Follow up:

Volume 3 is really interesting. It's funny to see how the anime deviates from the manga after like, episode 4, which is unusual for an anime. I'm a bit sad to not have Pluto, but at least we get Agni and Soma, which is just fine by me. The anime and manga are the same with the battle between Sebastian and Grell, even down to most of the dialog. I never knew Ciel had another aunt besides Red, but I'm a little weirded out by the fact Ciel and Lizzie are first cousins. Yes, I know in lots and lots of cultures 1st cousin marriages are very common and in many cases encouraged, but in the US someone who marries their first cousin is a red-neck. Not to mention that in English aristocratic circles they usually wanted 2nd cousin and further out.

I am very, very annoyed with the translation in this volume. Anyone remember my article about translation of literal versus artistic? I basically said that often times a correct translation ruins the meaning of a joke, pun or subtext in dialog, and it's okay to change the meaning or words in a line if end product is closer to the original intent. This volume is a perfect example of that. In chapter 14, the story starts out with Ciel dreaming after reading Edgar Allen Poe. At first I was a little confused by the dialog, until I got to the line 'Never More' then it dawned on me: these lines were meant to be quotes from Edgar Allen Poe's most famous poem The Raven. Instead of just using the actual lines from the poem, Yen Press used the English translations of the Japanese translation of the original poem

*headdesk*

Wanna know what the worst part is? If they would have used the original EAP poem, some idiot who read a fan-tran would being throwing a hissy fit that the translation was wrong. Instead, we get a corruption of one of the world's greatest poems because of a literal translation.