Yana Toboso writes her characters with their futures in mind and plans events in the story as much as ten years in advance. Following a short discussion with @abybweisse, I decided to make a post covering Grell’s character arc, which will go into depth about how I think Toboso has been rewriting her portrayal and what I see as the character’s future. I want to talk about Grell’s introduction, what Toboso has chosen to focus on since that introduction, what she has discarded, and what I see as her intentions for the future of the manga. This is entirely my opinion, so don’t treat what I say as gospel. I took inspiration from this postandthis post.
Origins (2007; chapters 9-12)
In many ways, Grell is an unusual character in Black Butler. As mentioned in the first post above, she was added to a pre-existing story about a female serial killer (Angelina Dalles) as a supernatural foil to Sebastian to appeal to GFantasy magazine’s shounen demographic. The design for the grim reapers wasn’t even finalized until during the Jack the Ripper story arc, which is why Grell has pointy teeth but none of the grim reapers who appear later do. Because of this writing decision, she runs into the problem of potentially not having a predetermined place in the story, unlike other characters whose arcs were decided as many as ten years earlier.
Right off the bat, Grell is depicted as a serial murderer of cisgender women, one of the oldestandmost common tropes of queer characters in media. Her writing also invokes specific stereotypes of transgender women found in Japanese media at the time but that’s a topic for another conversation. Grell is a thoroughly unsympathetic character in this arc, whose motive for helping Angelina in chapter 11 is explained as sympathy for Angelina’s desire to have children, but is framed in a way that looks a lot like manipulation:
She also kills her partner in crime of nearly three years because she thinks Angelina has gone soft when she won’t murder Ciel, her nephew:
At the end of chapter 12, after Grell is defeated and William arrives to arrest her, Sebastian provides a moral to conclude the story that applies as much to his twisted relationship with Ciel as it does to Grell and Angelina:
Humans are easily tempted. When they are poised on the edge of hellish despair and a spider’s thread of salvation presents itself, they will invariably grasp it… no matter the manner of human.
2008-2010
Black Butler was greenlit for an anime adaptation in 2008, unusually early for a manga that only started being serialized in 2006. The existing story arcs of Black Butler were all adapted into the anime, but because they ran out of material from the manga to adapt, the staff of the anime were forced to write original stories with the same characters. Grell is missing from the manga from chapter 13 to chapter 54 (although… canonically she’s only absent for a little over five months and punished for exactly three), but she reappears only a few episodes after her arrest in the anime.
I’m not going to cover season two because she gets no development in it, but Grell’s character arc in season one of the anime goes like this: after she is arrested by William, she is allowed to return to her job and ends up helping Ciel rescue Elizabeth after she is kidnapped and turned into a doll. Ciel and Sebastian gradually come to see Grell as an ally and she regains William’s trust, as he first allows her to use a death scythe similar to his, and then returns her original, illegally modified scythe to her by the end of the season.
The anime’s character arc for Grell was a good start, but it always felt incomplete. The fact that she murdered Ciel’s aunt and attempted to kill both him and Sebastian is swept under the rug, and this version of Grell feels way more silly and less competent than her manga counterpart. For better or worse though, the anime did help popularize Grell and affected the fandom’s perception of her as a result.
In 2009, while Grell was still absent from the manga, we saw the publication of the manga’s only character guide. There isn’t a lot to go over, but the character guide confirms that Grell was being truthful when she seemed to sympathize with Angelina. It also reaffirms her reason for killing Angelina (the part with the arrow above) and confirms that Ciel grieved at the loss of his aunt.
Return (2011-2012; chapters 55-65)
2011 was an important year for Grell as a character because she finally returned in the manga’s March issue after a 42-chapter hiatus. Chapter 55 starts where we left off in chapter 12: she is still a danger to Ciel and Sebastian, she is still an antisocial character who is unaffected by human suffering, she is still impulsive and hypersexual.
