Black Butler fans rejoice – the Spring 2025 anime season officially belongs to Earl Phantomhive and his devilish butler. This time, though, instead of solving a crime for the Queen of England on their home turf, the Phantomhive house is packing their things and heading to Germany to try and get to the bottom of a series of mysterious deaths plaguing the area. Worse still, it seems as though the region has been plagued by a terrible supernatural curse. With the same production team returning from 2024’s Black Butler -Public School Arc-, the Emerald Witch Arc is set to begin airing on April 5th, with a new special glimpse provided by Aniplex on YouTube. The teaser looks absolutely stunning thanks to CloverWorks’ signature, vivid animation, and approach to stylizing the series.
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Black Butler‘s Emerald Witch arc is the eighth major story arc from the manga and, for many longtime fans, one of its best. Spanning 21 chapters, the arc blends gothic literature tropes pertaining to lycanthropy with Yana Toboso’s signature lean into a campy otherworldly mystery that puts Ciel and Sebastian’s skills – as well as their pacted bond – to the test. The arc also introduces two brand-new characters to the series, Sieglinde Sullivan, a young noble girl who acts as Ciel’s foil for the arc, and her own ever-devoted butler, Wolfram Gelzer.
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Black Butler‘s Anime Is Rapidly Approaching Some of the Manga’s Best Moments
While Black Butler has always been on top in terms of writing a masterclass gothic mystery by spinning real-world history into the paranormal, Yana Toboso’s writing and artistry truly come to life in the Emerald Witch arc. Not only does the arc raise the already high stakes from the Public School arc’s run-in with Undertaker, who has revealed himself to be a greater threat than Sebastian and Ciel could have ever imagined him being, but it also explores what the world looks like outside of Ciel’s admittedly limited worldview. While the young Earl is on his ravenous quest for revenge against the cult that slaughtered his family, fans aren’t shown many of the internal struggles Ciel has been dealing with while attempting to uncover more information about what happened to his family.
Due to the nature of the curse presented in the Emerald Green arc, Ciel is finally forced to face the demons he’s been trying to keep buried for so long, while Sebastian, the very real demon doing his bidding until their pact is fulfilled is fighting to protect the entire Phantomhive household throughout the arc. It does bring into question whether CloverWorks intends to adapt the rest of the series, which, considering the ninth arc of the manga, the Blue Cult arc, jumps right into revealing all the twists that will be hinted at throughout the Emerald Witch anime, it would make sense for the studio to commit to delivering everything fans have been waiting after being forced to wait ten years to see the anime return.
Source: Aniplex on Youtube
