Black Bullet

Black bullet is a anime that was adopted from a light novel. This series was being compare to attack on titan, or being called a copycat to attack on titan, but that can't be true since attack on titan isn't the first nor last to have these kind of story and settings. Coming into this series, it had a lot of hype from people who read the light novel or the manga. What most people didn't realize is that it would be adopted into 13 episodes which would mean the pacing would be rushed. So lets begin, I'll be reviewing this series in five category, ... story,art,sound,character and enjoyment.

Story 6/10: The story is about humans being forced to live in a small territory because of the attack of viral parasites named Gastrea. Now with this series just having 13 episodes, that means a lot of story progression would be lost and rushed. The thing that I find odd in this series is that The theme of the story is about humanity is on the verge of extinction, but I never get the impression that humanity is on the verge of extinction by huge bugs and that there is some sort of survival going on here. Nobody cares about it. In fact, we don’t even see the population having anything to say about that, since the plot centers on the protagonist. If they had shown a few bugs attacking people even that would be enough. Just to give us viewers that humanity really is under a threat. I don't know if this is the flaw of the story itself or just because the series was rushed and a lot of things were taken out from the light novel.

Art 7/10: Art is pretty good, and nice to look at.

Sound 7/10: The sound is pretty good, I downloaded a few ost to listen to, I like the ost. I also like the opening is anyone getting a attack on titan feel to that opening or is it just me?

Characters 4/10: The characters are pretty bland and two dimmensional. Each character has different personalities but what I find annoying is how easy the characters mood changes, like one moment everyone is sad then a minute later everyone is all happy, I personally think this series would've been way better if lolis were not in it. also Enju is pretty annoying, when she calls out to Rentarou it makes me *facepalm* and just sometimes put me off and give me a different mood towards this series. Each characters also have a dark/sad past which can make it a little overwhelming.

Enjoyment 7/10: I have to say with all the flaw and paced of this series, I did have a lot of fun watching it, the actions were short, but pretty good with the epic soundtrack.

overall: This series would've been so much better if it was adopted into 24 episodes instead of 13 episodes. I'm not a light novel or manga reader but even I can tell the pacing was rushed. Light novel readers has also confirmed my speculation. Well what can I say about this series, if you like lolis and want a series with good action and great soundtrack, then you should give black bullet a shot.

Black Bullet. I went into this series with a bit of skepticism: Will this series, which seems to focus on human morals and values within the context of a war between the humans and "them", in which case, the Gastrea, achieve their message, loud and clear, in its measly 13 episodes of length? Much like previously released anime like Elfen Lied, Higurashi no naku koro ni, and Psycho Pass, that are well known for their darker settings that serve to illustrate a concept of humanity put to the test, Black Bullet incorporates a similar dark setting, with the apocalypse of the human race at stake, ... and themes like segregation and the definition of justice, which, in theory, should bring out a creation that goes beyond just "a tv series", and becomes a work of literature.

My skepticism was well-founded, however, and as I continued to watch the show, it continued to grow, along with my distaste for the show's repeated mishaps.

Story: 3
Black Bullet's story, while darker than your usual action-oriented plot, eventually devolves into just another shounen-resembling story that believes that "any plot twist will make watchers drop their jaws in awe and instantly believe that it's an interesting and well-executed plotline." Unfortunately, that fact isn't true, and whereas Black Bullet really tried to incorporate a complicated plot involving a little bit of politics, along with plenty of action and "character building moments", the sheer amount of predictable plot developments, along with contrived plot twists made the plot into something that didn't even really matter anymore - all that mattered in the end was watching the loli's fight the insects.

Art: 7
The art was one of the only parts of the anime that I enjoyed, and that isn't an understatement. It was appealing to watch the action take place - though some fights were a lot shorter than they could have been, the animation during those fights was fluid and sharp, and I could see most of the particles and special effects that really make a science-fiction oriented action scene worth watching. Studio Orange did a pretty good job, and while sometimes, the backgrounds didn't look as sharp or clear as they could have been, the majority of the more important features were well done, and I didn't really have any trouble differentiating between who was who or what was going on.

Sound: 7
The majority of the sound effects were fairly well handled - it never sounded too cluttered or too spread apart, and the opening and ending sequences were catchy. The opening really did remind me of Attack on Titan's first opening theme, and what with all the similarities between the two shows, I really can't say that it's just a coincidence, but I'll leave it at that...

Character: 3
One of the biggest issues this show had was the amount of fan-pandering it produced, solely off the characters that they chose utilize. Whereas a main character that can do anything and everything, taking bullet after bullet while pulling a Rambo to eventually take his enemies out is fun to watch, it doesn't really serve as a character - a living and breathing human being. In the case of Satomi Rentaro, it takes away his potential of being a main character people can relate to in order to empathically understand any overarching theme present in the series - which serves to make it harder to get it at all. In addition, the existence of superpowered loli half gastrea half human waifus 1. isn't explained and 2. isn't relevant to the plot except to provide the occasional joke or be the direct trigger for a sad emotional reaction when they die. The only interesting character was the masked man, only because his ideals are twisted, and not what you'd usually see in a series, making him unique amongst a cast of cardboard cutouts and tropes you can find anywhere else.

Enjoyment: 2
There were way too many cases of Pilot's Love Song, in which they would introduce characters, simply to have them die to invoke emotional response from the audience, as well as Guilty Crown and Mirai Nikki type plot twists, both which I dread. Overall, the series felt very contrived, and upon closer inspection, much of the plot that is in between the spaces of the giant overarching story didn't make much sense, and weren't exciting or fun to watch. They tried a little too hard catering fanservice to the audience, when the series would have been fine without it, and probably would have been less distracting as well.

Overall: 5
All in all, I enjoyed this anime MUCH less than I expected to, considering it had all the pieces it needed to create a masterpiece that actually mattered and would influence what I thought about a certain value or moral, or would make me question "what if I were in that situation, how would I react." In the end, it turned out to be a lackluster show that simply had too many flaws and distracted too much from the main message for me to give it a higher rating, or even to say that "wow, I learned something from this show" or "wow, this show really showed me something that I've never wondered about before, maybe I should rethink it." Heck, the series didn't even let me enjoy my lolis, without having them die sporadically.

Right!
This is my first review here so please spare me internet while I add to the huge ocean of random stuff!
Black Bullet was a show that I picked up after watching Guilty Crown and its fair to say if you liked that you'll like this. I hasten to add I would never claim Guilty Crown is good, but it is fun, and we all like to have fun do we not?
So was Black Bullet fun or a disaster? Lets see!

Story-3
My impression of Black Bullets story was of a director trying too hard. Calling someone a Try-hard should not be taken as an insult however. ... The plot seemed to be trying to fit in every dramatic plot twist from every other show ever in a 13 episode series. Action! School Drama! Love triangles (or more like a hexagon or dodecagon if you're fussy)! Revenge! Apocalypse! Robots! Zombies! Politics! Persecution! Loli! Look how cute the Loli are!Loli!
The story was in general quite a mess with supposedly dramatic events being thrown at the screen and never explained. My favorite being the tricycle from episode 4 which was never explained. However it did set up some impressively epic events which I enjoyed the scope of so its not a total loss.
In short most of humanity is dead, and trapped within cities surrounded by giant monoliths, built to keep the mysterious monsters created by the Gastrea virus out of the city. The best weapon humanity has are the Cursed Children, children born from mothers infected by the Gastrea and born super strong and intelligent and guided by promoters, similarly talented adults.
In shorter, sounds pretty cool.

Art-7
It looked pretty good.
Wait I need to write more?
Okay compared to most stuff coming out this year it compared fairly well. There were some very noticeable sudden drops in quality and the CGI for the Gastrea was awful.
The colour palate was quite varied and the character design fairly solid with the lolis especially getting a lot of attention. And (I flinch as I say this) they were drawn adorably at times. I swear half their art budget went on making those work.

Sound-9
Actually somewhere where the show shone. The OP and ED were both pretty solid with the OP being maybe my favorite of the season. The animation for the OP however was pretty poor using mostly frames taken from the show and the first version being much better synched with the music. The ED was done significantly better in that regard. I did feel the OP borrowed slightly from AoT's but hey that was a good OP.
The background music was also pretty good.I especially enjoyed the jazz theme that played with Tina Sprout and Enju's theme also.
I don't speak Japanese but the voice acting seemed good as well. They had a couple of my favorite VA's including Yui Horie (Hanekawa, Kouko and Minori) and Yuki Kaji (Eren from AoT and Shu from Guilty Crown).