Except this time some things have changed. We’re introduced to Grell’s younger colleague, Ronald, for whom she is a mentor. With Ronald, we get to see her let her guard down for the first time in the manga, and even have fun. Unlike her interactions with William, Ronald never uses violence to persuade her. We also see her competently performing her job as a soul collector, in line with Toboso’s desire to portray her as a capable grim reaper.
Undertaker is the main villain of this story arc, and during its climax, Grell battles him one-on-one. This only lasts a few pages, but it gives us one of our most interesting insights into her as a character and sets up a future conflict between her and Undertaker. In this scene, he attempts to manipulate Grell by pointing out their similarities, and we get our first hint that she can feel remorse for her actions:
Oh…
To wrap up this story arc and bring the reader back home, we get a comedic scene of William coming to drag Grell home similar to the ending of chapter 12, but this time we know there is more to her as a character, which puts her boisterous exterior into perspective.
2011 was also the year the final OVAs of the second season of the anime were aired, including The Story of Will the Reaper in April. This OVA, inspired by the idea that William owes a debt to Grell, is Toboso’s favorite of the OVAs, and she was personally involved in its creation. In it, we meet a younger Grell who is still closeted and coming to terms with herself, and are thus shown a side of her that we haven’t seen before in the manga or the anime. This OVA is the first time her queer identity is treated with any sensitivity, even though it misses the mark sometimes.
2013-present
Grell has another long absence from the manga from chapter 66 to chapter 104. When she reappears in chapter 105 she is with William and once again the manga contrasts her silly exterior with the information about her we are given. This is a way to deliver this information without forcing the reader to feel sorry for her. What we see versus what we hear:
This chapter lays the groundwork for the manga’s next story arc, which is an Undertaker-centric arc. So far, Grell is not a major player in this arc, but we’ve met another of her grim reaper friends, Othello, and learned that she died less than 70 years ago. This arc also promises a rematch between her and Undertaker in the future.
The future?
In future chapters of Black Butler, Grell could remain as a minor antagonist, but since Undertaker is already in the spotlight it’s more likely she’ll continue to work to stop him. She could side with Ciel and Sebastian, but Grell barely seems to remember who Ciel is, while he still responds like a traumatized person whenever he sees her:
Clearly some things would need to change in the story before they could form an alliance. Ciel, never a forgiving person, would have to get used to working with his aunt’s killer. Toboso acknowledges that Ciel and Grell’s relationship so far is not normalized. One thing that could help is to develop Grell’s relationship with Angelina further. In a series of posts on her Twitter from January 2018 (first,second,third), Toboso explains that because the writing on the Jack the Ripper arc was rushed, she hadn’t figured out the details of Grell and Angelina’s relationship but popular fanon convinced her that they were friends. Hopefully in the future this can be explored in the manga itself!
I would also like to see more of Grell’s relationship with her workplace as we learn about the grim reapers. She is stronger than William but lets him mess with her, why? Is he also indebted to her in the manga? Why do William, Ronald, and Othello have so much faith in her? How does she really feel about her job, when she ran away from it? As a side note, I know this fandom believes Grell and the other grim reapers will get backstories but the servant characters are only getting backstories because Toboso planned for them ten years ago, while Grell might not have originally been intended to be redeemed.
Ido want to see her fight Undertaker again, because they have some parallels that would make their interactions very interesting to me: they are both grim reaper deserters but she is weaker than him and got caught. They both became emotionally invested in individual humans. His style is austere, and he doesn’t use an electric scythe, while Grell is a modern, career-oriented reaper with flashy fashion tastes. He is incredibly old, while she seems to have deserted when she was still young (reminder that her death list was still just a stack of paper when she ran away ↴↴↴). Both have a body count.
Maybe then she can finally get her manga cover?
This is a really good assessment of Grelle’s development, so far, in the series.
I’d like to note a few things, though:
In the anime, when Grelle first returns to work, the temporary death scythe is two bonsai shears, but yes that’s closer to William’s averruncator than Grelle’s usual chainsaw.
