Black Cat

I’m gonna be straight here – Black Cat is one of the most disappointing anime I’ve ever watched. It’s been two years since I watched this anime and I’m still a little bitter at how much potential remained unrealized at its end.

Black Cat is about this assassin named Train Heartnet (hey, at least he escaped whoever named all the characters in Geass). Or wait, it’s about this secret bio-weapon disguised as a loli named Eve. Actually no, it’s about this bounty hunter dude named Sven. Oh, wait, never mind, I remember, it’s actually about the villain, Creed, who has a hard-on for Train. No hang ... on, it might’ve been about the organization that Train worked for, Chronos…

See, I’m writing all of this as if the abundance of disparate elements in the plot is a bad thing, but the thing is, the story started out with a ton of potential. The first four or five episodes do a great job of tying all these characters together in a sensible and, dare I say, a captivating manner. Seriously, the beginning of this show is excellent. It’s exciting and a bit dark without getting too edgy or angsty, the characters all have good synergy and play off of each other very well, and the pacing is near-perfect.

And then the timeskip happens.

I’ll try to be brief and not spoil anything here, but suffice it to say that a certain main character’s personality does a complete 180 after the timeskip, and virtually zero explanation for the change is given to the viewer, outside of occasional scattered hints that refer to certain events that happened pre-timeskip. This is unfortunately only the beginning, as the rest of the anime devolves into a giant mess of hastily-introduced and poorly-fleshed-out characters, a distinct lack of focus on core plot points that the initial episodes tried to establish, and a ridiculous number of plot contrivances that attempt to reconcile this lack of focus, to no avail. The pacing is haphazard at best and has all the grace of a one-legged donkey at worst. The only relatively consistent character throughout the show is Sven; everyone else undergoes obscenely rushed character “development”, which is really just most of the characters overreacting to major events and, much like aforementioned main character, completely flipping the script on their personalities and becoming the exact opposite of who they originally were. This isn’t even mentioning the staggering number of characters this show introduces. There are like 10 new villains that arrived on the scene halfway through the show, plus all the Chronos assassins and executives, plus the guys who were in charge of those 10 or so new villains I just mentioned…the list just keeps growing and growing, and almost none of them get any kind of proper characterization, let alone development. It’s as if Naruto or One Piece were to condense themselves into 25 or so episodes, and cram their entire casts and plot into that timeframe. It’s insane.

All that being said, the anime does have its good qualities. As I said before, the first part of the anime is very well done, and it constructs a reasonably compelling narrative while introducing a pretty solid cast of characters to drive it forward. The art and animation are also good, although the color palette was a little weird and off-putting at times. The soundtrack is fairly strong as well, and I am particularly fond of the opening theme.

Ultimately, the overwhelming number of flaws prevent this anime from being anything more than way below-average at best. In truth, the last three-quarters or so of this anime are straight up terrible in terms of execution. Still, though…I can only imagine how much more enjoyable this anime could’ve been if they had just stuck to the format the first few episodes had established. It’s a damn shame.

The purpose of this review is to express my disappointment as someone who read the manga first and enjoyed it a lot, and I will actually put my conclusion as an introduction so that at least some people will not summarily dismiss this (although I do not know how effective that will be; people tend to rate based on if the scores agree with them).

None of this is to say that the anime is not worth watching if you have not read the manga, or even if you have, everyone is different and you might wildly enjoy it. It has a genuine plot that has ... a clear goal and approaches it with a fairly consistent pace; it is rather all the little details which detract from this anime for me. The manga's art is more enjoyable since it is not poorly animated, its plot is executed more grandiosely, which is the main difference besides art that bothers me, and the manga allows you to imagine how the characters act a little more, and while sometimes an anime exceeds my imagination, as I am not very creative, it did not in this instance.