Characters-3
Characters really suffered in this show. most received essentially no development and there were a significant number a times where I was being shown an emotional scene and just thinking "I don't care". The bare levels of characterization that were set down were at times simply ignored and, even worse, sometimes brought back an instant later like nothing had happened. Again more time to actually show the journey the characters made would've been nice.
As I might have alluded to previously a biggest problem I had with the show was the Loli aspect. I object to the idea of Loli in general but that's fine. Why else do you watch anime except for something a bit different? Loli can be done well (see bakemonogatari) and it can be funny and adorable. However the sheer number of Loli characters all wanting to get boned by an 20 year old... nope. Not cool.
The leads were not entirely terrible. The Lead Lead Rentaro (definitely a phrase) was actually very solid being a step beyond the typical harem -insert your name here- character and actually showed quite a degree of compassion and awareness of the girls around him. He was a typical badass with a bit of filling. Enju, Rentaro's partner, was also fairly solid at times balancing the frailty of a young child thrown into a brutal situation quite well with sudden ability to bounce back typical of a child. And unlike the rest she did at least have a reason to love the main character. But as mentioned before important events seem to just disappear in characters minds rather than scaring them for life. I'm evil I enjoy that stuff.

Enjoyment-8
Despite all I've said I really quite enjoyed this show. There was a fairly equal balance between "This is awesome" and "This is stupid" moments but the awesome was fairly awesome and the stupid was so stupid it was kinda fun.
However I would not recommend this unless you have pretty good stupidity filters. The change from solemn coolness to forced romance Loli loving can be very jarring.

Overall-5
Mal says it all. Mediocre.
Its not rubbish (well maybe it is) and its certainly not great. However it is fun and I would say if you have a rainy day and nothing else you particularly want to watch then this will fill a gap. Expect fun not a masterpiece.
Also if you like Tetsuro Araki then this is definitely the show for you. The whole thing feels like a huge homage to his work.

Thanks for reading!

Black Bullet is, as many people have said before, similar to Attack on Titan in a way. Though instead of titans you have these huge bug like creatures called Gastrea, and its set in the future in Japan rather than an older style civilization. However the biggest difference between the 2 shows is that Attack on Titan is actually very good, where as this is just...eh.

Story (6)

The story as I mentioned before is, on paper, pretty similar to Attack on Titan. Humanity at the brink of extinction. Huge monsters that killed someone in the protagonist's family. A city inside of a barrier. But that's ... mainly where most of the blatant similarities stop. The main character, Rentaro is apparently half robot as well...also there's these lolis that are infected by the Gastrea or something and they like partner up with people like Rentaro and fight because now they have powers?...Also there's this villain that kinda fucks around inside the barrier and there's also other places other than Japan or something?

I don't know, the plot of this show I feel jumps around waaay to much and there's just too much going on at once, not the mention the pacing is basically terrible. There's a climatic episode like halfway through the season and it just really feels out of place and weird. I feel like the story lacked a lot of focus. The Gastrea were interesting but you hardly ever even see them until later on. They come off as barely having to do with the plot. Where as, with Attack on Titan, you're always reminded of them, and they are shown quite often. Hell, even the name of the show has barely anything to do with it. Rentaro shot his gun with "black bullets" like once in the whole show and that was in the first episode. Same with the whole him being a robot, I even forgot about that later on. I feel like there was a lot of lack of focus and proper pacing here.

Not to mention, there's a lot of brutal deaths is this show, mainly of little girls which I find very disturbing. I guess its not automatically a bad thing but I feel like every death, especially of little girls just felt very sudden and uncalled for. A lot of them where just forgotten quickly after so it didn't even feel like that really mattered.

Overall, it got more interesting by the end, but even the last episode had some pacing issues if you ask me.

Art (7)

The art is good. Not much to say here. Weird CGI that seems somewhat out of place but that's how most CGI is.

Sound (8)

The music and voice acting is over all pretty solid. The voice actor of Eren from Attack on Titan also voices Rentaro, and he does a pretty good job. The opening is very good as well as the ending, (though halfway through they changed the opening while keeping the song and the new opening wasn't quite as good). I'm also a fan of a lot of the background music as well.

Characters (6)

The characters are fine I guess. My favorite would have to be the villain, though he's not shown that often after the first few episodes. Nobody else really stood out to me though.

Enjoyment (6)

I never really felt like watching this show most of the time and I just kind of forced myself to watch it when it came on just because I wanted to finish it. It had it's moments but over all its probably my least favorite show I watched this season.

Overall (6)

It's alright and has it's moments, but there's really nothing that great here in terms of story in my opinion. If it really sounds like something you'd like, I'd say give it a shot, otherwise, I'd say just skip it.

Black Bullet is honestly in my opinion, one of the most overrated anime ever. Although it may not seem like the most popular anime, it's hype back in spring was pretty big, and I've seen reviews rating Black Bullet over an 8, which left me speechless. Black Bullet had a promising start sort of, but quickly it's plot just died away with no explanation of what's happening, my favorite character in the anime disappeared for half the show and the ending was plain rushed and made absolutely no sense.

The plot was "eh"; it was a mixture of Guilty Crown and Attack on Titans, which ... seems amazing, but that was not the case. There are these monsters called Gastrea, that infect humans turning humans into monsters. Humanity is on the brink of extinction until they find Vibranium, the stuff dreams are made of… or nightmares when it comes to the Gastrea. Having found the Gastrea's kyptonite, humans have created walls/barriers and have created haven cities where they could live in peace. Outside these barriers were the cursed children, humans that were part Gastrea (monster). In this world of turmoil, Rentaro witnesses all the ugliness in it. Unfortunately for the human race the Gastrea have managed to break into the city somehow, and it's up to the main character Rentarou and his teammate Enju to save the day. And... that's it, the ending ends in a makes absolutely no sense cliffhanger and blah blah blah blah. The few characters and animation were the only bright spots in this anime. Enju and the other cursed children was a new interesting add, and the main protagonist was pretty badass which was nice, but then in the end he suddenly loses all his "badassness". Anyways overall the plot just gets worse and worse as it progresses, that's really all I have to say. The anime is kind of enjoyable hence the 5 "average" rating, but seriously I wouldn't recommend this to people looking for a "good" anime.

Black bullet is probably one of the anime that got a lot of attention since it share a same atmosphere with Shingeki no Kyojin which is despair, humanity in the edge and dark themes. As the shingeki have finished airing, the emergence of black bullet is surely gives a lot of viewer have a great expectation on this anime. Some sites says this anime is a successor of shingeki. But does it really true? I would say not.

Black bullet is an anime that been package with thriller action and dark themes. The story is about when humanity was in the near extinct and living in ... small territory because monsters or parasites called Gastrea. Gastrea is not only killed people but also infected people, the people who have been attacked by gastrea have a high probability become one of them and so, humanity must struggle with that monster.

As the summary tells, it sounded awesome. Beforehand, Black bullet itself is an adaptation from light novel which people usually tends to have a great expectation since light novel is usually have more details in telling the story. But it wasnt happen, the story has plotholes and moreover feel rushed. 13 Episodes is doesnt enough to cover the story. As the story with thriller feeling, how the story progress is one of the key to make viewers feel the atmosphere. But in the end, it felt like the story drags the viewers to follow their fast paced story without telling what happen on that scene in detail and leaves a big question.

Well, the story is not always serious, they have some cute and funny things to lighten up this story. Well, its not weird since Shiden Kanzaki previous work is romance comedy. The jokes that happen is pretty funny but since the anime themes is struggling and despair, the joke feels like out of the place. For your info, the MC aka Rentarou have a pair named Enju which is loli. Some lovey-dovey things that happen is a little bit annoying. Why do we need to see a lovey dovey when we know that we’re struggling with monsters. There isnt any coherence when this anime talks about humanity in the edge but they put some lovey-dovey jokes.

Aside from the story, the art in this anime is quite “normal” for some action anime. When there is a battle, the effect is quite good, not so sparkly and they keep it as not too excessive. The background is quite detailed for an action anime and one thing to notice is how the art is suitable with the themes with the anime, the coloring in this anime is quite dark and blur which makes the despair and fear feels intensively being felt.

Other things to notice in this art is how the design of each characters. Sometimes the characters design isnt consistent. When watching this, i cant help to notice that in every scenes they draw the characters so badly like how Kisara’s boobs shape, its quite weird and really bothering. Its something that doesn’t bode too well for an action/fantasy series such as this. In the end, there isnt something to being prominent except how the coloring that really brings the feel of this anime.