Othello doesn’t say Grelle wasn’t a reaper 70 years ago, he asks isn’t it trueGrellewas a reaper 70 years ago. And you show above that Yana-san was directly involved with the “Story of Will the Reaper” OVA. Of course, we know there’s an issue with the way that OVA was drawn. It has Thomas’ record saying he was born in 1775 and dying in 1779. There’s no way Thomas was only 5 years old. Maybe add 20 years to that? But that would still have Grelle in reaper training before 1819, around the time that Undertaker destroyed half of HQ. Therefore, it seems to me that Othello is questioning why Grelle doesn’t recall 136649. And that goes back to my posts where I ponder what really happened as part of Grelle’s three months of suspension. Were Grelle’s cinematic records messed with?
Grelle might have been holding those paper clipped files for Madam Red because it was more information than what would usually be in the agenda. We don’t really know whether Grelle already had that Chanel agenda. Then again, it could be that Grelle simply hadn’t bought that agenda yet. It’s really no clear indication of Grelle’s age as a reaper.
I’m also expecting Grelle to have another major run-in with Undertaker, ever since Othello sent that dove back to HQ to request backup.
But ever since Othello asked Grelle for protection in the human realm, I’ve pondered Grelle’s chances for survival. My Mother3 theory has each of the reapers needing to either die or return to their realm. The Magypsies don’t get much character development in the game, but some of them assess their lot in life before they disappear for good.
I don’t expect Grelle to get a volume cover until it’s a volume that has a major showdown between either Grelle and Sebastian or Grelle and Undertaker. I still say it could ultimately end with Grelle’s death, particularly if Othello somehow gets in the way or causes Grelle distraction. If Grelle dies protecting Othello, that might be the most character development we get, since Grelle had previously shown a very selfish personality. It would finally force Grelle to wear Madam Red’s shoes, so to speak, not just her coat.
Yana Toboso writes her characters with their futures in mind and plans events in the story as much as ten years in advance. Following a short discussion with @abybweisse, I decided to make a post covering Grell’s character arc, which will go into depth about how I think Toboso has been rewriting her portrayal and what I see as the character’s future. I want to talk about Grell’s introduction, what Toboso has chosen to focus on since that introduction, what she has discarded, and what I see as her intentions for the future of the manga. This is entirely my opinion, so don’t treat what I say as gospel. I took inspiration from this postandthis post.
Origins (2007; chapters 9-12)
In many ways, Grell is an unusual character in Black Butler. As mentioned in the first post above, she was added to a pre-existing story about a female serial killer (Angelina Dalles) as a supernatural foil to Sebastian to appeal to GFantasy magazine’s shounen demographic. The design for the grim reapers wasn’t even finalized until during the Jack the Ripper story arc, which is why Grell has pointy teeth but none of the grim reapers who appear later do. Because of this writing decision, she runs into the problem of potentially not having a predetermined place in the story, unlike other characters whose arcs were decided as many as ten years earlier.
Right off the bat, Grell is depicted as a serial murderer of cisgender women, one of the oldestandmost common tropes of queer characters in media. Her writing also invokes specific stereotypes of transgender women found in Japanese media at the time but that’s a topic for another conversation. Grell is a thoroughly unsympathetic character in this arc, whose motive for helping Angelina in chapter 11 is explained as sympathy for Angelina’s desire to have children, but is framed in a way that looks a lot like manipulation:
She also kills her partner in crime of nearly three years because she thinks Angelina has gone soft when she won’t murder Ciel, her nephew:
At the end of chapter 12, after Grell is defeated and William arrives to arrest her, Sebastian provides a moral to conclude the story that applies as much to his twisted relationship with Ciel as it does to Grell and Angelina:
Humans are easily tempted. When they are poised on the edge of hellish despair and a spider’s thread of salvation presents itself, they will invariably grasp it… no matter the manner of human.
