The Gastrea virus spreads like wildfire, causing each infected host to rapidly mutate, gaining new
powers and abilities with every stage of development, even while they continue to attack, kill and
infect multiple new hosts. Unable to fight a pandemic enemy that turns defenders into adversaries, the
shocked remnants of the human race are forced to retreat into cities surrounded by giant monoliths
made of Varanium, one of the few materials that can stop the Gastrea. Now mankind's last hope lies in
the Cursed Children: young girls infected with the virus who have managed to retain a hold on their
humanity. Paired with a partner, they alone have the strength to take on a Gastrea in one-on-one
combat. But the very thing that gives them power is a ticking time bomb, so even as they protect
humanity, they are also feared and shunned. Are they Girls? Monsters? Or Mankind's Ultimate
Salvation?
(Source: Sentai Filmworks)
Every now and then, you come across something so average that it's almost impressive. "Wow," you tell yourself. "How did this manage to be so okay at everything without managing to cross into good?" Black Bullet is one of these rare gems of mediocrity: the foundation is solid and everything built upon it holds up, but it's not quite well-crafted enough to truly be considered stable. Black Bullet is the story of Rentaro Satomi, a young man working for the Japanese government as a "promotor" to fight against monsters created by the Gastrea Virus. Aiding him is the ten-year-old "initiator" Enju Aihara. Initiators are known as the "cursed children" due to their superhuman abilities. Also, they're all underage girls. Don't ask why they have to be underage girls. They just do. Shut up and let them do their blatant pandering to lolicons. Rentaro and Enju begin by combating Gastrea, but later a masked man called Kagetane Hiruko and an impending collapse of a monolith defending Tokyo both threaten to destroy the city. If you think this sounds like an interesting concept, you'd probably be right. Conceptually, this is a very strong series. The animal-themed initiators make for an interesting magic system and the plot is solid enough. However, the show overall feels a bit lackluster, probably due to the low amount of character development. There are plenty of scenes that should be tear-jerking or emotionally powerful. The cursed children in particular get a raw deal and if the series had managed to follow through on what it was trying to do, it would have been filled with heartbreaking moments showcasing just how thoroughly these young girls' lives had been destroyed just because they were different. Unfortunately, when terrible things happened they usually happened to characters with little to no character development or plot importance, and it's hard to take the whole cursed children tragedy seriously when they're used more for cutesy fanservicey scenes than for a serious, mature story. Yes, there were plenty of times times that I said "that sure is terrible," but I said it when I should have been moved to tears. Ultimately, Black Bullet just doesn't do enough. It's like someone drank a can of Darker than Blackweiser and said "you know, this is really good but it's a little too strong for me" and then went on to make Black Bullight and while it does still kind of taste like Blackweiser it's watered down and has this sort of skunky loli taste to it but it's still enough to get you buzzed and once you've had a few you don't really notice the loli taste that much anyway. And frankly, if I wanted to see that, I'd just rewatch Darker than Black: Gemini of the Meteor _oh snaaaap_ but no seriously that's basically what Black Bullet is. If you're really into action anime, particularly ones with sci-fi or urban fantasy elements, you'll probably like Black Bullet. But it falls short of better shows in its genre and it doesn't bring much to the table. It's definitely not a bad show. It has solid writing, a great magic system, a few interesting characters among the sea of uninteresting ones, and a bit of humor along the way. It's just brought down by a few unfortunate pitfalls and an overall unwillingness to capitalize upon its full potential. If you like this type of show, go ahead and watch it. But if it's not your usual thing, give it a pass. It's not that it's a waste of your time. It's that there are shows your time is better spent on. Three stars.
