Black Rock Shooter is a shoddily scripted anime focussing on the drama between a group of highschool girls and an unexplained connection to a parallel world. It centres around the lead character Mato Kuroi Mato lives her every day life interacting with her fellow classmates while a personification of herself is fiercely battling her class mates in another world. The purpose of this alternate world is that the personified versions of the characters are bearing the pain and anguish of the real world characters and this is portrayed through the fights taking place. The show makes no efforts to explain how this world came to be and at first I simply thought it to be an artistic expression of the day to day life of the highschool characters and not something actually taking place but this was not the case. Later in the series we see that not only are the characters aware of this alternate world but for some unexplained reason Matos mother is also aware of this alternate dimension. The lack of context or introduction to this world and its importance doesnt help the audience connect with the fights or the real world characters in any way all it becomes is a respite from the annoying dialogue between the main characters. My favourite thing about this show was the cour length that being it was short and there were only eight episodes in the season. Its hard to like anything about this show when the plot has no direction and the characters are bland and contain a lot of annoying qualities. The characters are all overly emotional and melodramatic school girls. The main challenge the characters face is overcoming there own distasteful qualities and when each character is so dislikable youre hardly rooting for anything other than for them to get on with everyday life and stop having to see the school counsellor. The school counsellor is a character that seemed to have some vendetta against the happiness of the students and would attempt to place nihilistic thoughts into their already depressed heads this again was another unexplained plot point we never are given any information as to why the school counsellor is conniving and evil and are left to assume that shes simply as deranged as the rest of the cast and for no explainable reason. The plot was without substance and the only well thought out element was Matos affinity to a childrens book about a little bird and its rise and fall as it explored the colours of the world. This story was often contrasted against Matos tribulations and used as her motivation to accept the darkness of a bleak and horrible world. That being said for an animation that focussed so much of its dialogue on colours it really had none in the artwork. The art was basic at best in the real world that we spent half the show in and then was only slightly better in the alternate reality in which everything was CGI there was another style of art used to present the story of the little bird and while colourful it wasnt well drawn it seemed that there was a lot of wasted potential on the artistic front as there were three different modes in which to present exciting art but that potential was never reached across any of them. While the show and art were mediocre the music that accompanied followed suit. There was never any exciting or interesting music while it wasnt horrible it simply lacked impact. The alternate reality presented the opportunity to have some exciting music but was often silent and all the audience was given to listen to was the object noises of weapons. The show was simply lacking on all fronts and left a lot to be desired. The music and art were places that couldve easily been improved while the plot and characters required a major overhaul to bring them to the standard of good anime.
38 /100
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