Our main protagonist in this anime is Kentaro and Enju, they’re always being considered as a couple though its just a claim from Enju not from the both sides. Kentaro as the main character in this anime is like the other main character which is have a justice feeling and would help anyone, He also has a kind heart, calm demeanor, and comes across as brother type as what he does to Enju. Enju, in the other hand is like young sister type, differ from Kentaro, Enju see Kentaro as her couple and do what she can to get an attention. Actually this is quite interesting too see the relationship between them throughout the series. They way how they interact with each others is quite enjoyable.

If there are things that awesome from this anime, it was their sound. From, the opening song this anime have Fripside with their song “Black Bullet”. This song is tremendous, the gospel in this song is really enchanting and gives me a goosebumps, its quite epic song and one of the best opening song in spring 2014. Aside from the opening song, the soundtrack is great too. Its no wonder since its been arranged by Sagisu Shirou who is responsible for Evangelion, Berserk, and Magi. This time, he also made it with his music in this anime. Its increasing the intensity feeling and quite catchy. But sadly, sometimes this soundtrack song is overly used and repetitive. It makes the song losing its taste and being plain.

Beside the soundtrack, the seiyuu also what makes this anime more better with their voice. We got Kaji Yuki known for his voice as Eren Jaeger and also Yui Horie who known as singer and seiyuu for Hanekawa Tsubasa in Monogatari series

In the end, this anime is not what are people expected, if we’re talking about quality its just so far from Shingeki which people tends to relate this anime and of course, not all people would dislike it, some people would find this anime is interesting. This anime is good in some way and people who likes tragedy, dark themes and loli, this anime would be a great show for you.

Black Bullet is amazing, an amazing failure of a series with decent potential at its start.

Black Bullet is an anime, an anime with great potential that ultimately transformed into shambles of disappointment. Many have been comparing Black Bullet to Attack on Titan but of course, Black Bullet is intrinsically different and distinct in its own right.

The story revolves around humanity and their suppression due to the dominance and superior existence of viral parasites named Gastrea. As humanity is left with no alternatives but to be exiled into small territory and to coexist with terror and despair, the world should evidently be indeed ... a dark and tragic place to live in. To survive, the loli army, I mean the cursed children are prime and vital to combat the Gastrea and are humanity’s ultimate weapon born from women who have been infected by the Gastrea.

The characters are merely bland and tedious to be the main focus of the show. Satomi Rentarou is the archetype of an indomitable, well preserved and determined male character which has been utilised throughout anime history in countless of shows. Having the best plot-armor possible, he’s pretty strong in combat too. Another character in the harem, I mean cast, Enju, the notable orange hair little loli girl is energetic to the max and does not know when to keep her mouth shut at times. Enju constantly mentions her wish to marry Rentarou, that being said, it is only normal for her to have a few rivals. One of them is Kisara Tendo, the president of the agency Satomi works for and also apparently is Satomi’s childhood friend, a good use of the childhood friend cliché to add a woman with a big chest to the crew. Another main character is Tina Sprout, another loli in the group of friends who fight against the Gastrea, with sniping skills of a God and the body of a 5 year old girl, she also takes a hinted liking to Satomi Rentarou. And for the rest of the loli cursed children army characters, let’s just say, never mind.

Despite each character containing different personalities and traits, one factor largely affects the seriousness of the show, and that is the constant implementation of forced humour. The show is just ineffective in setting its own atmosphere, coming into the series; a person looking at the synopsis would come into Black Bullet believing that the show is serious and dark heavily. Scenes can be tragic and upsetting at times, leaving the audience to feel and express sympathy to the characters; however these sentimental moments are easily hindered and obstructed a few seconds later with unnecessary comedy. Being on the brink of extinction, the vibrant and lively atmosphere the cast give off does not blend in well with the plot.

It’s like mixing sugar with salt. It just doesn't work well.

Being a one-cour show, the show evidently suffers from lack of character growth and development and is bound to leave out some scenes from the original source material. The pacing transcends too quickly after the first episode and near the final few episodes of the show, it is amazingly obvious how rushed and butchered Black Bullet has become. No justice served for the source material.

The art is vibrant and bright most of the time despite the supposed dark tone the plot gives off. Despite the contradiction, it is enjoying and nice to look at. However, honestly it makes the viewers hard to take the show seriously because of the liveliness when humanity is on the verge of extinction. The animation and visuals during action scenes do not make the show stand out amongst other shows with decent action scenes. The CGI utilised alongside the Gastrea are used awkwardly and are not pleasant to look at which I believe sometimes fits their design well as they are not meant to look aesthetically attractive and appealing being viral parasites.

The music in the show is probably the single best aspect of the show. Having the OP sung by fripside and the ED songs sung by Yanagi Nagi, personally one of my favourite Japanese female singers, they added a new substance to the show and made it more enjoyable. Sadly, the background music being catchy is used too many times and not always at the most appropriate moment, losing its uniqueness, style and substance.

Overall, if you want a serious and tragic show with a dark atmosphere, I do not recommend touching Black Bullet. However, if you love little girls, sure, dive in. Or if you just have lots of time, sure, dive in. Besides some decently executed moments, don’t go in with expectations as high as the Eifel Tower as you will only come out as the world’s shortest skyscraper.

Stepping into the world of Black Bullet, I was only told of negative things and not to expect much from a "Lolis save the world" kind of show. Unfortunately enough, a lot of what I heard held true, but not everything and those little girls weren't apart of that problem.

Black Bullet essentially is an anime that tries hard to breach the conventional post-apocalyptic human-survival setting, but is unable to do so. The show gets stuck at a crosswalk confused if it wants to do something different or stick with the same formula. Perhaps Black Bullet's greatest vice is the pacing, which is abnormally quick. Even ... for those whom have not read the light novel(such as myself) can painfully see when the chain of events are simply moving too quick for us to follow and understand. Although, while it had several cons and rough edges, it did have a few positives as well.

Story (6/10):

We're pretty much given the standard 'humanity struggling for survival against a mysterious alien race'(The mysterious alien race here is the Gastrea), in Black Bullet, which isn't necessarily a bad thing if executed correctly, but BB does not deliver exceptionally well when it came down to execution. As any story, Black Bullet attempted taking a concept that is well-known, adding their own flair to it by making Humanity's last hope the little girls. Oddly enough, this is where a lot of the negative stigma has come from and I don't think those accusations are rightly justified. When uncovering the reasoning and digging deeper into the plot, it actually seems interesting on how and why the world's fate is in the hands of little girls. It tries to question morals and how society may see those whom are different than the rest, but it just doesn't dabble much into that when it should have. The real big problem though becomes the pacing of the show. The anime for the most part was terribly paced, it went through many events and climatic moments in a heartbeat, giving an unsettle feeling of, "What? It's over already?" and leaving several questions unanswered. Although the pacing slightly does get better towards the end, it becomes far too late for it to save the show and unfortunately, the characters are severely affected by this too. We'll pick at the characters more later though.

Art (8/10):
Looking beyond the mountain of problems with Black Bullet, it does have its positives and the art is one aspect of that. The scenery, characters and Gastrea are all well-done and can actually be impressive when it came down to the action. I also think that many people whom are more interested in the characters will be pleasantly surprised as each character does have their distinct look and they're all for the most part appealing. It seems more obvious than not that they paid far more attention to how Black Bullet looked than other important details.

Sound (8/10):
Once again, it felt as though the studio focused on making sure the anime sounded good as well and it did. Whether it was making sure the Gastrea sounded as disgusting and beastly as possible, giving some 'beef' to the sound of guns, music to set the mood and so-forth it was all rather pleasing and well-done, but it just feels unfortunate that while Black Bullet sounds good and looks good it lacks in other departments.

Characters (6/10):
As any anime, it's important to present a worthy cast to the viewer otherwise the plot would fall apart and the audience would lose interest. You could have the strangest and most terrible plot, but if you give a show great characters it would thrive. In the case of Black Bullet, which provides a wide array of characters in a meager 13 episodes, it's a lot of misses with a few done right fortunately enough. During the story segment of my review I talked about how the pacing affects the characters drastically and that's what their downfall is. Black Bullet is able to deliver to us plenty of characters that seem very interesting when we're introduced to, but because of how quickly events are moved none of these characters get a big chance to become something more. The main focus is always on our MCs, Rentaro and Enju, so for the majority of the time we'll be watching them. This wouldn't really be a problem if the anime was solely focused on them, but it's not. Black Bullet shows off plenty of unique characters which would seem to be worthy of our attention, but they just get thrown on the back burner once introduced. The anime tries hard to make the characters 'evolve' by hitting us with short back-stories and shocking/thrilling events, but they're over in a blink of an eye and get tossed to make room for the next characters' turn. A lot of these events and interactions between characters would have actually been quite good, but they required more time to expand, which evidently, they didn't have and ended in a mess for a lot of characters. Luckily, a few characters do manage to stay afloat in the mess and become more important in the show and interesting to us. Thanks to some of the characters' involvement and personalities it isn't all bad. Unfortunately, for a lot of the other characters, you just cannot get attached to them at all no matter how hard you try.

