Y'all KNOW How Emotional I Am About UT And My Baby Ciel..

Y'all KNOW how emotional I am about UT and my baby Ciel..

WHY YOU GOTTA DO THIS TO ME??

A Reason to Fight - Undertaker / 136649

(I edited this stuff after smelling the Undertaker X Claudia vibe in the Ch104, so…) 

💢 for the Underlliam ship post(yep am the same anon)

Send 💢 for a random thing that annoys me

It annoys me that the reapers sent to investigate and capture Undertaker weren’t sure who he was (I guess he had been under the radar until just recently), and that Othello had a hunch but didn’t think to find out his real name from his registration papers. He went to the human realm wholly unprepared to track down, let alone deal with, someone like Undertaker. With a hunch like that, he should have recognized that he would not be able to handle this without lots of backup, if the hunch turned out to be true. The whole “kama toss” scene is funny but shows a serious lack of thinking things through on Othello’s part. Seriously, as soon as Othello realized who they were definitely dealing with, he and Grelle should have noped TF out of there immediately and sent the dove.

Wiliam and Grelle have been exchanging info on all this with the German branch since at least the green witch arc, but Sascha and Ludger/Rudgar seem to know important things (now) about our earl’s lineage that the London branch still hasn’t noticed. And that information apparently still hasn’t been shared. Otherwise, Grelle should have already known before Othello even showed up. You know... if Undertaker ends up confirmed as Cedric, which I absolutely expect, at this point. It’s also a bit annoying that Othello has that strand of our earl’s hair but hasn’t said anything about results of examination/testing. I’m sure that something in the DNA would be an eye-opener... like giving him at least part of the information that the German reapers already know....

There is a distinct lack of communication in the reaper realm that parallels the lack of communication in the human realm. Stories like this pretty much rely on a lack of proper communication, but I still find it annoying. 🤷🏻‍♀️

i think reapers don't age but their hair can grow ? i mean they're not getting older , only their hair got longer

I believe there is evidence they get older, too, not just grow their hair. However, they age at a much slower pace than humans, since nothing is human about them anymore, except for their souls... and possibly snippets of their cinematic records... according to my theory, in which they are human souls reborn in “reaper bodies”, as a form of punishment with a chance of “salvation” or “redemption”.

Let’s do some comparisons for Othello and Undertaker, shall we?

They were “recruited” at the same time by the reaper organization and given registration numbers (and then trained together), and I believe that means they were growing up as “people” in the “afterlife” destined to become “reapers” because they had previously killed themselves. Not everyone in the “reaper realm” technically has to be a “reaper”. I really should update my theory to explain that: It’s not really the “reaper realm”; it’s the “afterlife” — a place where you are reborn/reincarnated after death in the human realm — and the reaper organization is just one of many potential “employers” there. You get “recruited” by the reaper organization, once you are deemed old enough, if your death in the human realm had been by suicide. Different organizations probably exist there (in the “afterlife”) to handle the “salvation” or “redemption” of people who are being given the chance to “right” some other “wrong” from their past lives as humans. They age very slowly... essentially because they are being given a very long punishment... and it might be expected that it takes them a long time to “right” their “wrongs”. Not everyone in this “afterlife” necessarily has “reaper eyes”, so this feature might mark them as “reapers” there, too.

“Undertaker” went by “136649” instead of his given name (I strongly suspect that’s Cedric K. Ros—, which I think is a reference to Cedric of Rotherwood, the father of Wifred of Ivanhoe, in Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe), while Othello continued to go by “Othello” (and I have a feeling his backstory is based on the murder-suicide of that character from the Shakespearean play of the same name. That Othello was tricked into believing his new wife was cheating on him, because of false evidence, so he strangled her to death and then committed suicide by stabbing himself in the chest. This would help explain why our Othello ended up interested in/suited to working in the forensics lab... and it might also help explain why Undertaker is insulted by Othello, of all people, calling him crazy... if our Othello had also committed a murder-suicide....)

Anyway... *cough*... they do seem to have matured somewhat since they were recruited by the reaper organization; I don’t think it’s just their hair growing (or them gaining knowledge/experience) over time:

“Undertaker” seems to have aged ever so slightly since he was recruited by the reaper organization and chose to go by “136649”. Also, it seems he decided to never cut his hair? Because his hair is already getting really long back when he and Othello were still working together. (I’m also somewhat partial to the theory that long hair on a reaper is indicative of their power. And Grelle is decidedly a strong reaper....) Reapers might be able to change their hair length at will, anyway; not just cutting it short but also quickly growing it out again.

If you were to lengthen the hair on Othello in the picture on the cover of ch149 (all of the pics in this post are from ch149, BTW), he would still look slightly younger in the face than he looks now. I think so, anyway. As I said above, “136649” already has long hair by then.

I’m not entirely sure, of course. It’s only a theory... one of a few that could possibly explain their origins.