~~~img600(http://i.imgur.com/5ze2r0R.png)~~~ # ~~~__Spoiler-free review__~~~ #Review in brief: Black Bullet features solid action, emotional scenes, and a great soundtrack to boot. However, it suffers from its blistering pace causing it to miss out on character development and fall flat with its attempts at humor. Your enjoyment hinges on how well you can tolerate its flaws, and while I'd argue that this anime has more good than bad it does straddle the line quite hard. #Review in full: Let's start with the good. Black Bullet's most frequent quality is its steady (but not overbearing) action scenes. The show does a good job of making action intense and brings out some admirable animation and music for these scenes. The fights felt varied from each other as a wide variety of battlegrounds, circumstances, and opponents (both human and Gastrea, the antagonist monsters of the show) prevented even repeating rematches from feeling repetitive. There are a few fights that feel like they were cut short to prevent important characters from dying though. Still, solid overall. The other strong point of Black Bullet are its emotional scenes, which are pulled off beautifully thanks to how the show uses its setting. While others have criticized the setting because it doesn't convey a sense of imminent human extinction, I would argue that this was never meant to be the case. Humanity clearly suffered a heavy blow in years past, but the discovery and usage of the fictional metal "Varanium" is shown to have protected humanity and allowed it to get back on its feet. This is made bluntly clear by the fact that the "wall" protecting Tokyo is just an array of Varanium obelisks. Armed with the Gastreas' kryptonite, it's reasonable to believe that the remaining human enclaves (of which there are implied to be many in Japan alone) could exist as futuristic city states similar to Singapore in form and function (which in loose terms is what the setting is). ~~~img500(http://i.imgur.com/MbVdnuV.jpg)~~~~~~_See? Totally impenetrable._~~~ That said, humanity is still fighting the Gastrea, and it turns out that people who are infected with the Gastrea virus before birth (and survive) develop Gastrea-like abilities during their brief lives. This is the point that Black Bullet focuses much of its serious moments on; in a world where the main group fighting humanity's enemy are a bunch of child soldiers imbued with the genetic code of that same enemy, what happens when these children are inevitably distrusted & despised for their similarity to the enemy? When they are no longer seen as children but as weapons of war? How does this affect them and their worldview? Is it right, or fair? Black Bullet is just as much about a war between humans and alien-like monsters as it is about main characters Rentaro and Enju as they struggle to find meaningful answers to such questions. This turns what would have been merely a jadedly serious teenage action hero and an energetic young girl into surprisingly appreciable characters and solid main leads. The reason I say "surprisingly" is because plot-wise Black Bullet took a lot of shots in rapid succession and not all of them hit (more on that in a bit). Black Bullet's touching moments are hits in this regard, and the serious scenes all hit hard. Expect many doses of emotion from this show. Everything is held together by the great soundtrack that feels right at home with the setting, plot, and whatever is currently happening on screen. It's even worth checking out on its own. The animation has both good and bad moments, but tends to be good on average. The CG is really hit or miss and is not infrequent. Now for the not-so good. Black Bullet's main flaw is that its pacing is simply too fast. While this partially lends to the steady flow of its action it also pushes much of its humor flat on its face, stunts character development, and affects believability by skipping explanations. That's really it, but I'll go in depth for those wondering exactly what this affects. Anyways, most of the jokes are centered around the loli characters and how Rentaro does a great job of (unintentionally) making a lot of them develop crushes on him. Not all of these jokes are inherently bad but the quick pacing means that these jokes often come shortly after serious scenes. I had to stop and take a breather at a few points when a touching scene was bulldozed by a poorly placed joke just to be forgotten by all characters involved. However, there isn't much fanservice outside of these jokes (and these jokes aren't frequent either) leaving things balanced to those who can get past them. ~~~img500(http://i.imgur.com/0Xx6JI3.png)~~~~~~_What better way to introduce a child soldier with a terminal disease?_~~~ It does lead to another one of Black Bullet's flaws though; character development outside of the main duo is quite low and many backstories are explained in seconds. This isn't helped by how oblivious most of them are to the joke scenes. Instead of making you think "oh, so that scene wasn't serious" they'll often make you think "wow, that character is an idiot" thanks to this combination. Even worse is the fact that many characters have super-human abilities (a rather common thing in Black Bullet, even outside of the child soldiers) but don't so much as have their abilities discussed (with even less having their abilities explained well). It does come off as the sort of thing that is usually left to the viewers to fill in the blanks, but given how often these super-powers are relied on it does tug at the story's believability when so little of it is explained. Lastly, the plot is rushed at points (especially during the last arc). Many crucial plot elements are given little to no explanation and there's a few lampshades to be had. Sadly, it all falls back to a lack of backstory for most of the characters, as most of these plot elements involve specific side characters that receive far less attention than their importance to the plot warrants. This affects the ending as well since it takes the time to set up for a continuation that seems quite unlikely at this point. At the very least the main plot points are resolved and the final scene is well done. # Verdict: Black Bullet might have its problems, and many of them are glaring, but the things it does right are quite great. Its problems keep it from being easily recommendable though. It's the sort of show that you watch when you have nothing else planned at the moment, and only because you had a sudden urge to try it out. Then again, pacing is really its biggest issue, so if you can get past that you shouldn't have much trouble finding something worthwhile here.