Enjoyment (7/10):

Looking beyond the irrelevant characters and absurd pacing, Black Bullet was somewhat enjoyable. Black Bullet piggybacked on its, 'Looks good, feels good' attitude and did so by presenting smooth high-tension action, great music and sometimes pulling sucker punches on the audience with some messed-up events that judge our sense of morals and compares it to those of the show. The story wasn't completely terrible as I was able to follow and have a general understanding of what was going on and while I didn't like many characters there were a few whom I did appreciate. Although there are plenty positives, there are far more negatives which I nor many can ignore.

Overall (6/10):

Black Bullet is an anime that had plenty of potential, but didn't use much of it. At the start it had an interesting set-up, intriguing characters and the looks, but in the end all it had was its looks and that just doesn't cut it. If the pacing was slowed down and they expanded more on the characters, we could have seen something great, but we just didn't. A very small number of characters in the cast and the 'looks good, feels good' attitude was really Black Bullet's saving grace. It was entertaining, but non-memorable and it aches me to see an anime that could have been so much more, just be nothing more than another more-or-less mediocre show. While it's not terrible as many people have claimed it to be, it's not that great either. It's unfortunate to see while Rentaro, Enju and Co. are out saving the world, they couldn't save Black Bullet from being mediocre.

Black Bullet is a mixed bag that is mostly full of garbage. The great action scenes and the many cute characters are bogged down by forced emotional scenes, unbalanced progression from happy to sad moments, a predictable story, uninteresting characters, tired cliches, cheesy dialogue and poor story pacing. The action and the cute girls are worth the watch but don't expect the story to blow you away and be prepared to groan a lot from cheesy moments. It is visually impressive but not enough to save it from being terrible!

Hmm, what to say about Black Bullet? Its a interesting show, and I can see that there are people that really like this show for its action and fast pacing of the show itself

But there is a reason I stopped watching this anime after episode 6. That's mostly because this is not my kind of anime. That lies in the way the characters are presented

Or, in better words, how the characters lack any good presentation. The main characters don't have anything that makes them special or sets them apart from other anime's.

but that isn't a big problem. There are more anime's that don't have ... very fleshed out characters. But the difference is that those stories focus on something different like the story or the animation. Black Bullet sort of tries to focus on a good story, and the fighting that is presented in the show. The problem is that the story isn't that good and that the fight scenes aren't that good.

The reason the story isn't so good, is because of the contradictions with the story itself. I cannot spoil anything, but in episode one, the main character cannot beat the villain, and in another episode he can beat him, without any more training or becoming better in his fighting.

But I already said, if you are the type of person that likes action in anime, and doesn't really care for the characters or story, then this is a anime for you. After all, the fight scenes are looking really great.

But for people who watch anime for the characters and the story, I cannot recommend this anime.

*Note: If this review is tldr, then at least jump to the end and read my advice on how to approach this anime. Thanks for your patience.

Two words sum up Black Bullet very well: Paradise Lost

I began watching this series out of curiosity, since it had finished airing last week. The first episode blew me away in terms of art, sound, and story. I was deeply interested in the Black Bullet's world, and I wanted to find out more. I prematurely gave this anime a 9/10 rating after the first four episodes, but that rating slowly decreased into a 6/10. At the end of ... the series I was left with an opinion on what the show was and what it could have been.

Black Bullet is a prime example of how a potentially great series can be ruined with sub-par pacing. It was imprudent to abridge such an enormous universe and story into a mere 13 episode show.

The story of the anime is quite intriguing, and you will see many other viewers refer to Attack on Titan or other dystopian anime series for Black Bullet’s dark world of humans’ fight against alien parasite. The premise of the story is certainly strong, but it is dragged down to terrible rating due to the quick pacing of the series. The first four episodes is a very interesting arc, and has a mini climatic moment in itself. Quickly after this, the series slowly deteriorates and diverges from its main selling point: badass action and emotional feels.
The story is very complex and deserves a bit more than what most critiques are willing to give. The internal conflict of the city and the cursed, the fight against an alien race, and the personal struggles of the characters are very intriguing and interesting. Yet the main problem results from inadequate screen time spent on those important conflicts and emotional triggers, and this restricts the series from becoming more than average.

The art and sound of the show are very sharp and sleek. They really make the show shine and sparkle despite the many inherent flaws. The character designs are very well done, and the music (original soundtrack, not the OP and ED) sets the mood for both the serious and happy moments.

The characters, while inherently interesting and strong, suffer from a lack of screen time and important development. The anime focuses strongly on a handful of characters, while ignoring the other very important side characters who play a pivotal role in the story. Many times, you are overwhelmed with random characters that explain the political aspect of the series, and you’re left scratching your head on who that character even is.

Overall, I enjoyed the series. I don’t believe it was a waste of my time in anyway, and I’m sure that the light novels are really interesting (I have not read any of them prior to this review). If only this anime took its time and expanded the episodes from 13 to 26, then many of the problems could have been fixed. I’m sad to see it end on such a sour note, and I hope a second season can perhaps make amends.


*Personal advice to those who do not want to watch the entire series due to overall negative reviews: Watch the first four episodes of the series, and leave it at that. This series is similar to the TV show Dexter – it becomes progressively worse, but the beginning is really amazing. First four episodes = 9/10 rating.

Black Bullet was a series I actually genuinely enjoyed watching. I'm not big on loli or any other such type of thing, but this series was actually really enjoyable almost the entire way through, but I'll go further into details with that later on.

Animation: 7
The art direction and the overall animation for the series is very well done. It's fluid and the action sequences are fast-paced and get you pumped. However in comparison to other titles that have aired around the time this did it falls short.

Music: 6
This section would have been higher if not for one reason. Instead of paying attention to the ... music during the sequences the art and animation took far more attention from me as did the events in the storyline. The music I did manage to hear though fit the situations quite nicely. Because of it not feeling all that important in comparison to the story and art it only gets a six though.

Characters: 8
All the characters in the main cast were pretty enjoyable to be honest. The antagonists save for one specific character were just... frustrating. They got my blood boiling, soooo... well done! The one I enjoyed though was that guy who seemed to always find a way into the main character's head and mess with him which made him all the more likeable as an antagonist.

Story: 5
Oh boy... This would have been a lot higher of a score if not for the season ended... The storyline up until episode thirteen was enjoyable. It didn't seem to have any plot holes and a lot of the time I was freaking out over Rentaro's actions and loving the series. However the story decides to try and pull a plot twist that while not feeling forced, felt like it lacked any form of logic the series had up until that point and making one character seem completely different from how she was the entire series only to leave us with a terrible cliffhanger and no season two in sight. The ending alone lowered the score for the story which could have easily been a seven or an eight possibly.

Overall: 6
It was fine, but without a season two this series just seems to lack anything truly worthwhile. It's a fun ride, but don't watch this if you like conclusive endings. If a season two gets made then I'd definitely recommend watching it. However if you can't stand the type of cliffhanger ending I have previously mentioned then this is definitely not for you...
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Oh, another monster of the week show ... oh, sorry, Loli of the week. My bad.

The very first true sentence in the show goes "If you don't want to die Rintarou, survive." Now, here already, I knew this was going to be one hell of a ride.

Black Bullet bears a whole lot resemblance to "Shingeki no Kyojin", a whole lot more popular counterpart. First and foremost, the main characters are practically identical, both having suffered a terrible tragedy of losing parents, and having one female sidekick by their side, all the time. The reason why this doesn't work as well in Black Bullet ... is because we literally get 5 seconds montage of how they met, and ... well, that's about it. Secondly, their relationship might be disturbing. Remember - Enju is ten years old and she oftentimes says incredibly obvious sexual remarks as well as constantly hit on our main character. But let's stick to the story for now.

You have the main plot in the synopsis, so I'll dwell a bit deeper. The story is composed of short arcs, each having a new enemy our main duo (trio, quadro ---?) must face. One thing you must know about the story is that it's EXTREMELY predictable. It quite literally goes by textbook when it comes to "twists" and the story itself. There's this one episode early on where our main character witnesses injustice in his world, where Cursed Children (little girls who embody the wide-spread virus but contain it under 50% ...) are thrown aside as thrash, despite their importance in securing peace within contained area. Then after that there's short, unnecessary scene after which comes the meeting of our Bad Guy 1 and our MC, where the Bad Guy 1 asks him: "Did you ever witness things you would change in this world?" (paraphrasing). And this isn't just one time. This keeps on happening over and over and over again until eventually you literally know what's going to happen next. And not next episode, next scene. Also, the story as odd shifts in the tone. It's as if the creators weren't quite sure whether they'd go "true dark" or "true light" so they kind of met it in the middle and ... well, it didn't work out well. These shifts feel weird, unnatural, even forced (which they are). The story itself is far from being spectacular: you've probably seen it in dozens of other anime. Main guy and his sidekick are world's only hope of salvation. Even though the "power-ups", or rather ranking increases, our MC gets are completely unjustified seeing as he's exactly the same as he was in the first episode. Oh well, I guess everyone else suddenly just got weaker.

