For those of you who aren't well-versed in the Vocaloid fandom and don't know what the hooplah is about, here's a brief history: Black★Rock Shooter started out as an original character by the artist huke. A Vocaloid song producer named ryo saw some illustrations of B★RS and thought that she looked like a dark-haired Hatsune Miku. One song and music video later, B★RS was introduced to the Vocaloid fandom with positive reactions. The song, video, and character became worldwide hits, which in turn spawned the OVA.
With an action-packed trailer for an OVA based on a great song, one would think that the anime would be an entertaining fantasy adventure, right? The results are quite far from that.
So, here we are...Black★Rock Shooter: a slice-of-life anime involving the relationship between two best friends. I'm not kidding: that is the core of the story. If you strip away all the hype surrounding the anime, this is what the anime really is. It's nothing that avid anime fans haven't seen before. To make sure that what the viewer is watching is in fact an OVA about Black★Rock Shooter, various scenes involving a death match between her best-friend-turned-nemesis, Dead★Master, have been thrown in. For most of the OVA, the scenes from the slice-of-life side and the fantasy side of the story seem irrelevant, despite the fact that the two fantasy characters bear striking resemblances to the real world characters. It's only during the last 10 minutes of the OVA that the director decides to slap on some logical reason as to how these 6 characters connect. Because of how the story is structured, there is a lot of guess work needed to be done about the relationships between all these characters: Why does Black★Rock Shooter's world look so desolate? How did Dead★Master become evil in the first place? And so on. The OVA brings up more questions than it does answer them. The storytelling technique of two or more stories intertwining can either fall under brilliant or gimmicky/messy. Anime like Baccano! perfect this technique. Guess which category this OVA falls under? I hope A-1 Pictures decides to animate more OVAs to clear up the plot holes in this one.
The art was the only thing that prevented me from dropping the OVA (along with the hope of things eventually getting better). When I saw the trailer for the OVA, I thought it looked terrible and hoped that it would get cleaned up eventually. At least that one expectation was reached. The pleasant, pastel look of the real world was a good contrast against Black★Rock Shooter's seemingly post-apocalyptic world. It also looks more gothic than I imagined it would be, with cross-shaped graves and a barren church populating the action scenes. The character designs are also interesting and distinct. Even characters such as Mato's brother and the detective stand out from the rest of the cast. The main characters are the most appealing, since the story focuses on them. The animation is especially nice in some scenes, including Mato dangling Yomi's cellphone charm and the action scenes in Black★Rock Shooter's world. If you're going to watch the OVA for one thing, make it the animation.
The sound was just as good as the animation. supercell, ryo's band, provides a nice mix of orchestral cues and hard rock music for each setting. ryo's use of the piano is a trademark in his music, so you'll be hearing a lot of that in the more dramatic scenes. He even manages to throw in homages to the song the OVA is based off of in some of the soundtrack to give the music a more thematic feel. The insert song also sounds nice, but the eniding theme might take a few more listens in order to get used to it. The voice acting is decent at best. The character's voices weren't as annoying as I thought they would be, but there's nothing special about them, either. Miyuki Sawashiro as Yomi stood out the most for me. The way she spoke gave the character a sort of elegance that brought to mind Rue from Princess Tutu. There is also the case where the fantasy characters don't speak at all (except for Black★Rock Shooter at the end), a very interesting move on the writers' and director's parts, but it does nothing to help with their side of the story.
As for the characters...where do I begin with them? If the writers wanted to turn Black★Rock Shooter into this kind of anime, there really should have been more attention paid to developing the characters in both settings instead of just one. What form of development we get is very weak and underwhelming. The development in the real world setting is alright, but more could have been done to make the viewers care more about the characters. In Black★Rock Shooter's world, there was next to no development between B★RS and Dead★Master. It seemed as if they were there only to appease the fans that were waiting a year for this to come out. Although the problems occurring in both worlds are similar, they exist as two separate entities that would eventually connect in the end. That's not an excuse to abandon the development of one set of characters in order to develop another set. The fantasy characters were there as fanservice and a weak way to move the story along. The character development was what really dragged down the OVA, not the story.
Like a handful of people that were awaiting the OVA, I was surprised to notice that the OVA not only failed to reach my expectations, but seemed to abandon my expectations altogether. Given the nature of the Black★Rock Shooter character and music video, I was expecting an action-oriented OVA that used the character's world and design as a framework to help develop the story. I really thought that she was going to get an actual personality and a decent backstory. I ended up getting something else. I really was let down, not because I didn't get the kind of anime I wanted, but because the effort put into this project was so shallow. If you've been waiting to watch this OVA like I have, don't waste your time. If you just so happen to be wanting a slice-of-life/action hybrid in your anime-watching diet that'll kill a lazy afternoon, then I guess you can go ahead with this anime. It's mediocre, but it's not the worst anime ever. Again, I hope a few more OVAs will be made to clean up the mess this one has made.
