I discussed this privately with a few friends but I actually love the idea a lot so I’m sharing with everyone. 😀
So far in this very long arc, there were a few occasions the focus drifted away from Ciel & Seb. The first major time was at the very beginning of this arc
with Ed being the reason Lizzie went to the Sphere music hall in the first place and the second major time…
led to very unfortunate circumstances. T_T
So I was saying to my friends that I’d love to get some more chapters not focusing on Ciel and Seb, especially now that they’ve been put in a rather awkward position…
and might need the help of others to clear their names if they’re really arrested. And since Soma is hurt, more Ed-centric chapters could be more likely and I’d personally love that.
First of all, it’s hard to believe that Ed won’t question if real!Ciel truly isn’t involved with the Sphere music hall considering that Lizzie is with him and that she left the house for the Sphere music hall over two months ago.
Secondly, Ed is currently the only one who was also there at Weston when UT explained about his latest BDs to Ciel
so, should he recognize UT (even if we know Ed can’t see anyone else when Lizzie is here), he might be able to suspect that something is up with real!Ciel.
As for a team up with Soma, the reasons I find this idea so cool are because Edward and Soma both are characters who are very close to our!Ciel + at the time of ch143, what they know about the current arc is complementary, meaning that if they were to assemble their information, they would both easily realize that our!Ciel was framed.
To explain: what Soma knows and believes is that…
someone who looks exactly like our!Ciel attacked him and Agni, leading to Agni’s murder. So now he’s pissed at our!Ciel because he doesn’t know about the existence of the twin (since our!Ciel never mentioned anything about it).
Meanwhile, Ed just found out that the twin is back…
and that our!Ciel is believed to be behind the blue sect arc for different reasons.
So should Ed see Soma and find out about this…
If Soma tries to argue that our!Ciel did this even if this doesn’t sound like him, then Ed will at least be able to tell Soma that “wait, he actually has a twin brother who just came back???”, which could make Soma realize that his friend is innocent and Ed that the twin is up to no good (especially if he remembers about Weston previously to finding out about the attack on Soma and Agni).
Add Sieglinde…
who heard this, who can confirm that Ciel and Seb are the ones who brought Soma to her and who researched about the blood samples Seb found in the Sphere music hall + Nina…
who helped Ciel and Seb with getting into the Sphere music hall that one time, they will barely need Violet’s confirmation to understand that “Lord Sirius” is in fact the twin (even though I think Violet’ll confirm it either way, because our!Ciel helped him and his friends).
Violet (and also Lizzie) is more likely to be necessary in order to convince the other people involved in this arc that our!Ciel is not Lord Sirius: like the Double Charles (who may end up accusing Ciel of the Parliamentarians’ murders next), Randall (because Abberline won’t be able to convince him on his own I guess) and maybe even Alexis.
TL;DR Ed investigating some more as Ciel is possibly arrested and meeting with Soma could surely be one way for the entire truth to be revealed + also for Soma to stop believing that his best friend attacked him.
I just hope Ed does realize, one way or another, that there is definitely something not right about the twins and Lizzie.
I forgot to add that this idea is also likelyas a parallel to the Weston arc (additionally to UT creating even more perfect BDs)…
…and the Maurice Cole incident.
Except that this time,it’s Soma who’s falsely accusing our!Ciel and Edward who is more likely to investigate for our!Ciel’s sake. :)))
That’s also a big part of why this idea is pleasing me so much, because I loved the Weston arc!
Hi Anon! Haha yes, I saw some funny posts about real!Ciel basically not really looking forward to seeing his aunt again and, even if it’s just supposed to be humor, personally I think this may not be so far-fetched. 🙂
We already know real!Ciel finds her scary after all…
and she did say to our!Ciel…
even if it turned out that Seb is the one who took that bear down. xD So she’s definitely not strong enough to beat a demon, but still, when it comes to more thoughtful games, I think her nephews possibly have got nothing on her.
There is this trope in manga, that Sensei even referred to in the past, which is about how children are influenced both by their blood as well as by who raised them: so the reason the twins are twisted boys is because Vincent was also like that + because, in our!Ciel’s case, Seb also took on his education.
It doesn’t mean that they don’t have any good sides (our!Ciel was mentioned to be kinder than most of his family several times), it’s just one way to explain why they can also act terribly and drastically.