Warning this review may contain spoilers. First impressions: So Black Bullet… we’ve got monsters and we’ve got people trapped in the walled off city. Does any of these things ring a bell? No? Ok. Story 4/10: So Black Bullet. The premise of Black Bullet to me seems like they just copied and pasted elements from other shows- cough attack on titan cough blue gender. Basically, there is a virus that turns people into monsters and what’s left of humanity is in a walled off city. So one problem I had with this show right off the bat is the setting it takes place in. The world the story takes place in paints this epic picture of where humanity is close to extinction and every day is a fight for survival. There is a virus that turns people into monsters that are "apparently “ beyond human imagination because it seems that giant moths and spiders are apparently beyond human imagination, that kill other people. Humanity’s only hope is the brave warriors that fight these monsters every day. Now probably judging from what I have said about the world this takes place in, you’re probably thinking to yourself, “why is this a problem for me?”. Well if you have asked yourself that question then I will tell you. Because while watching this show I never saw any actual survival going on. Despite how the monsters are apparently this huge danger to humanity and have killed off most of the human population everything in this world seems to be like our world except for the virus that turns people into monster. What's left of the human race is now living in walled off city going about life like nothing ever changed. There are even schools and shops that are open that people go to. You are probably going to argue “well the schools are there to train those you will fight the monsters right?”. Well if you thought that then I am sorry to tell you that you are wrong. They’re just normal schools. Because that's what we need in our post-apocalyptic setting… schools. So basically it is just another light novel version of a post apocalypse. Another problem I had with this is show is that it couldn't seem to keep a consistent tone going. For example, the tone of this show seems to swing back and forth from dark and edgy, to school life to fan service with little girls- and yes you did read right. Fan service with little girls trying to get on the main character’s D. One thing I did find funny was this shows attempt to be mature and taken seriously with the whole concept of super loli discrimination. Despite the reason for the super loli discrimination being very forced and seems only to be used for shock factor. It also is used to make the protagonist look like a hero who treats his super lolis with love and respect while the rest of society tries to kill them every chance they get, even though the only reason they are still alive is because they’re super lolis. Wait… so what you’re telling me that these people are pretty much throwing away their only hope of survival? They must be very dumb to do that. I mean assume that these people were actually trying to survive, you would think that they would try and figure out exactly what would help them survive. It is like if an army person were to throw away his gun in the middle of a fire fight. But of course we can't have actual good writing; rather, we have to make sure that these little girls are victims and suffer. Now If you’re wondering about the actual storyline and what not, it’s pretty generic and unoriginal. It basically boils down to shit happens and main character has to fix it. And there is some sort of government conspiracy that you don't give a fuck about. Characters 3/10: The main character is pretty much a passive bland character that has nothing interesting and the only thing that makes him different from the rest of the character is that he is nice to his lolis and tries to make the world a better place for his super loli harem. Even though he not really trying that hard to do that. The side characters are very bland and nothing interesting about. They are pretty much cardboard cutouts of light novel stereo types. Which aren't even that good any way. Art 6/10: Now, for the most part, the animation was fine. But this show had some very bad CG animated scenes. The backgrounds look pretty cool but that was about it. Sound 4/10: The OST for this is very forgetable. It's OP also rip-offs Attack on Titan’s OP, for some reason. The OST was done by Shiro Sagisu who worked on Attack on Titan, Berserk Golden Age movies, and Bleach. Enjoyment 4/10: The only thing I enjoyed about it was the loli discrimination thing. This is like racism to lolis which I found quite funny at times. I am like “oh this is racism towards lolis, I never thought that could happen but it did”. Despite the fact, that the reason for this was very forced and superficial. Overall 4/10: So overall, if you are a loli-con or some kind of pedo then this is the anime for you. However, if you looking for a good post-apocalyptic show then you won't find it here.