Two redeeming parts of this show though are Art and Sound. Art is quite crisp and can be extremely detailed from time to time (CGI is unappreciated though) and I especially liked the ED's first 10-15 seconds. First OP is quite good while the second one is just far too generic to care. The soundtrack can be badass in the badass moments but it's oftentimes too generic for you to even notice. Voice actors wage from the most annoying pieces of voice on Earth to okayish. Props to the production team.

Characters are ... all over the place. Our main character, Satomi Rentarou, is probably the most generic loud-mouth of shounen genre. He's like every other. He's the embodiment of them all. You'll often hear lines such as: "I WILL SAVE THE WORLD BY MYSELF!" (caps lock intended) or "ENJU IS AS MUCH OF A HUMAN AS YOU AND I ARE! WE ARE ALL HUMANS!" or "STOP SCREWING WITH ME!" or "DON'T WORRY, I'LL PROTECT YOU."
Yeah, our MC yells a lot. And I mean A LOT. So, if you're into that, good for you but I, personally, find it extremely annoying that every second line character spits out is a scream of sorts.
Our other MC, Enju, is ten year old girl with constant thoughts about male-female relationships, weird ideas about how to interact with far older dude and, quite frankly, disturbing remarks about sex. For heaven's sake, she's TEN YEARS OLD. I'd understand if you made her look ten, but she looks ten and IS ten. She's your classic hyperactive loli who's in service of the main dude because he cooks well (no, I swear. According to flashbacks, that's the reason). Then we have a lot of other characters (majority of which appeared only in the like last 4 episodes or so). We have Tina, blonde, erm ... clumsy? loli who's lost in all sense of that word. Then we have Kisara, our MC's love interest. And of course all the cockblockers (gotta have those).

All in all, even though cast seems varied and huge and interesting ... it's too generic. There's no unique spin to the characters, and while you may like some of them due to their quirkiness or humor, they won't stick to you so much that you'd cry if they die. (I crid evri tajm)

Black Bullet is a mixed bag. In one hand, you've got pretty decent visuals, fights and animation overall, and the other hand you've got ... well ... mess. It's like "Guilty Crown" but with far less production value. A lot of characters are annoying, for other you don't really care. and even if you find one or two that are likable, chances are they'll die or be destroyed.

So my final verdict: Flashy flashy, BUT NO MUSTASHY! Only watch if bored.

Super duper quick review because to be honest there isn't much to be said about this crappy anime.

Story: 4
It seemed cool at first until the characters got involved.

Art: 6
The manga looks so much nicer, but this is not bad I guess.

Sound: 5
I don't really remember the actually soundtrack, but the ED was good. The OP sounds like an Attack On Titan Opening.
...
Characters: 5-sh
They were so very cliche. The protagonist (whatever his name was) was boring and annoying, which doesn't make any sense (or makes perfect sense) that all the females in this anime fall for him. At least I liked Enju and the masked guy had potential to be a good character too.

Overall: 5
This anime doesn't deserve more than a 5. Please don't waste your time watching this unless you want to just watch the first ep and never find out what happens next. It's not worth it.

STORY: 4/10
CHARACTER: 2/10
ART: 5/10
SOUND: 6/10
ENJOYMENT: 4/10
OVERALL: 5/10

A light novel adaptation that’s set to a post-apocalyptic future where humanity is few in numbers due to the heavy losses attained from powerful, big monsters. So, the remaining humans have built a wall to protect themselves from being eaten. Sounds familiar, right? That's why so many comparisons are made to another anime, ‘Attack on Titan’ which in turn hurts this show. I know fans of this show are frustrated with all the comparisons but you can’t deny what’s in front of you. The writers and studio could have turned this into a Futuristic Sci-Fi version of ‘AoT’, something ... we haven’t particularly seen but rather settled for a cheap knock off of a popular anime. I’ve compiled a short list of the comparisons between ‘AoT’ and ‘Black Bullet’ at the bottom if you don’t believe me. The writing here is poor which hurts the story, leaving it with many plot holes. For instance, you don’t buy the post-apocalyptic world setting since it’s only mentioned in words and not shown to us. The people and city are hailed in good conditions, food is readily available alongside mechanical upgrades, health check-ups, etc. They mention a war at the beginning which is barely touched upon, the New Human creation group motives are unclear, the monster origins aren’t mentioned either. And while the 1st half of the anime has a somewhat decent story, complete with lots of comedy and fan service; the other half is just downright sour! It totally throws you off balance with its sudden shift, unloading lots of information and just kills your mood and the shows momentum by eradicating most of its comedy and replacing it with dramatic seriousness.

So, these monsters can only be killed by special bullets and in comes the MC, Rentarou who’s a combat officer resolved to kill these monsters and exacting his revenge based on what he went through in his past. Whether you want to blame it on an incomplete story or poor writing but the characters are bland and generic. Ren is a generic good guy who’s pretty weak since he loses more than he actually wins. I think the show wants to play him as an underdog despite his superhuman strength and experience in martial arts but it never works cause he’s very forgettable so you don’t care much about what happens to him! Enju, a cursed child is another MC who’s under Rentarou’s care. Cursed children are depicted as monsters in society for their ability to inherit and display powers. Enju gets little growth of her own, residing as only a love struck loli. There are some good human moments throughout the show but they are poorly handled so you forget about them quickly. Like in the beginning, Enju hates her kind and distrusts Rentarou but in a span of 1 year, she completely does a 180 and we never get to see it! Very essential character change was omitted which could have easily been accomplished in 1 backstory filled episode. Kisara happens to be another love interest, or so we thought, with crazy katana skills whose biggest contribution to this anime are her fan service moments with Ecchi jokes and scenarios. She does get her own identity towards the end which happens at the cost of a potential romance but unfortunately, it’s too late to care. Like why the hell will I take her seriously now when all she’s done until the end is fawn all over the MC and deliver only fan service to us! The main villain is the most interesting character, both mysterious and sinister, yet his reasons for villainy is ridiculous and he came across as a weak impersonation of V from the movie ‘V for Vendetta’!


The art work from the character looks to their facial expressions are fine, though they do stand out during battles. During a character’s special move, you should feel all the hype which the art style delivers but unfortunately there’s no excitement in any of them. This applies especially to the MC who has the annoying habit of crying out long ass names for his Kung Fu moves every time during a fight which is very anticlimactic and stupid! The monsters looked pretty neat with the lights emitting from them but then the CGI completely ruins all the hard work! The OP is surprisingly catchy, though not special enough to remember after a while. And the rest of the OST is pretty much a dud! The voice acting for the subs were better here than the dubs, I particularly liked Yuki Kaji’s work on Rentarou. Yuki managed to come across as a genuine high school kid which I appreciated.


In conclusion, the story was very rushed, I feel this anime would have benefited from 24 episodes run time. Now either the show didn’t respect its audience or they really had no idea what theme to pick, in my opinion balance is the name of the game and often the problem of this anime. I wouldn’t mind a remake if it’s done properly! But stop with the plot holes and copying off ‘AoT’. Rather make it your own story without rushing integral character arcs and set a concrete tone for the show. It can still be enjoyed as a popcorn flick anime where you shut off your mind and enjoy what’s in front of you.


!!!!! CONTAINS SPOILERS !!!!!
These comparison points were collected from the Internet:
1. The world building is such where gigantic monsters live and eat humans for pleasure/hunger.
2. Both the Mc loses their mother by the said monster so they are hell bent on revenge.
3. Huge walls were created to block out the monsters, making the humans safe for a while.
4. But then this 1 huge monster manages to break the wall and other monsters enter the city and starts eating the humans.
5. Both the MC’s go through their own body modification to help them fight better hence becoming one of the top fighters of their group.
6. Both MC’s fight alongside a girl who has no parents but was saved by the MC at some point in the past so now she has undying affection for the MC.
7. Both shows feature a hot albeit weird scientist who are very interested in the monsters and the MC.
8. Both MC’s come up with a reason to go across the wall and fight the monsters.

So here you have it! The comparisons are too many to ignore and really sucks out the fun from ‘Black Bullet’ especially if you have watched ‘AoT’ and loved it!

