know better), so he sets up shop to wait for his blood supply to come home.
When Our Ciel returns to the manor, Real Ciel needs to convince him that he’s on his side so that Our Ciel will willingly support him with his blood. Everything he says to Our Ciel is to manipulate him into the mindset they had when they were kids: everything is okay and Real Ciel will protect Our Ciel. Just leave everything up to him.
There is a beautiful poetic irony here: Real Ciel talks like he’s still the stronger twin, when he’s actually physically and psychologically weaker than Our Ciel.
The tables have turned completely.
When they were children, Real Ciel was outgoing and brave and Our Ciel depended on him.
Now, Our Ciel is independent and resilient and Real Ciel is counting on his bodily support just to survive.
The matter is deliberately left ambiguous by the author, and that’s just as it should be: Kit and Dewey and Olaf are all dead now, so Lemony has no way to prove Beatrice’s paternity with any degree of certainty.
All we know is that Kit had made some manner of arrangements for Beatrice’s birth and seemed confident that Beatrice would be raised in a stable home:
I’ve scarcely looked at these maps, poems, and blueprints that Charles sent me, or chosen wallpaper for the baby’s room. […] “I know I don’t have to tell you how terrible it feels to lose a family member. I felt so terrible that I vowed I would never leave my bed.” “What happened?” Klaus said. Kit smiled. “I got hungry,” she said, “and when I opened the refrigerator, I found another message waiting for me.” [Kit Snicket & Klaus Baudelaire – The Penultimate Peril, Chapter Two]
There’s also these passages which seem to confirm Dewey and Kit were romantically involved:
For another terrible moment, it felt like the boat was going to sink into the water, just as Dewey Denouement had sunk into the pond, guarding his underwater catalog and all its secrets, and leaving the woman he loved pregnant and distraught. [Lemony Snicket – The Penultimate Peril, Chapter Thirteen]
“I knew you ran into danger there,” Kit said. “We were watching the
skies. We saw the smoke and we knew you were signaling us that it
wasn’t safe to join you. Thank you, Baudelaires. I knew you wouldn’t fail
us. Tell me, is Dewey with you?” [Kit Snicket – The End, Chapter Eight]
Note that this passage betrays her attachment to Dewey since she momentarily forgets that she purposefully hid Dewey’s existence from the Baudelaires in “The Penultimate Peril”. One of the first questions she asks the Baudelaires as she emerges from the wreck is Dewey’s location. Dewey clearly is of prime importance to her. So I would agree with the interpretation that they were in a relationship and that Dewey was supposed to act as Beatrice’s father.
Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean Dewey is her father in the biological sense. We know that books 1 to 13 of “A series of Unfortunate Events” happen over less than a year because the Baudelaires celebrate their birthdays. So it’s entirely possible that Beatrice was conceived BEFORE the Baudelaire fire, at a time when the hostility between both sides of VFD wasn’t really as bad as it used to be, or when Olaf had shown (deceitful) signs of wanting to change his ways. Kit could have been seduced or succombed to her passion until the news of her friends’ murder got out.
Another disturbing possibility to consider is that Kit was raped. Given Olaf’s history of intended pedophily and marital rape, it’s definitely not out of the equation.
All in all Kit’s and Olaf’s past affair seems to come out of the blue in “The End”, but it’s probably intentional: it’s supposed to remind the Baudelaires that the world is a complicated place and that it may still surprise them. People are neither noble nor wicked, they’re just chef’s salads. That said, the fact that the Baudelaires end up as guardians of Olaf’s potential bastard may be the ultimate irony.
What’s interesting is that Violet, just like Kit’s child, was supposed to be born on the Island until Beatrice was banished… And there’s also some suspicion that she may be Lemony’s biological daughter. But in that case too, Lemony seems to value nurture over nature. He doesn’t give much thought about whose DNA Violet or Beatrice Jr descended from. Dewey and Bertrand were the fathers these women chose for their child, and that’s the only relevant part.
When Sebastian first appears, we see many different forms in the mist. Such as as a snake…
…a wolf…
…bird and a horned creature (a ram or a goat maybe?)…
…and a bat to name a few.
It’s clear that Sebastian has a lot of power of the form(s) he chooses to use.
When he wanted to take on a human facade, he choose to look like a (devilishly) handsome man.
A man who happens to look a bit like Vincent.
While this could be a coincidence, perhaps this is just another one of Sebastian’s forms that he thought could stir emotion and even fear inside of our!Ciel. After all, our!Ciel had been convinced that he had sacrificed his brother – that he had committed this horrible, unforgivable crime. Who do children fear seeing when they’ve done wrong? Their parents.
Our!Ciel would undoubtedly fear his parents ever learning he did such a thing. While they are dead, that thought would be in his mind. He wouldn’t anyone to know that he had sacrificed his brother – especially not his father.