2008-2010
Black Butler was greenlit for an anime adaptation in 2008, unusually early for a manga that only started being serialized in 2006. The existing story arcs of Black Butler were all adapted into the anime, but because they ran out of material from the manga to adapt, the staff of the anime were forced to write original stories with the same characters. Grell is missing from the manga from chapter 13 to chapter 54 (although… canonically she’s only absent for a little over five months and punished for exactly three), but she reappears only a few episodes after her arrest in the anime.
I’m not going to cover season two because she gets no development in it, but Grell’s character arc in season one of the anime goes like this: after she is arrested by William, she is allowed to return to her job and ends up helping Ciel rescue Elizabeth after she is kidnapped and turned into a doll. Ciel and Sebastian gradually come to see Grell as an ally and she regains William’s trust, as he first allows her to use a death scythe similar to his, and then returns her original, illegally modified scythe to her by the end of the season.
The anime’s character arc for Grell was a good start, but it always felt incomplete. The fact that she murdered Ciel’s aunt and attempted to kill both him and Sebastian is swept under the rug, and this version of Grell feels way more silly and less competent than her manga counterpart. For better or worse though, the anime did help popularize Grell and affected the fandom’s perception of her as a result.
In 2009, while Grell was still absent from the manga, we saw the publication of the manga’s only character guide. There isn’t a lot to go over, but the character guide confirms that Grell was being truthful when she seemed to sympathize with Angelina. It also reaffirms her reason for killing Angelina (the part with the arrow above) and confirms that Ciel grieved at the loss of his aunt.
Return (2011-2012; chapters 55-65)
2011 was an important year for Grell as a character because she finally returned in the manga’s March issue after a 42-chapter hiatus. Chapter 55 starts where we left off in chapter 12: she is still a danger to Ciel and Sebastian, she is still an antisocial character who is unaffected by human suffering, she is still impulsive and hypersexual.
Except this time some things have changed. We’re introduced to Grell’s younger colleague, Ronald, for whom she is a mentor. With Ronald, we get to see her let her guard down for the first time in the manga, and even have fun. Unlike her interactions with William, Ronald never uses violence to persuade her. We also see her competently performing her job as a soul collector, in line with Toboso’s desire to portray her as a capable grim reaper.
Undertaker is the main villain of this story arc, and during its climax, Grell battles him one-on-one. This only lasts a few pages, but it gives us one of our most interesting insights into her as a character and sets up a future conflict between her and Undertaker. In this scene, he attempts to manipulate Grell by pointing out their similarities, and we get our first hint that she can feel remorse for her actions:
Oh…
To wrap up this story arc and bring the reader back home, we get a comedic scene of William coming to drag Grell home similar to the ending of chapter 12, but this time we know there is more to her as a character, which puts her boisterous exterior into perspective.
2011 was also the year the final OVAs of the second season of the anime were aired, including The Story of Will the Reaper in April. This OVA, inspired by the idea that William owes a debt to Grell, is Toboso’s favorite of the OVAs, and she was personally involved in its creation. In it, we meet a younger Grell who is still closeted and coming to terms with herself, and are thus shown a side of her that we haven’t seen before in the manga or the anime. This OVA is the first time her queer identity is treated with any sensitivity, even though it misses the mark sometimes.
2013-present
Grell has another long absence from the manga from chapter 66 to chapter 104. When she reappears in chapter 105 she is with William and once again the manga contrasts her silly exterior with the information about her we are given. This is a way to deliver this information without forcing the reader to feel sorry for her. What we see versus what we hear:
This chapter lays the groundwork for the manga’s next story arc, which is an Undertaker-centric arc. So far, Grell is not a major player in this arc, but we’ve met another of her grim reaper friends, Othello, and learned that she died less than 70 years ago. This arc also promises a rematch between her and Undertaker in the future.
The future?