[WARNING: SPOILERS AND LONG REVIEW AHEAD. FOR TL;DR SKIP TO “OVERALL” SECTION.]

Watching Black Bullet is the equivalent of that kid who is always enthusiastic in school. He may not be the smartest, but he tries so hard and you just want to give that little guy an A for effort. Unfortunately, in the real world grades aren’t given for effort but for quality, and that is where Black Bullet fails: it tried to do too much with a plot that ultimately wasn’t going to be anything more than mediocre.

STORY- 6/10

Oh look, a post-apocalyptic thriller! Humans are trapped inside a certain area ... and there are monsters on the outside that want to try to get in and eat all of us! I wonder where I’ve heard that before…

The main criticism that I have with this anime is that it was rushed. Extremely rushed, in fact, and it is a damn shame because the story showed a lot of promise as being one of the few light novels that aren’t harems/pretentious otaku-pandering/both. It’s my personal belief that if this show had gotten 26 episodes, it could have been legitimately well-received.

Our story takes place in the 2030s, when a parasitic virus is turning people into monsters called Gastrea. Humanity has taken refuge in what used to be Tokyo (seriously, did you expect anywhere else?), behind monoliths constructed of an alloy named Varanium that is the Gastreas’ only weakness. Well, almost.

The other way to fight Gastrea is to turn them against each other, and that’s where Cursed Children come in. They are formed when the Gastrea Virus infects a pregnant woman, and the child is always born a girl, with a human appearance but the powers of a Gastrea. In response to this, the governments of what’s left of the world formed a civil security system where a Cursed Child, or Initiator, is paired with a human, or Contractor, and they are outsourced to private agencies. Since they make up the majority of humanity’s defense against the Gastrea, obviously Contractors hold a lot of power in government and society. However, the Cursed Children aren’t exactly treated the same way.

This is where our main character, Rentaro Satomi, comes in, as a low-level Contractor working with his partner, Enju Aihara, employed by the Tendo Agency for his classmate and longtime friend, Kisara Tendo. Of course, many more interesting, and some not-so-interesting, characters will be met along the way.

I’ve heard so many people toss lolicon accusations at this show, but really, it’s not that much loli-pandering. Sure, Enju does have a crush on Rentaro, but he’s not interested. However, I can see why people might think this and it might turn them off.

I actually thought the story, while a little clichéd, is okay. However, the problem here is rushing, rushing, RUSHING. This anime tries to pack as much content as it can in 13 episodes, which leads to it moving too fast to really have much of an impact on the viewers. That, and a huge “LOLWAT” moment at the end of episode 7 that really left me scratching my head and soured the anime to me. Thankfully, the anime does pull out a fairly decent conclusion, but overall, the story is middling.

CHARACTERS- 4/10

Now there’s only going to be so much character development you can get in 13 episodes, but some of the characters manage to be very unlikeable in the time they’re given. Also, some characters that the audience is supposed to care about don’t get enough screen time to be worth caring about.

Rentaro Satomi- Our main protagonist. The main problem I have with him is that it can’t seem like he knows which hero type he wants to be. He seems set up to be an anti-hero, but he regularly plays ping-pong with the hero scale, going from traditional hero all the way down to full-on designated hero in a couple instances and sometimes it really gets hard to root for him when he, for instance, threatens to kill a group of civilians for harassing a Cursed Child. Dick move, people, I agree, but under no circumstances is it justified to end their lives. He has a decent backstory, but it’s not visited enough. Overall, not a very heroic character though he does have his good points.

Enju Aihara- The Initiator our protagonist is paired with, a nine-year old girl with rabbit characteristics. She gets a lot of flak for a) being a loli and b) crushing on Rentaro. I agree that her crush was unnecessary, but I do find her cute, and unlike her partner, she didn’t make me want to punch her in the face like Rentaro did sometimes. Also, once you find out about her backstory, you’ll have a whole lot more sympathy for her.

Kisara Tendo- The owner of the Tendo Civil Security agency and Rentaro’s childhood friend. Her grandfather saved Rentaro as a little boy when he was about to be killed by a Gastrea. Her family owns a kenjutsu dojo, and she is incredibly proficient with swords and hand-to-hand combat. However, most of her family were killed a few years ago, and she has sworn revenge on the killers. She’s one of my favorite characters, mainly because she has some compelling backstory and I love women who can fight- she even gets to call Rentaro out on his dickery at the end of the series. The problem I have with her is that she’s pretty much a non-factor to the plot for the first half, and even in the second half she takes a backseat. She’s there for all of the story, but she’s not much more than there. There might be hope for her yet as the final episode dropped a major tease with her possibly pulling a heel turn, but with the way this anime was received, I can’t see it getting another season, which is sad because she needs more love.

Kagetane Hiruko- The not-villain of the story, he was one of the things that the show got right. He’s the kind of awesome villain in the mold of Dio Brando: smooth, suave, and charismatic even when he’s exploding police heads. Did I mention he can fight as well? Also, he’s got a much closer connection to Rentaro than anyone thinks, and their relationship, from enemies to uneasy allies, gets the most attention than any other interactions in the series save for Rentaro/Enju shenanigans. Character development done excellently, he was my favorite character of Black Bullet.

Seitenshi-sama- The leader of the Tokyo Area Settlement, she is an idealist who would like for humans and Cursed Children to get along. I liked the political themes her introduction in the story brought into it; unfortunately, apart from her pacifism there’s not much else to her. Pretty flat character.

Tina Sprout- Okay, the first thing I have to say is that I don’t understand why Enju gets bashed and Tina gets praised despite them basically being the same character! Is it because she’s ‘Murican? If so, that’s a big double standard, anime fans. Pausing from my rant to explain her, she is a high-ranked Initiator who is sent to Japan to assassinate Seitenshi, who has just sent her new personal bodyguard Rentaro out to capture her. I don’t like her very much because she gets defeated in the most shonen-y way ever: after ten minutes of beating Rentaro into a bloody pulp, a flashbang grenade goes off at exactly the right time and he knocks her out with two moves. That’s it, game over. What followed next induced my head to meet the wall. She gets no punishment, despite trying to kill the leader of government not once, but twice! Huh? If I sent my little sister to kill the president, it doesn’t matter that she is both cute and following orders, she’d still face life in prison! How is this any different? It seems like a cheap attempt to turn Tina good without worrying about the damage she’s caused, or maybe it’s due to the unsettling theory that civil security agents can do whatever the hell they please and no one can do anything about it. Either way, afterwards she ends up partnering with Kisara and becomes Enju 2.0. Weak.

Takuto Yasuwaki-
“Welcome to the Poorly-Written Villain hotline, how may we help you?”
“Well, um, I wasn’t really given any motivation for hating the hero.”
“You don’t need motivation! You need to to try to kill that little girl! The viewers are sure to hate you after that!”
“But that little girl just tried to kill our nation’s leader, who I’m sworn to protect. Wouldn’t that make it justified?”
“Then what we’ll do is make you look and act like Nobuyuki Sugou. That means the viewers will know you’re EEEEEEEEEVIL!”
“I thought fans hated that show for all the wrong reasons.”
“Screw logic, I’m the director.”
‘Nuff said.

Miori Shiba- What is her point? She only shows up a couple times, and the extent of her characterization is “wants Rentaro’s D”. Seriously, how does she even contribute anything meaningful to the story?

Shoma Nagisawa and Midori Fuse- I’m sorry. I know I’m supposed to care about Midori’s suicide and Shoma’s heroic sacrifice, but no amount of emotion is going to make me give two shits about characters who’ve barely had one episode of screentime. Also, catgirl, because apparently catgirl!

ART- 9/10

The art is the one good thing about this anime. The characters all have distinct designs, the animation moves fluidly, and I didn’t notice all that many off model frames or designs. Overall, good work by Kinema Citrus, the studio that did Barakamon. It’s a shame that the story couldn’t match the artwork.

MUSIC- 7/10

The soundtrack is composed by Shiro Sagisu, the man who did the music for Evangelion. Unfortunately, this is probably his weakest entry to date, as all the music is utterly forgettable. It’s not the worst thing he’s composed (looking at you, song that plays when Ichigo powers up) but it’s far from the best and it doesn’t aid the story in any way.

OVERALL- 6/10

Apparently this show is pretty polarizing, because people either like it or think it’s the worst thing to hit TV since Sword Art Online. However, I just think it’s mediocre. While the art is great and the music all right, some elements of the show can alienate the viewers and it’s just too rushed to invoke the kind of emotion it’s supposed to in the readers. The characters are the weakest point, with some hard to cheer for and others unimportant due to general irrelevancy to the story or lack of screen time.