As siblings, Vincent and Frances were brought up together (Tanaka, according to Sensei in that same post,
probably
being the one who looked after them after Claudia’s death), so since Vincent had a few twisted and evil parts, it’s easy to bet that Frances might have inherited/developed some too (especially since she possibly used to be her brother’s spare). xD
And marrying Alexis wouldn’t have erased that, at least I don’t think so [x][x]. In fact, Sensei might have even hinted at this before…
because Frances thinking she’s getting old in ch14 (chill bae tho’, you’re in your mid 30s) isn’t really about not aiming properly. Rather it’s because the thought of her daughter in danger made her way more emotional/hesitating than her younger self used to be.
My interpretation of this line might be wrong of course, but anyway being a Phantomhive is not about being physically strong like Frances is, that’s just bonus, rather this is about being cunning and ruthless. And Vincent was, the twins are, Claudia probably was too, additionally even Tanaka and UT are, so Frances must be as well.
No way marrying into the Midford family would have erased the whole education and way of thinking she had half of her life, at least I hope not, because I am a big fan of Sensei’s characterizations and I wouldn’t want to change my mind on this. xD
Sorry for rambling Anon, it’s just to say that Frances’ absence is indeed weird and I would understand real!Ciel (or even UT) being suspicious/worried about Frances being eventually bad news, just like our!Ciel himself.
I hope this makes sense, thanks for passing by and have a nice weekend! ^3^
Hey, guess who can come and go through the World Tree once a month during the full moon and doesn’t get lost either?
Personally I still think this boy has a link to Griffith 2.0, as in that he’s possibly the ego of the Gutsca baby after his corporeal body ended up as Femto‘s vessel, post the tower of conviction arc.
We know he is powerful too, so if he borrows Femto’s powers (?) he might as well borrow his ability to travel along the World Tree without getting lost and in order to get to his parents during the full moon (the night magic forces are the strongest).
In other words, I don’t think this boy is Griffith/Femto because Schierke confirmed his OD didn’t make the brand react (so he’s not evil), but that doesn’t mean he can’t be linked to Griffith/Femto to some extent anyway (since Femto and the Gutsca baby share one body), which would explain why he too can travel just fine using the World Tree.
@sentrakk already made a post about whether or not Sugimoto would end up shooting Ogata the next time they’d see each other and that is also my belief that he will be given a chance not to.
Aside from that though, I just wanted to add that the reason Sugimoto might be empathizing with Ogata and thinking that the way the 7th division made fun of his origins was clearly pathetic is because…
…he experienced something similar.
In fact, it’s almost alike to the reaction he had when Shiraishi first made fun of Asirpa, calling her Sugimoto’s “Ainu pet”.
Of course, all their circumstances were different and at least Sugimoto had the chance to erase it all after he left his village, when Ogata was constantly made fun of by men in the army and there is no way for Asirpa to change her origins either.
But still, it’s kinda interesting that these three, who were subjected to mockery by others, ended up in the current situation: with Asirpa being the very reason Sugimoto is extremely mad at Ogata (there is the fact that he shot Sugimoto in the head too, but ya know, Asirpa is top priority) and the possible road to salvation for both of them. I just noticed. x)
I think it’s becoming more and more likely that this guy could be Shiemi’s father, since the age range seems to match in the flashback with Shiro and Yuri who are (barely) teenagers. Him being her father would also explain why he said…
even if she doesn’t remember him.
In that case, I guess we could consider that the man following Shemihaza
in the flashback
(who most likely is Shiemi’s grandma) could be Shiemi’s grandfather?
My point is that, while we don’t know from where all these men come, if her father and grandfather were both Grigori following “Shemihaza” around, then it sounds like Shiemi could already have a future husband/father for her own child ready from the same group as these guys.
And that could explain why she said this upon realizing her feelings for Rin:
Initially I thought she was talking about being taken away by the Grigori or about the complicated situation around Yukio and Rin, but then again, when she told her friends that she wouldn’t become an exorcist, she mentioned that she would still help from her shop, meaning she’d still be around to some extent.
So unfortunately, it may really be about Shiemi having no say in her own future, to the point of not even being able to choose who she wants to be with.
In a previous post about Rin/Shiemi amongst other dynamics, I mentioned that it shouldn’t be a coincidence that Rin thought he was rejected while Shiemi ended up realizing about her feelings for him and being unable to do anything about them because “it’s too late”.
So if Sensei did this on purpose, that means we’re in for more drama @ the Rin/Shiemi ship, guys, with Shiemi becoming like a (powerful) bird in a cage locked by the Grigori (+ I imagine they wouldn’t want their precious Shemihaza’s host/nephilim/etc to get too romantically involved with Satan’s son and ultimate vessel anyway).