In future chapters of Black Butler, Grell could remain as a minor antagonist, but since Undertaker is already in the spotlight it’s more likely she’ll continue to work to stop him. She could side with Ciel and Sebastian, but Grell barely seems to remember who Ciel is, while he still responds like a traumatized person whenever he sees her:
Clearly some things would need to change in the story before they could form an alliance. Ciel, never a forgiving person, would have to get used to working with his aunt’s killer. Toboso acknowledges that Ciel and Grell’s relationship so far is not normalized. One thing that could help is to develop Grell’s relationship with Angelina further. In a series of posts on her Twitter from January 2018 (first,second,third), Toboso explains that because the writing on the Jack the Ripper arc was rushed, she hadn’t figured out the details of Grell and Angelina’s relationship but popular fanon convinced her that they were friends. Hopefully in the future this can be explored in the manga itself!
I would also like to see more of Grell’s relationship with her workplace as we learn about the grim reapers. She is stronger than William but lets him mess with her, why? Is he also indebted to her in the manga? Why do William, Ronald, and Othello have so much faith in her? How does she really feel about her job, when she ran away from it? As a side note, I know this fandom believes Grell and the other grim reapers will get backstories but the servant characters are only getting backstories because Toboso planned for them ten years ago, while Grell might not have originally been intended to be redeemed.
Ido want to see her fight Undertaker again, because they have some parallels that would make their interactions very interesting to me: they are both grim reaper deserters but she is weaker than him and got caught. They both became emotionally invested in individual humans. His style is austere, and he doesn’t use an electric scythe, while Grell is a modern, career-oriented reaper with flashy fashion tastes. He is incredibly old, while she seems to have deserted when she was still young (reminder that her death list was still just a stack of paper when she ran away ↴↴↴). Both have a body count.
Maybe then she can finally get her manga cover?
This is a really good assessment of Grelle’s development, so far, in the series.
I’d like to note a few things, though:
In the anime, when Grelle first returns to work, the temporary death scythe is two bonsai shears, but yes that’s closer to William’s averruncator than Grelle’s usual chainsaw.
Othello doesn’t say Grelle wasn’t a reaper 70 years ago, he asks isn’t it trueGrellewas a reaper 70 years ago. And you show above that Yana-san was directly involved with the “Story of Will the Reaper” OVA. Of course, we know there’s an issue with the way that OVA was drawn. It has Thomas’ record saying he was born in 1775 and dying in 1779. There’s no way Thomas was only 5 years old. Maybe add 20 years to that? But that would still have Grelle in reaper training before 1819, around the time that Undertaker destroyed half of HQ. Therefore, it seems to me that Othello is questioning why Grelle doesn’t recall 136649. And that goes back to my posts where I ponder what really happened as part of Grelle’s three months of suspension. Were Grelle’s cinematic records messed with?
Grelle might have been holding those paper clipped files for Madam Red because it was more information than what would usually be in the agenda. We don’t really know whether Grelle already had that Chanel agenda. Then again, it could be that Grelle simply hadn’t bought that agenda yet. It’s really no clear indication of Grelle’s age as a reaper.
I’m also expecting Grelle to have another major run-in with Undertaker, ever since Othello sent that dove back to HQ to request backup.
But ever since Othello asked Grelle for protection in the human realm, I’ve pondered Grelle’s chances for survival. My Mother3 theory has each of the reapers needing to either die or return to their realm. The Magypsies don’t get much character development in the game, but some of them assess their lot in life before they disappear for good.
I don’t expect Grelle to get a volume cover until it’s a volume that has a major showdown between either Grelle and Sebastian or Grelle and Undertaker. I still say it could ultimately end with Grelle’s death, particularly if Othello somehow gets in the way or causes Grelle distraction. If Grelle dies protecting Othello, that might be the most character development we get, since Grelle had previously shown a very selfish personality. It would finally force Grelle to wear Madam Red’s shoes, so to speak, not just her coat.