Overall, Black Bullet is an okay show but not a great one. If you are interested in the franchise, I suggest you check out the light novels first as they are about to be translated into English in order to see if you like the story in the first place, and you should probably stream it on CR as I don’t feel this anime is worth paying $50-80 for.

Black bullet is probably one the most Over hyped anime this season.Its one of those anime that has a Very good setting but failed to redeem itself because of the Bad or Rushed pacing.
I'm not gonna lie,Black bullet has a lot of potential to be one of the big boys of its genre but sadly given a limit of 13 episodes so its pretty understandable for its Rushed pacing.But..still it could have been way better.

Story 7/10: To summarize it up easily,The story is about the humans at the edge of extinction because it was overrun by Viral parasites called Gastrea.They used some form of metal ... called Varanium which the Gastrea is weak to for your information.To construct a huge black varanium monolith to fend off Gastreas from entering their city.That's the main plot and its definitely an interesting one.


Art 7/10: The art is good and not the best this season but its still pretty good.I personally think the art has settled itself in my heart and Its a good fit for the story's lightly dark story.

Sound 10/10: This is where Black bullet excels.Its very well done The opening and Ending are absolutely fantastic that I would watch it over and over again just to hear and see its eye candy animation.The OST at the course of the anime is Super good and Well placed as the story progresses there's never a moment where the OST failed to place itself accordingly with each given situations.

Character 5/10: Enter Rentaro.The Protagonist you're generic hero with the heart of justice even at the moments of chaos.There's a lot of characters that will be introduced as you watch the anime,Each with their own personality that the audience each will have their own favorites and hated characters.Enju is the Initiator of Rentaro and tries too hard to be likeable and its annoying at times but not at the point that you will hate her along the way.This is highly paced that you don't care about the characters dying because they introduce and kill them off.At that point you just go Meh.

Enjoyment 6/10: 6 is Too much even for this anime but I personally Enjoyed it mainly because its not one of those Generic animes we get every season.The action scenes are pretty fast that you will yell "THAT'S IT!?"(Fast paced) and Important supposedly tear jerking deaths seems like its coming out of nowhere because its (Fast paced) it may seem like pointless killing at first glance but When you try to understand it.It makes sense that those deaths are important potential development for the characters in the anime but because everything is (Fast faced) you just don't care.Even the characters seems like they don't give a S- at all.One minute everyone is sad and depressed then the next minute they put on their happy face then the next minute they're serious.(Fast paced) this is my face at the end of this anime :l .

Overall 6/10: I'm a generous guy and it should have been 5 at best and I'm gonna rant again that Rushed pacing is unforgivable.This is an anime adaptation of a Light novel that goes by the same name and I'm now completely 99% sure its better than its anime counterpart.The LN has probably better pacing and Emotions would make sense in each situations.(Someone confirmed it for me and the LN is actually better WHO KNEW? I do.)
Its in the line of recommendable and not recommendable animes.I would recommend it to those lovely people who likes animes that try for something new and not your basic generic anime.
The Final episodes is emitting Sequel bait so hard for another Season and I say give it a chance.I'm not that hype but I would still watch its mainly because They constructed the story in Season one and I'm hoping they fix their pacing in the next season.
This is also my First review :))

A total and utter mess. A very intriguing one at that, but still a mess.

Story: 3/10

For humanity to best an enemy that threatens its very existence, they must first find unity. The gastrea virus, turning humans themselves to monsters that are at best difficult to beat, at worst practically immortal, is definitely such an enemy. As such, the main character who tries to defeat the gastrea finds himself first struggling to defeat the discrimination of the general public and the plain self interest of those in high places, before he even has a chance to fight the real enemy.

This idea has been tackled by quite ... a number of series to different amounts of success. It is an intriguing premise that offers many possibilties, yet requires one to be very careful to not to let the different threads of the story get tangled. Sadly, in this case they did get tangled, terribly so. While the story really does quite a decent job of justifying the main character's struggle, it only seems to manage to do so through making the antagonists of the story vary from the plain stupid to those that are actually just batshit insane. While there is no disputing that that message isn't entirely unjustified either, it fails to utterly to deal with the roots of these problems as the justification for the atrocities that are committed never go beyond plain revenge. While making the viewer question humanity's right to existence was not in itself bad, the original intention behind it all remains painfully unclear. The actual explanation as to where the hate and discrimination originates was never expressed in a clear way - if the intention was to say that it was completely unjustified, it still fails to have compelling rationale for happening.

One of the more successful aspects of the story is the portrayal of the real(?) enemy, the gastrea. Despite remaining more of a backdrop for a good part of the series, as is often the case in this kind of plot, the threat is felt in a very real way on multiple occasions. The gastrea never become completely insignificant and are even capable of concerted attacks on occasion, proving that ignoring them is not an actual option. This is perhaps the only plot point of the story that keeps progressing fairly consistently, while everything else is all over the place.

The characters are something that at first appear to be the strong point of the series, with much potential for growth, especially in the case of the main character. None of them are especially innovative, but they seem to be set to become more interesting with this. This doesn't happen. The main character seems to possess an uncanny resistance to character growth, ignoring every single chance he ever has to reform his ideas into something more consistent. The lolis, despite being potentially very good portrayals of children, end up being mainly utilized for the annoying fanservice bullshit. The few characters that experience any development do so with overnight 180s on their personalities.

One of the most jarring things about the entire series is its utterly abysmal pacing. The important story developments are very rushed, while the downtime between the big stuff takes up a huge amount of the show. While I'm not one to dismiss the importance of exposition under any circumstance, it's even more baffling that the series fails to deliver an even nearly acceptable amount in those large segments that seem should be dedicated to it. At a closer look, these bits are actually all about developing the character relationships. Which seems to be something that the show does well, all up until you realize there has been zero actual progress, aside a couple of abrupt jumps, on this too. All in all, these huge amount of time spent trying to immerse the viewer in the characters left me to be completely unaffected when these characters were brutally murdered.

Character: 6/10

Through all the other inconsistencies, one thing that the series manages to achieve is a consistent style. However, judging from the fact that I can't think of a single good thing to say about that, I have to conclude that this was achieved through simply sticking to mediocrity.

Art: 7/10

I have no complaints, aside that I will never learn to understand Japanese ideas behind designing alien looking monsters. I have a hard time taking the gastrea seriously based on what is probably supposed to be a very intimidating appearance. Aside that, the art is good. Not outstanding in any manner, but really pleasing enough to the eye.

Sound: 9/10

Clearly the best part of the anime. I believe the only reason the anime managed to invoke any sort of feelings in me was because of the excellent voice acting reinforcing the personalities of the character to a huge degree. The music also was spot on most of the time, bringing the tension that was otherwise lacking in the rushed fight scenes. Also, the opening song was really the highlight of each episode of this anime, to be completely honest.

Enjoyment: 7/10

It manages to retain the resemblance of a quality anime for much of it, just barely, despite the constant inconsistencies (I actually think that's the right choice of words, dreadful as it is) and the terrible pacing with zero exposition. It's actually quite good fun whenever the nonsense isn't too jarring.

Overall: 6/10

It's not a terrible anime, and I dare say it had huge potential to be absolutely great. In general it keeps good production quality and doesn't go completely of the rails in any aspect. However, for someone who puts as much weight on story as I do, it's a painfully mediocre anime. It feels like the team really has what it takes to make a great anime, but perhaps the director was simply unqualified for the task.

Story - 6/10

The premise of Black Bullet is interesting enough. Humanity is driven to the brink of destruction by a species of powerful monsters named 'Gastrea'. You'd be forgiven for initially comparing this show to Attack on Titan, as many viewers did upon starting the series. Though the similarities end there.

The story follows Rentaro Satomi and his partner, Enju, who is one of the many cursed children living in Tokyo. With the appearance of the Gastrea, a certain population were infected by a virus, and gave birth to children with superhuman abilities. One of the more interesting aspects of Black Bullet was the injustice and ... prejudiced these children are forced to face. While the plot is overall quite weak, the social commentary was quite effective. In terms of the plot, that's really the only positive thing I have to say about this anime.

The pacing is astronomically terrible. The first four episodes went by so quickly that the audience is barely given a chance to try and grasp what's going on. They could have honestly written an entire series based on the events of those episodes. Half-way through the anime I felt as though it should have already ended. In episode 4 there were literally about 5-6 climaxes happening all at the same time. Absurd doesn't begin to describe the pacing of the show. Even for a 13 episode anime, they could have given us a chance to rest. Constant action and drama doesn't make a good anime, there needs to be a cool down in between. The only time when there isn't any action or drama is when they throw in pointless fanservice or cliche jokes that we've heard a thousand times. There's very little room for actual character development.