And now he has to stare into a face that looks similar to his father’s face each day – a face belonging to someone who knows exactly what he did.
To the rest of the world, they only see a handsome man, but to our!Ciel it’s a reminder that his parents, particularly his father, would have been horrified that he, the weak son, had ‘sacrificed’ the chosen child.
not only did hide realize this ghoul was planning on eating him, he also disappeared into an alley while said ghoul was hunting him… and it just so happens that mado was there at that exact moment
wouldn’t be the first time hide’s led a ghoul to their death like this. how exactly does he always know when and where the ghoul investigators will be? he wasn’t with the ccg at this time, and even if he was, i seriously doubt the ccg would feel the need to give him this information, its not even really necessary for a normal investigator to know other investigators schedule. and, if im not mistaken, in the tg novels hide was only able to see the map for a few minutes, not really long enough to memorize it.
so?? where is he getting this information? it would definitely be available to a member of the washuu clan. thats all have to say about this tbh
So apparently in Chapter 109 of Black Butler (Kuroshitsuji) when you blow up a panel where Edward first notices Mr. Barvat, the fortune teller you can see that he has constellations on his arm. It’s like they’re tattooed there, along with the sun on his left hand. Oddly the one that is easy to make out is the big dipper, and the others I’m not so sure of.
Thank you to Shuri from Blackbutler.net for blowing up this image in the first place. Any ideas of why he might have these markings on his arm, other then connections to the whole astrology aspect of it.
[…] Speaking of demons, I was recently interviewed together with Okada-san [*Mari Okada, screenwriter of season 2]. We talked a bit about demons and after listening to our discussion, the interviewer seemed a bit surprised. He was like, “Ah, I see… so that’s what demons are like in Kuroshitsuji….” (lol)
I might write more about my perception of the demons in Kuroshitsuji when the magazine with said interview has been released. [*Note: She never did.] I’ve never really talked about demons and their existence in depth so far and I probably won’t do that in the future either, so if our discussion about demons isn’t cut, it will be quite a rare interview.
Anyway, it is commonly said that demons are angels that have fallen or that they were born from the crotch of the tree. However, I’ll probably never state clearly what Sebastian’s true nature is. I’ve already vaguely decided on what he could be, though. (lol)
I think it really doesn’t matter. It’s like the ‘margin’ of a book, it’s not relevant to the main plot.
Sebastian is just Sebastian. One hell of a butler. That’s all you need to know about the character Sebastian from the manga ‘Kuroshitsuji’.
Here’s all the interviews from the Official Profiling 2
book. (Well, except for the ones with Ling Toshite Shigure, Chelly from EGOIST,
and Yugo Kanno. Aka the ones in charge of the music. Sorry about that.) They
include the following:
Cast – Hanazawa Kana (Akane), Seki Tomokazu (Kougami)
Staff – original story concept & screenplay – Urobuchi Gen; 2nd season structure – Ubukata Tow
Staff – Director – Shiotani Naoyoshi
Under the cut are a lot of words (almost 13k), but here are the
takeaways:
Like I theorized way back, Psycho-Pass is not a series with a fixed start-end plot, but a sandbox where only certain elements of the world and certain characters are set in stone. Thus new writers, etc can come in and play with the pieces every single time. Even the staff’s all “there are so many side stories and spinoffs that we’ll leave it up to you to figure out canon” from them.
The movie was thought up, planned, and put into production before they ever considered season two. I repeat, the movie was always the priority, and the gears started moving right when they finished s1.
Apocalypse Now was a huge inspiration for the movie.
Everyone (cast, staff) agrees that if a certain character had been there in s2, the case would have been wrapped up right away and there would have been no s2. (So unbelievably true, but grrrrrr)
Shimotsuki Mika is beloved by the staff for the exact same reason that fans dislike her (“she’s what Sibyl thinks a true Inspector is”).
Hinakawa was always made to be a foil to other characters (poor boy).
If you didn’t know, many of the important staff figures spent a lot of their careers on live action, crime series, etc, and really love Western scifi/crime/etc media, which is one of the reasons why PP feels so different from a typical anime you see nowadays.
The recording cast left an empty chair in the studio for you know who during s2, and HanaKana basically said at one point, “Please come back already!”
And if nothing else, read the two cast interviews!
Spoilers for s2 and the movie, obviously, under the cut.
This post focuses on the translation of Ishida Sui’s
comments and does not have any good quality scans/photos of zakki. Already
available pictures will be used to give you the idea 🙂 Please buy a copy of
his artbook to support him if you can!
This is the memorable first volume cover of Tokyo Ghoul. Kaneki is holding Takatsuki
Sen’s The Black Goat’s Egg.
When thinking of what feeling I wanted to create
while drawing, I could only vaguely think “Let’s make it blue-ish”, and I
remember drawing it very timidly.
I guess we could suppose he’s wearing Anteiku’s uniform?
midnight-in-town 