Another version of my theory I’ve been tinkering with: they are reborn — with their old souls — in the “afterlife” and grow up to their late teens or maybe twenty, then the reaper organization “recruits” them. And part of this recruitment includes an arrestment to their aging process. In other words, they stop aging soon after they officially become “reapers”. 🤔

a blog about reapers? i found the right person to ask this ahah how could undertaker recognized othello from the stairs with that nearsighted face he has.. and all the hair in front of his eyes too. I hc he recognized othello's voice and in case i'm right, this means that they know each other more than what it seems, since i personally don't think that it's easy to recognize a voice of a person you don't know very well

Hi Anon, thanks for asking me! It’s an interesting question. I absolutely agree with you that UT recognized Othello’s voice. His nearsighted problem is canon, and also he doesn’t rely on his vision too much as he said during the battle in Campania arc.

However, I don’t think the hair in front of his eyes is a big deal. He could simply cut his curtain into two pieces, you know…when nobody notices him, and then observe secretly through the gap, lol I’m joking. Anyway, he does read books like that with that long bang full cover his eyes. So maybe it’s just kind of art style?

As for the relationship between UT and Othello, I also agree they know each other more than what it seems, at least, more than a normal comrade/co-worker. Othello calls him White Hair chan/Whitey, I don’t think we’ll give someone a nickname but not use it from time to time.

Besides, if we go further, I’d say Othello didn’t tell the whole truth, in other words, he did hide something in the conversation with Grelle. I believe we may get more information about their past as reapers at the right moment in the future.

Thanks for the ask Anon! I edited this for you, have a great day! XD

What about othellos relationships with other reapers?

Hard to say, since we’ve only seen him interact with two. But he also mentions that he’s the one others assumed might become the mad scientist, not 136649/Undertaker.

He seems to count himself a friend of Grelle, and they know each other at least somewhat well, since Othello says “Grelle-chan” without Grelle making comment about it. Plus, Grelle did tell him about “Sebas-chan” before Othello got to meet the demon. But Grelle also insults him for being a “geek” and didn’t know just how useless Othello was with his death scythe. Grelle didn’t even know Othello had never modified his death scythe after training… until just recently. I think Othello wouldn’t mind becoming better friends with Grelle, but Grelle doesn’t have much patience for him or his nerdiness.

Othello and 136649/Undertaker trained together, but it looks like information mostly went one way: Othello telling 136649 about himself, but 136649 not saying nearly as much. I mean, Othello never even learned 136649’s real name, so he just called that star of the soul collection department “White Hair-chan”. I suspect that 136649 knows why Othello had such a reputation for being a future mad scientist. In fact, I think 136649 learned early on (perhaps even during training) something about Othello that made him not really want to have much to do with him. If Othello really follows the pattern of his namesake and killed his lover before killing himself, that’s definitely something 136649/Undertaker would find mad/insane. But, other than that, it’s possible that 136649/Undertaker got the idea to mess with cinematic records of corpses after finding out the sorts of things Othello might have been doing in the forensics lab. I and some others here suspect that reapers who misbehave (enough) might be “reprogrammed”, if you will, to better focus on their work. Even if that’s true, Othello isn’t necessarily part of the group that conducts that work. However, he does apparently like to “peek around” in the brains of whatever subjects he’s studying. He threatens to do that to 136649/Undertaker, and that’s met with the reply that 136649/Undertaker isn’t ready to be dissected in Othello’s lab. Othello also happens to mention to our earl (and Sebastian and Grelle) that our earl is the first living contractor (with a demon) that he’s ever taken a sample from. In the licensed English translation, it says “cells”. I’m reminded of the fact that if you remove part of a film strip and put it under glass for display, that’s called a “film cell”. It’s a lot like placing sample cell tissue on a microscope slide for use and storage. So, I have developed this image (pun intended) of Othello with a collection of saved bits of cinematic records from various individuals over the many years… not just biological tissue samples. Because I suspect he likes to keep stuff like that, too. All these things might even be catalogued and stored in some file room or specimen storage room at the lab….

As far as Othello’s interactions with other reapers go, I’m not so sure. Reapers in the soul collection department might largely avoid him, even if it’s only because they are flashy soul collectors… and he’s just a lab geek. Much like the stereotype of jocks and nerds not interacting at school. Even others in the forensics lab might keep some distance. I’m not sure how strong that “mad scientist” reputation might be, but some may have been there long enough to know how the reputation started. It’s even possible that Othello did something so bad that he was “suspended” or otherwise punished for it. If so, whether his cinematic records were messed with or not… being caught, stopped, and punished might be the only thing that’s kept him from becoming truly insane….

136649’s ponytail

I was working on the long post about visual similarities between some characters in Black Butler and Mother3... when I realized something about Undertaker’s registration photo for 136649.

He already had his hair in a ponytail. It was hard for me to tell at the angle it was drawn, even though it did look odd, but when I changed the alignment, it became apparent that his hair is pulled back into a ponytail, and his bangs are just hanging loose as a much shorter fringe than he had later.

That’s the only way I can explain the shape of his hair in this panel, unless Yana-san just couldn’t get the angles right. But I don’t think so. I think his hair is already a little long by the time he’s registered with the reaper organization.