Another problem I had with this anime is that there are so many plot points which were completely forgotten and thrown aside. It's simply bad writing when you introduce all these separate plots, then drop them as if they hadn't even happened to begin with. The tricycle at the end of episode 4 was completely pointless and was never mentioned again. It gives me the impression that the writer started to introduce all these different scenarios then realised he had no idea where he was going to take any of them.

Characters- 5/10

For the most part the characters are bland and uninteresting. Our main protagonist is a rather brave and determined character, which is always nice to see given the amount of useless protagonists that are out there. However, he lacks any defining qualities. It's difficult to even work out what his motivation for fighting is. And while Rentaro may come across as a strong character, there are plenty of times when he is utterly powerless. There are plenty of times when Rentaro witnesses the mistreatment and abuse of the cursed children, yet never appears to step up or punish those responsible, despite the fact that he is more than capable of doing so. It gives us the impression that he is either apathetic or so significant that he has almost no impact on the world around him.

There isn't really anything notable about Enju besides from her obsession with Rentaro. Her past is mentioned briefly but never explored. She has no unique traits whatsoever and I get the impression that the author just wanted to throw an energetic loli in there for good measure. There's only a small handful of characters that we remotely care about. Among those would be Kisara, Rentaro's childhood friend, and Tina, another loli that Rentaro picks up along his journey.

For the most part Kisara lacks any kind of depth whatsoever and there's really nothing to set her apart from everyone else. She barely has an active role in the anime up until the end, when her character takes a rather sudden twist. There's nothing wrong with surprising the audience, but when you have absolutely no character development at all, then suddenly decide to pull a massive twist, it appears disjointed and jarring.

There were a handful of other characters that had quite a bit of potential. Kagetane, the initial villain of the series, was rather an interesting and smooth character. Yet he only appears a couple of times despite being such a popular character. The rest of the characters that accompany Rentaro are given almost no screentime at all, to the point where we barely even care. Several characters important to the main character end up dying throughout the series, but their deaths are handled so nonchalantly that there's no emotional impact whatsoever. There were about two emotional scenes that the anime did pretty well, but for the most part I had no reason to care about any of the characters deaths.

Art - 7/10

The art was ok for the most part. Nothing remarkble however. The CGI for the Gastrea was pretty painful to look at, and the animation itself wasn't as fluid as it could have been. There were some scenes that were animated quite well but the series was occasionally prone to sudden drops in quality

Sound - 6/10

The soundtrack was extremely generic and forgettable. There isn't a single BGM track that I can recall. The opening theme was pretty well done, but it's not something I'll remember in a couple of months time.

The ED theme, Tokohana, was pretty good however. I didn't skip the ED once throughout the series and I enjoyed listening to it. In all honesty the ED theme was one of my favourite things about the entire show.


Overall - 6/10


Conclusion

All in all, Black Bullet was a weak show with a pretty forgettable plot.There were one or two scenes which were handled well, but I find it difficult to relate to any of the characters. The pacing was a major flaw, and it was just bizarre how quickly the first four episodes flew past. Maybe it's just a poor adaption and there was nothing wrong with the light novel, but this anime his succeeded in putting me off the entire series forever.

Expectations are a real bitch sometimes, especially when something below your conceived notions throws all that pent-up eagerness you have out of the window. So when watching any show, I try my best to remove any expectations I have to spare myself the disappointment while being open-minded to enjoy the good points any show has.

Unfortunately, I didn't do that with Black Bullet.

It has nothing to do with external hype. It's just with the way Black Bullet is structured. I enjoyed it nonetheless but... it could have been so much more. It had so much potential and promise too. Oh well... on with the criteria:

STORY - ... 6

My rating for story is a combination of both premise and pacing.

The premise was actually really good. Take the crisis of Attack on Titan, the epidemic likeness of Guilty Crown, the monsters of Alienators (if you've heard of it), and the partnering system and expertise of Léon: The Professional (for the "every badass needs a loli" reference) just to give you an idea. The main threat to humanity has a weakness that's coincidentally abundant in Tokyo (Varanium) and the global organization set up to defeat said threat has a ranking system for the combatants.

After that, everything just falls apart when it comes to pacing.

There are two issues I have with Black Bullet's pacing: length and presentation.

With such an ambitious and monumental premise, 13 episodes IS NOT ENOUGH. Character development, world development, important plot points, and buildup impact are all sacrificed just to get the show over with. With very little time to get plot points across, not only did events seem too contrived and convenient but it also leaves the viewer in the dark with what's going on. What's worse is that the show sometimes assumes the audience knows what's happening and continues tossing vital plot points which aid in confusion rather than understanding. I did manage to connect the dots eventually. But with a premise this huge, I'd want sufficient details presented in an organized manner for me to soak up everything else the show offers me.

Next, is presentation, which made the big mistake of making me expect something more out of this show. Black Bullet has three arcs. The first episode showed the titan of a premise this show had. And by the end of it, we get a villain I don't care about and a crisis that doesn't seem urgent enough to be called pre-apocalyptic. Skip to the second, we already have a problem and a rising action. And by the third and fourth, the show already reaches a climax and everything seems to reset after each arc. Balance is restored for another problem to screw everyone up and the hero to save the day (with a lot of casualties). Rinse and repeat. Black Bullet keeps showing glimpses of the plot potential it had and reminds you every time that there are 13 episodes. It presented the power-play of politics, the paranoia and oppression of the feared and misunderstood, the economic relations between nations during global crises, the inhumanity of mechanized warfare, and the struggle between vengeance and justice. It could've expounded more on these issues. It's like window-shopping. You see all of these things you want to buy but you never get to enjoy them. What I got was a half-baked mess with action and tragedy to fill in the gaps.

There's also the show's bipolar nature from the get-go. As much as I enjoyed happy-fun-times between the characters, it felt unnatural with the show's premise. On one hand, it amplifies the shows darkest moments like Higurashi or Madoka Magica. On the other, it interrupts the show. Black Bullet shuttles back-and-forth between being dark and tragic, to being cute and unassuming. Who could resist with the amount of lolis in this show? Add that to the length and it dampens the urgency and pain the show could've delivered. All that gore, dismemberment, and dead bodies lost its meaning. Also, didn't help that most deaths occurred off-screen. *Sighs*

And no, adding an unexpected plot twist will not redeem the damage already done.

ART - 8

It's a shame too because the art is really fit for a dark action series. Though the Gastrea (the monsters in this series) were slightly skimped, the weapons, action sequences and explosions (happy now, Michael Bay?) were well animated, especially DAT RAILGUN. Generous amounts of gore and Gastrea innards are spilled for our viewing pleasure, but like I said earlier, I hate off-screen events. It's like a cop-out for both the animators and writers. The character designs are of standard fare, and pretty cute if I do say so myself. No pedo.

SOUND - 7

As long as the OP and ED match the show's spirit, I don't skip it. But if it's really good, I download it. And luckily Black Bullet passes the mark with its choir-infused catchy J-pop opening, and orchestrated rock ED, with the brunt of the relatively high score coming from its background music: from glitchy tactical tunes, to a quirky piano and flute duo for light scenes, to rolling melancholic piano pieces with minimal choir and woodwinds, to a combination of orchestra and choir against the action set pieces. It doesn't stand out as much as other shows, but it fits well enough to gain my attention.

The seiyuus did their job with special mentions to those who brought out the softspoken nature of Tina, the eccentricity of Muroto, the twisted ways of Kagetane and his daughter, the naivety of Enju, the burden of Rentarou, and the fragility of Kisara.

CHARACTER - 4

With this length coupled with a slightly large cast, I'm not surprised that I didn't feel attached to any of them. Though I felt their situational agony largely contributed by the seiyuus and music, their development felt empty, neglected, and sometimes forced. Though the Gastrea are the main baddies, the human villains felt like they weren't even there; with one of them never participating again after one arc and another being so lame and awkward, I was surprised the entire cast let him live for 13 episodes.

ENJOYMENT - 6

I still enjoyed it. It just means adjusting the way I view the show. My insightful mindset devolved into being a sponge for moe, action, and drama. Goes to show how important execution is over substance. Instead of enjoying what I see on-screen, I was more entertained by the possibilities of what could make this show better. As good as it could be, nothing can change what's already there.

Overall, Black Bullet receives a fair 6 for poor presentation of an otherwise colossal idea. In the end, it's just rushed. It's not the story's fault. The presentation, on the other hand, can go in a Heaven's Ladder Railgun Launcher and get blasted off to the next Stage 5 Gastrea along with an Ekpyrotic Bomb filled with my expectations.