Black Rock Shooter

I usually try to avoid writing negative reviews, since someone went to the trouble of making it and there's obviously talent involved in doing so. However, I'll make an exception this time. Although it probably is my own fault for sitting through the entire thing. I can't understand how or why I did.

The story seems to revolve around a bunch of young girls coming to terms with the emotional pain of adolescence...other than that I don't really know. Its confusing and really boring. The girls have some sort of dream world they go to to avoid the pain of reality and all they do is shoot these massive chain guns and stuff (maybe that's why I thought it was going to be good).

I'm giving it 3 for the animation, which was different, but still quite good. Long story short, this must have been made for tweenage girls and somehow I got the impression (by the tags on anidb) that it was going to be an action anime, and so I proceeded to sit through the entire ordeal. To anyone reading, unless you are a masochist (like me) or a 12 yr old girl, avoid this like the plague!, and all I want for Christmas now is to unwatch it...

...But if I had a list of all the things that this franchise has done so far, this would be at the very bottom. The series is a spin off of the OVA, Not a sequel like I was hopping. Still, I wasn't disappointed with this. The music is better, and the action is in all ways made by Mr. Gurren Lagann himself. Black Rock Shooter to me is the School life version of that near perfect anime (HIGH RECOMMENDATION). The only real and I think we can all agree upon flaw to the series is the story. Its like a Manga, it's played out through character conflicts and Arc's and at times it's very confusing, and there's no buildup it's just... ehh... In the end, BRS is good. Best thing in the world, nah. But if you're looking for a good and short anime Action-Drama with the Tim Burton Formula (not to add the best in recent years) give this a shot. On another note: Some people mentioned not sticking to the source material as a flaw.... Your joking right?? The source material to this is A illustration, A drawing by a guy named Huke. That became a music video soon after that. To put that in lambent terms, what source material did they have in the first place??? All that they had was what she looked like and that she had a minor case of depression. Sometimes I wonder how "professionals" keep there jobs...

Angst is a hell of a drug. A little of it can be extremely powerful, but too much and you end up mired in sticky adolescent self-pity. Black Rock Shooter is a show that has a lot of slick animation, gritty fight scenes, and weird vaguely science-fictional concepts, but in the end its emotional core is nothing more than that same angst overload, and it's all rather maudlin and over-dramatic.

To be fair, the creators seem to have had the best of intentions, and at least tried to do something interesting with a property that could have been a simple hot-girl-kicks-ass series. The execution just falls flat, however, and trying to figure out the series mythology is like walking upstream through a river of mud. There's a good show in here, but it's not this. It's usually pretty to look at, but ultimately Black Rock Shooter is an unfortunate failure, and together with the dire Guilty Crown represents the nadir of the once-revered noitaminA block.

Usually when something is hyped up I try to avoid it. Hype is like a disease left unchecked, it spreads. However it's not always a bad thing. That alone has sometimes led me to some of the most financially and critically acclaimed Animes ever to come from Japan. Black Rock Shooter is no different. From past greats like Cowboy Bebop and Trigun, To the Very popular year of 2007 epics like Gurren Lagann, Soul Eater, D. Gray-Man, Ga-Rei-Zero and Deathnote. And even more recent ones like Guilty Crown and Steins Gate.

Black Rock Shooter is one the types that strafes far away from the traditional philosophy of Anime. The story is a pile of hay but... Understandable. But the series (as short as it was) shines through your well developed characters that are your typical middle school melodramatics and high velocity silent action sequences. The lore is very interesting too, very impassive and not very hard to figure out. That is unless you're a guy with a bad drug habit (Re:wandereramor) who uses cool typing language and thinks he's knows what's good or not. And don't even get me started on those who though the OVA was bad, those reviews are a clear definition of lack of understanding as to what an OVA is made for and not what it should be.

Why are there so many dumb people in the world...

Anyway BRS is a good Anime, In contrast to the OVA it does a great job of addressing feedback and crafting a awesome Action-Drama. it's not one of those goes-on-forever types (Not to say there not bad if you get my wind) with action sequences were the characters stop to babble at each other for a bit and then continue doing what there doing. Its short and sweet, just like any other great anime should be.