Hopefully, best wingman Izumo will most likely be able to vouch for Shiemi’s feelings to Rin at some point and from there something will happen. 😀 Oh and there is still Amaimon to consider, because he seemed really pissed upon realizing that Mephisto didn’t tell him about who Shiemi was.
if it turns out that Frances was indeed aware, like Tanaka, that our!Ciel was lying about his identity, then it will make me very emotional, because it will mean that Frances kept it to herself (and didn’t even tell her husband who was officially Ciel’s guardian), watching out for her nephew as she did so.
Honestly, there aren’t a lot of outstanding adults in Ciel’s life at the moment, so I damn hope that she (as a Phantomhive too) is one of them and I’m still vouching for the mentor thing to happen somehow, since it seems they were both the spare to their elder brother + they lost the exact same family members because of the Watchdog duty.
I’m currently highly confused and torn between what matters the most to real!Ciel.
Until now, I always thought it was his little brother (because of the flashback mainly), but now in the current arc, I’m wondering if all he cares about might not be the “Earl Phantomhive” title. Not for what it represents about the Watchdog duty necessarily, but more because he was Vincent’s heir and so it’s his.
If that’s the case, that means he definitely lied about not being angry or pissed off about our!Ciel’s lie.
So I reread the whole flashback to try and getter a better understanding of the twin’s rather new character (since he was technically introduced in ch129).
The fact he’s dead is not helping, but
if we’re considering that real!Ciel is still mentally ten years old, despite UT making him “grow up” to match as our!Ciel’s twin, then maybe…
that’s all what the latest chapters are about. It’s a chess game, because what real!Ciel cares about is playing again with his little brother, like they used to, since it’s “the most fun of all”.
Add UT who definitely wants Seb out of the picture because of the contract and that could lead to the current situation with calling Scotland Yard over and framing our!Ciel (and thus Seb, as his butler).
If the game in itself isn’t what’s motivating real!Ciel to go against his little brother then…
…another explanation is that, because he was supposed to be Vincent’s heir and even if he loves his brother, the title and everything that’s related to this position
(including, Lizzie, as his fiancée)
are his and he wants them back from our!Ciel.
For example, the attack on Soma & Agni could either be a sign of real!Ciel’s jealousy towards Soma and his relationship to our!Ciel, just like it could be a twisted way to punish our!Ciel for taking the ring from him (as the message on the wall specified).
The thing is, real!Ciel as a BD went through the same process as the BDs from the Campania and Weston arcs. So being obsessed with the few parts of his life he clang to until he was sacrificed (going back home, being Vincent’s heir, being with his little brother, etc) could be what’s going on.
Last possibility is that the target of UT & real!Ciel’s plan using Scotland Yard is only Sebastian…
…because clearly neither real!Ciel or UT particularly like him, while they both showed previously that they didn’t necessarily wish harm on our!Ciel.
I don’t know how framing Ciel would lead to only Seb being arrested or getting out of the way though, especially since there is no way a prison would hold Seb back, but UT at least must have something in mind?
TL;DR I can’t be sure but seeing the flashback, I think real!Ciel should (logically) still care about his little brother, just like UT seems to care about at least saving Ciel from the contract. In other words, the only enemy for real!Ciel and UT should be Seb.
So framing our!Ciel is either a way to get to Sebastian/the contract or simply a twisted game between brothers because “it’s fun” (+ UT could be fond of seeing the twins play “like they used to” since he’s lost into the idea that bringing the dead back is
That’s all it is: real!Ciel is using his pawns against his brother’s in a real lively chess game. I’m a bit iffy as to what the twin ultimately wants, but let’s save that for later.
It’s a chess game and our!Ciel stepped right up to it in ch129 when he came back to the manor…
and he definitely had a late start because of the shock and confusion when realizing that his older brother is back and Lord Sirius, the blue star of the blue sect, but…
I’m sure he’ll manage to recover. 🙂 Because Ciel has people he can use against his brother too.
Without already mentioning that Abberline and probably Edward will end up on his side (Ed because he already accused Ciel wrongly in the Weston arc and came to regret it + he and Ciel investigated most of the arc together), Violet, Sieglinde and even Soma have several ways to yell bullshit about our!Ciel being the mastermind behind the sect:
For Violet, it’s a question of motivation and wanting to pay Ciel back for helping him several times + saving his life in ch125.
For Soma, he’ll first need to hear about our!Ciel having a twin brother to connect the dots and realize that his friend didn’t kill Agni
and for Sieglinde, it’s just about friendship, considering all that Ciel did for her in the past and how she’s the one who analyzed the blood samples for him.
