Black * Rock Shooter OVA – review

“Storyline: Person 1 meets person 2. They become friends. Person 3 enters equation, person 1 and 3 become friends and person 2 feels left out. Person 1 and 2 make up, person three feels left out… We have entered an endless recursion of fail.” – Daldaren from AnimeTake

That's a mighty huge gun

The Black * Rock Shooter OVA wasn’t necessarily poor entertainment. It has some pretty strong elements. However what it lacked was fluid cohesion and a solid story.

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I’ve never really understood Hatsune Miku’s popularity, and thus Black * Rock Shooter’s. The artificiality of their voices just doesn’t strike such a deep chord within me, and I’ve been accustomed to think that the sole reason they’re so big in Japan is because of expert marketing, advertising and merchandise aimed at the anime industry.

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However I must admit that the sound in this OVA was pretty good (although a far cry from the synthesised stuff BRS is known for). It was also nice to recognise a tune or two from the BRS single too.

Homework - a silent killer.

Animation was pretty solid. I liked the character models, but there was a little lack in texture and detail. Never before have I seen such a plain slice of bread/toast. The fightscenes were great, albeit rather disjointed by the slice-of-life component of the OVA which FAR overweighed this alternate world…..

Sometimes the best protection is no protection at all.

….. which forms the exact crux of the problem that Black * Rock Shooter suffers from. There’s simply no damn explanation why this other world exists. The evil girl from the start Black Gold Saw simply never appears again. We have no idea whether the opening fight scene is prior to or after the events of the OVA proper.

For some reason Yuu's head reminds me of a pumpkin.

The slice-of-life element to the OVA was also fairly straightforward, and something we hear time and again. Essentially it’s about friendship, and the pitfalls of having more than one friend. Morale of the story: don’t get more than one friend. It ruins lives.

"Why do I suck so much?"

I think most fans were expecting 50 minutes of semi-naked chicks duking it out with huge guns and blades in weird and wacky locales. I certainly was expecting that, and that would have made an infinitely more entertaining OVA. However the S-o-L stuff really interrupted our dosage of fanservice the fanservice interrupted the S-o-L component. I’m not sure whether I’d watch a BRS anime series, but I guess I’m kinda up for it, as long they decrease the high-school girly moments and ramp up the alternate world.

Animation: 8.5/10

Sound: 8.5/10

Story: 6.5/10

Characters: 7/10

Enjoyment: 6.75/10

Overall : 7.45/10

Mmmmm.... kinky...!