The good news: Black Butler volume 30 is a pretty good volume.
The bad news: It’s pretty much a side story stretched into a full volume.
The gang is all split up looking for blood gathering operations, and the manga has been following the Mey-Rin/Ran-Mao pair. But all of that is put on hold as Black Butler shows Mey-Rin’s past and how she came to work at Phantomhive Manor.
I remembered volume 29 leaving off with Mey-Rin in a stand-off with another undercover maid, and so I was confused when volume 30 opened with Sebastian asking someone to use their eyes for the Young Master. The manga then jumps back further in time to a boyish youth named Rin (obviously a younger Mey-Rin) operating as a thief thanks to Rin’s incredible eyesight. Rin is eventually caught by the mafia and forced to work as an assassin with the codename Owl, which leads her to a mission at Phantomhive Manor.
Going back to volume 29, I found it did end with the same “Sebastian makes a request” scene, but considering how long it has been since then, it’s easy to forget that page existed. Readers who were expecting to see how Mey-Rin and Ran-Mao take down this operation and free the captured maids will be in for a surprise, as Black Butler only returns to the present in the final four pages, and it’s nothing but the continuation of the stand-off. The next volume preview teases the end of the arc and that the action will shift to another pair. So readers who wanted to pick up right from the end of volume 29 will probably be better off skipping to 31.
An older Mey-Rin doesn’t narrate her story, which I think was a missed opportunity to dig a little deeper into this character. Or at least connect it more to the “now” instead of limiting it to the last few pages. Ciel’s long backstory was essential to the plot; Mey-Rin’s is not. This seems like it should be a separate book called Black Butler: Mey-Rin’s Story rather than Black Butler volume 30.
I did enjoy learning more about Mey-Rin. True, readers could probably assume a female sharpshooter probably had a rough life, but there are some intriguing parts. I did not expect her to have a connection with Lau’s group. That kind of makes her teaming up with Ran-Mao ironic. Anyway, the extended flashback only goes as far back with her already using her super-farsightedness to help rob nobles, and it would have been interesting to see how this whole scheme was set up after finding herself an orphan in a foreign country. But Mey-Rin’s background already takes up a whole volume, and this approach means that the attention is on her becoming a mafia killer and then a maid-bodyguard and not her life as a whole. It was also nice to see her motivation for working for Ciel does not just stem from her crushing on Sebastian.
I do wonder if the other arcs will have a similar approach. I can’t same I’m uninterested in learning more about the other servants, but this volume feel like a complete detour. I don’t want to spend too long away from Ciel taking on his brother and the Undertaker, and if future volumes follow this pattern, it will be an agonizing wait.