WWHCurrent Anime & Manga Blog: Final Impressions: Black★Rock Shooter

April 7, 2012

Posted by DarrenW

Dear Otakus,

I'm back with the final impressions for the awesome, "Black★Rock Shooter"!!

Mato Kuroi, Black Rock Shooter

The story of Black Rock Shooter begins with the single black rock shooter, alone in an isolated world of dreams and fantasy, wielding her star cannon which can shoot rocks out at incredible speed. She is shown having two long pigtails, a left eye that burns with a blur flame, and constantly wears the LEAST amount of clothes I've ever seen. She continues her life in this mystical world, fighting other beings in her world endlessly.

And then there is Mato Kuroi, your average middle schooler, who is the protagonist for this story. She joins the basketball team and on the first few days of school, meets Yomi Takanashi, a timid girl in the same class, who does not want to make friends with Yomi, for some unknown reasons.

Yuu-chan

Well it's later found out that it's because of Yomi's possesive 'friend' Kagari Izuriha, that causes Yomi to keep away from making friends. Ugh creepy wheelchair bound girl. Followingly, Yomi begins to go mad from being lonely and void of friends. Mato's best friend, Yuu-chan, seems keen to help Mato, but it seems Mato must make the ultimate decision of her life, to BECOME Black Rock Shooter.

Other World

Other World Characters

There are two worlds which exist in the universe, the world we know of, and the world of emotions, where their actions are driven by our emotions. If someone from the world of emotions is killed, the person of the real instantly snaps back into normal behaviours.

Unfortunately, upon entering, Black Rock Shooter is "killed" and mutates into something of an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT ENTITY.

If you would like to draw comparisons, I find it VERY similar to Yumekui Merry, what with the dream world and human world, and the fact Merry in Yumekui Merry isn't wearing much EITHER. But of course the key difference is that Yumekui didn't have nearly as much action nor cool CGIs.

Yomi Takanashi, Dead Master

Not wanting to spoil things for you guys, I strongly suggest you go watch this anime. I think SparkNorkx was quite impressed with it, and Tr3xus loved the unique character designs.

In terms of plot, it was well expressed, with three different segmented stories of which involved most, or almost all of the characters. However, it was not great in the sense that it did not give you the 'umph' sort of plot-line, and did not give a severe impression that I expected it to.

Black Gold Saw

Now the strong point in this anime was the constant theme of emotions, friendship, hope, etc going on. Normally it would be portrayed within the theme as part of the plot, but this time, I found it vividly entertaining to have this theme sewn into the very fabric of imagery. It was a good idea to have two worlds going on to portray the different negative feelings. Sad news to those who are unable to link imagery to inference and see the plot. XD I had to admit it was a bit hard to see what they were going on until the climax.

Kagari Izuriha, Chariot

Furthermore, if you're the kind of person who do not like main characters going berserk and loony, you shouldn't watch this show. There are some very aggravating scenes that do give you the sort of disgust when you see some of the characters going completely insane and doing things in an attempt to ~~"commit suicide"~~ make a point.

The fighting scenes in the anime made up and deserves a good praise. Though I felt that the finale was pretty abrupt, it was a good job overall.

If you're asking me why this review is so short, well its because there are ONLY 8 EPISODES.

But personally, this anime really deserves some praises. It is original in it own sense, and it has managed to produce a powerful story with just 8 episodes.

BRS VS BRS

"Broken" Rock Shooter

Many of the problems raised in the anime can also be related to real life problems. In some sense, some of you may feel connected to the anime as some of the problems the main characters have are actually quite real.

Another note is that the 3D CGIs are ~~very well made~~ awesome, and the OP is as usual, a great job by supercell. The OP, "ブラック★ロックシューター" (Black★Rock Shooter), is composed by ryo (supercell), the SAME COMPOSER for Guilty Crown's "My Dearest" and "The Everlasting Guilty Crown" Omg.

Epic

However, I'm not really digging the parts where Black Rock Shooter gets shot or injured. Although there's no blood, it still looks painful, like C3.

Black★Rock Shooter premiered on February 3, 2012 and only has 8 episodes. It was fansubbed by AFFTW-Hatsuyuki, Asenshi, AsukaSubs-SubDESU, CSS, Commie, Nishishi-subs, WhyNot, and GX_ST. Wow.