Review of Black Rock Shooter

I didn't have the highest hopes for the Black Rock Shooter anime, but I did expect a somewhat concrete plot, at least. Sadly, we can't all get what we want. Even if it's the bare minimum. Let's start with the good points then, since they'll be over fairly quickly. Huke's idea of an alternate world where silent girls fight in order to reduce the emotional stress placed on their teenaged counterparts, all without each other knowing, is something fresh that I believe could have created something so much better than this.The fact that it would be set in high school, with regular problems, and regular girls, wouldmake it all that much more relatable. All in all, it had promise as a good thought provoking anime, to name one of the large range of things it could have been.

The art was superb. This show was beautiful, and when the art switched between CG and 2D was handled very well. The fight scenes, character designs, etc. were enjoyable. The music as well. The aesthetic part of it all was one of the best considering the leaps that anime have taken recently thanks to digital art.

Moving on.

Oh how badly did this disappoint me. To put it bluntly, the characters were ridiculous. In fact, I had a hard time taking all of this seriously. The emotional "crisis" that these girls faced made me grimace and shake my head with second-hand embarrassment. Regardless of personal situations, this sort of absurd mental abuse is extremely unrealistic and, frankly, more comedic than tragic.

At some point, the plot ceased to be linear, got jumbled all over the placed, and I spent more time looking at girls crying and being jealous than seeing them work out their problems with plausible ways. The end was basically thrown in my face as a sort of "Here, take this for your troubles," and then it ended. That was it. A good 8 episodes of what could have been something great, and it ended in a tattered mess of plot holes, things that tried to patch up those plot holes, and girls who were somehow ok even though they clearly weren't an episode or two ago.

All in all, looking at it was nice, thinking about it wasn't.