Obviously Lizzie knows on the truth on this matter too, she knows who the real Lord Sirius is, but her heart is being held hostage by real!Ciel’s side right now so she’s a major pawn to use against our!Ciel for the moment,
but it could change because her love for our!Ciel makes her a wild card.
The servants will side with our!Ciel, who is their master, out of devotion, but they have no idea as to what’s really going on unfortunately. Except for Tanaka, who probably saw it coming (’how’ is still the question) but who’s as tied as Lizzie I’d say, seeing how sad he also looks.
So yep: chess game. Brother vs brother, Seb vs UT, Grell and Othello probably being confused af and Mama Midford hopefully still missing for a reason
(maybe Alexis telling her what happened will trigger something?). Can’t wait :))
Heyyyyy, you know who else is missing and could be considered a chess pawn for our!Ciel’s side? Lau. And Ran Mao additionally, I guess.
Not that Lau showed up in the arc so far, so the probability that he’ll play a role isn’t that high obviously, but still, Sensei said before that, even though Lau is busy running his own business while following the Watchdog’s rules, he’s mostly “interested in our!Ciel”.
Undying Seb doesn’t seem to faze or interest him so much, so he’s…
…hanging around our!Ciel mostly for his own enjoyment of things.
So I’d say he’d (knowingly) rather play the part of the pawn to our!Ciel’s side of the chess game over real!Ciel’s anyday (if real!Ciel is to become the Watchdog for a short time after our!Ciel’s arrest), because he always bets on our!Ciel to provide him with a lot of amusement.
Ran Mao will follow Lau, but she too seems to like Ciel a lot anyway…
…so that’s two more people that our!Ciel could use wisely against his brother.
In fact, friendly reminder that Lau is the most mysterious character of the whole cast as of right now (and that’s really saying something), so having our!Ciel owing him could be rather interesting for a future arc focusing more on Lau. :))
And one last thing, about missing characters…
Frances Midford, irrelevant to this arc? Idon’tthinkso. 😀
Since real!Ciel is the one who started this chess game rather strongly, the odds that our!Ciel will overcome his brother at the end are even better considering what Frances taught our!Ciel (a tactic he used for the last 4 years for his revenge actually).
I’m in for this type of games, guys. It’s gonna get wilder. :))
Are we forgetting The other peices? The two Charles, John Brown and the Queen. You honestly think she’ll sit by as this is going on and screwing with her watch dog?
And one price that can help Lizzy is Paula.
And we haven’t seem the other Lords yet. Nor the killer.
@darkspellmaster I was keeping this for another post but since you added on: I agree with you this arc is far from being over.
However, I think Ciel is def going to be arrested and the Queen won’t be of any help. The Double Charles were probably told about the dead lords from the Parliament as of ch126, but are they truly supposed to believe Ciel is innocent?
After all, they know as first-hand witnesses what he’s ready to do to solve a case, with the example of the circus arc, so this doesn’t sound helpful.
I’d love to make a more detailed post on this after Monday but, basically, this arc sounds a lot like the end of “Kuro the manga Part 1” as in, our!Ciel is facing all that he ever did wrong in Kuro.
Lying about his identity? His bro is coming back.
Pushing Liz and Soma away from him? Now they’re hurt and doubting him and so he’s hurt too.
Using Ed for murder? The Weston arc had gotten them closer but now Ed may need some time to truly be sure he’s innocent.
Needing the Double Charles’ testimony? As I said, after the circus arc, he can’t count on them.
Needing the Queen’s help? Well, he already messed up 3 times in a year (curry arc, circus arc and green witch arc) so after ch108, it’s not certain the Queen would care to help, especially since she’s also very interested in Bizarre dolls.
It goes on and on and on. 🙂 Honestly, the only people truly on our!Ciel’s side at the moment are Sebastian (because of the contract) and maybe Tanaka and Frances, if they both knew about him lying about his identity beforehand. And also maybe Lau because he never knew the twin and seeks entertainment from Ciel, but like, that makes the list very small for now. xD
Everyone else is shaken by the news and the accusations about our!Ciel being the Blue Sect’s mastermind are adding to the confusion and doubts surrounding him. That’s what Seb meant by “well played”.
Anyway, since this arc is about confrontation, I think it is eventually supposed to end on our!Ciel learning to rely on the characters besides Sebastian who will accept to believe in him (I made a list in the first post). For now, the situation is confusing so he has trouble gathering his pawns for the counterattack, but ultimately most characters are bound to turn away from the twin because he’s a nutcase the ones who cared about “Ciel Phantomhive” since the start of Kuroshitsuji care about who our!Ciel truly is.
