It appears that we were sold a bill of good with regards to this season of Kuroshitsuji. I give everyone involved a lot of credit – not only were they tight-lipped about what the future held and kept Sebby and Ciel out of all the previews and stills, they even produced a lavish OP for the first episode only – and that ain’t cheap – just to convince us that this season would be Alois and Claude. And by all accounts, it worked.

Judging by the new OP and the ED, those two will still have some role in all this – villains, perhaps. But Ciel and Sebastian are clearly back in the spotlight. In a sense I’m relieved, as I was very skeptical (with good reason, apparently) of Kuroshitsuji without them. But I dearly hope we get some sort of explanation for why, after the ending if S1, Ciel is suddenly walking around as if nothing happened and all of his servants are apparently unharmed.

In fact, this entire episode was basically a slice-of-life excerpt from S1. A wafer-thin plot about an old dam and a white stag in the woods is an excuse to reintroduce pretty much the entire cast of S1 (bar Grell, who returns in episode 3). The servants act dumb, Lizzy is terribly annoying, Ciel is adorably tsundere and Sebastian is, well – Sebastian. It’s perfectly fun and great to see the gang together again – but how? I’ve seen it theorized that this is all a dream world that’s in Ciel’s head – but that doesn’t explain everything, since soulless little boys presumably don’t dream. So just what the hell is going on, here?

I do enjoy these characters – Sebby and Ciel are a joy to watch interacting, and I’m happy enough to be able to do that for now. But if there’s no exposition forthcoming it will start to strain my patience. I’m not ready to call BS just yet – I don’t think this is a reset button situation. But I sure hope there’s a reasonable explanation for all this.