So ultimately it’s all about what UT said in ch35:
Because it’s literally what’s happening and maybe that’s actually why UT made sure the arc would unfold that way. He doesn’t want Ciel to lose his soul to Seb, that much at least seems clear, so this arc could be one way to make sure it doesn’t happen as @frederickabberline explained here, or so UT thinks.
That’s what I refer to as a possible “end of part 1” for the manga: once we’ll be done with this arc, once Ciel realizes he’s supposed to be living for himself, surrounded by people who care about the real him (and not because he assumed his bro’s identity), then we’ll move on to the whole problematic surrounding the contract and whether or not our!Ciel eventually wants to break away from it.
Even though I initially thought that UT was calling Othello out because Othello had possibly proved in the past to have the same misguided curiosity towards humans (which is what the very original idea of UT’s BD project was initially), now I wonder if this wouldn’t rather be a Shakespeare reference?
For those who don’t know, the tragedy Othello is about a Moorish man living in Venice who’s tricked into believing that his wife is having an affair with his Lieutenant. So he kills her out of jealousy, before realizing the truth and killing himself as a result.
So if Othello in Kuroverse is supposed to be a reference to this tragedy, that’d mean our boy here became a Shinigami because he killed his wife. Meanwhile, if we’re considering that UT’s strong attachment to the Phantomhive family roots from the possibility that he had strong feelings for Claudia
and that ultimately he wants them all back because…
he doesn’t want his connection to the P family (to Claudia in particular?) to disappear
or because he promised Claudia he’d protect them all and he doesn’t want to fail his promise to her
…then I’m wondering if this isn’t what UT is referring to when he’s calling Othello out, as in, “I’m doing this out of love and you should be the last one to criticize me on the subject considering your own circumstances.”
Since some readers often have the wrong timeline in mind though, please remember that UT killed himself way before Claudia was even born and he met her after he deserted the Shinigamis, it’s not like he became a Shinigami because she died. So it’d go like this when it comes to Othello vs UT:
Othello: killed himself because he killed his wife
UT: killed himself, deserted, fell in love, lost the woman, decided to experiment about bringing back the dead
hence ch142 and UT telling Othello to back off about saying he lost his mind on the subject (sensitive subject for him and all).
TL;DR
@aroturier (as always I can’t tag you akejzbkejb I hope you’ll see this)
Honestly, at this point I think every possibility is a thing. Like:
UT could be feeling guilty about Claudia’s death despite not having done anything that led to it
just like he could be angrily denying any guilt he might feel despite having done something that ultimately led to Claudia’s death
just like he might be feeling guilty because her death is partially his fault
We don’t have enough details to reach any conclusion at the moment, so if UT’s comment in last month’s chapter was really meant to be in relation to Claudia, it has many possible explanations.
More so than guilt however, I think that UT is eaten by regrets: you don’t try to bring the dead back if you’re at peace with how the people you love died…
and in my opinion, if there is really a parallel between Claudia and the reference to Othello, then the issue for UT could be that he’s dead convinced he could have avoided her death if he had done something differently.
Again, “how” is hard to determine for now, but he did say this…
So if he warned Claudia about the burden of the Watchdog duty and either she didn’t understand (like Ciel) or refused to save herself (like Vincent?), back then it could have been the source of an argument between them.
And if he left her because he couldn’t bear to watch her destroy herself (especially if he was in love with her) and she ended up dead…
well, whether he also feels guilty or not, he’d definitely
at least
feel regretful and very intent on not having it happen again.
Bummer for him though, the same happened with Vincent, which is probably why he’s skyrocketing on the wrong road right now. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
TL;DR we don’t know what happened with Claudia, if she’s who UT meant to Othello as a source of his motivation regarding the BD project, whether he feels guilty about her death or not, but there is definitely something (if not everything) about her death that doesn’t sit right with UT.
Could simply be the fact that she died at all, or could be how she died/what led to her death. The only thing I’m reasonably sure of is that she’s the reason we’re where we are in the story right now, as far as UT’s character is concerned.
I hope I answered your question :))
I love this because it means that Ienaga ate a part of Sugimoto’s brain when he was hurt and that gave Ienaga the same desperate obsession that Sugimoto has, about keeping Asirpa safe and taking her back from Kiroranke and Ogata.
Very moving because very expressive of *how much* Sugimoto cares for Asirpa. The fact Ienaga will now want her safe too is a great bonus ‘cause that means maybe less threat of eyeball eating. xD
midnight-in-town 