I think the easiest place to start is the art. If you have watched a lot of Gonzo, then you probably have found that although maybe not always superb, they have had a hand in such creations as Gankutsuou or Last Exile with superb animation that moves very naturally (except in the terrible mech scene), and even in less refined instances like Full Metal Panic! or Gantz is still quite acceptable typically. In this anime it moves very awkwardly and left me rendered uncomfortable the entire anime. It is not the worst art ever, and I am giving it a three not so much for the actual drawing style, which is probably around fairly typical, but for the emphatically terrible way in which movement occurs.

The voice acting is stellar. In regard to music, I usually try to rate it this way: if it does not detract from the anime, then I am not upset (if it detracts I will rate it a 1 or 2 by default). In this case, it is certainly no Cowboy Bebop or anything, but it never terribly detracts, distracts, or annoys.

I want to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that the plot changes they made were for the amount of time they had allotted to do with the amount of episodes, but I found almost every plot change to be for the worse, which is why I penalized the story so highly. It is much more exciting and constantly 'epic' in the manga. I will not spoil them here, but if you have read and not watched or vice versa, then you will easily notice them.

TL;DR: Watch it until episode 6-7 and drop it after.


The story starts very cliche but well done and interesting with a lot of potential and the MC is badass, the art and animation is nice for the time the anime was made and sound is decent as well, everything looked promising until the time skip happened where our MC turns from badass to generic annoying boring wimp sounding like MC, the plot goes from mysterious and interesting to boring save the world, friendship power, killing is bad etc.

This anime had a lot of potential but it got ruined thanks to the incompentence of the ... director/writer of this series, it felt almost like he changed his mind from cool badass to "I'm scared it won't sell so I need to make it as generic and boring as possible and do 180* on MC". Trully disgusting.

Also the different POV changes to Sven, Eve and the others characters instead of focusing solely on MC point of view felt really out of place and destroyed a lot of enjoyment.
People watch this for Train, if they would have committed to follow only his POV and focus on his badass counterpart solely rather than destroying his character and giving too much POV to others, it would have been a very solid anime.



Rating:

7/10 episode 1-6
1/10 epiosode 7+

Black Cat! What an awesome synopsis with a great story! These were my first thoughts on the series. In the beginning, I was very impressed. The first few episodes were great, entertaining. Unfortunately, it all just fell apart into a giant mush of boring side stories, awful character morals, and poorly designed villains.

I like to start my reviews off with the good aspects of a series, so let's go over a few. The opening song wasn't too bad. ... The animation was average. I did find myself enjoying a few of the characters. Sven had excellent voice acting. Saiya and Kyouko were enjoyable characters. There was so much potential!

Let's skip the point... I just, wow. I was enjoying Black Cat a lot, but it was just written so poorly. It was about cool assassins and bounty hunters, then they became morally illogical, neighborhood watch style of characters.
"We have the power to kill this terrible murderous rapist with super powers, but let's turn him over to the police so he can break of jail for the 6th time."
Of course, this is just an example, not a spoiler, but you understand how frustrating it became. Not only that, but the story just kept flipping to awful side stories and introducing useless characters with no relevance whatsoever. Most of the villains had ridiculous logic, or lack thereof. Not to mention, this series actually has 24 episodes. Mal probably didn't include the 24th episode because it was downright terrible. You could hardly tell what was going on at all.

All and all, I will not be watching this series again, and I'm not even that proud to have finished it. It's too violent for kids, too illogical for adults.. it's just a flop. If you enjoy far-fetched, wild adventures, with ministories that don't add to the main story, you might enjoy Black Cat, but it definitely wasn't for me.

3/10 Sweepers. Hopefully enough to sweep it under the rug :') !

I didn't see much of the story unravel, I only saw episode one, but what I did see was highly confusing. I understand in action scenes the need to change frames often, but even in the first fight sequence the frames change so much you can't tell whats going on. The writing is so awful and cheesy. Black Cat, "I'm here to bring bad luck." What, are you joking? Thats the coolest thing you could think of.
The Art style is probably the best thing about this show.
I guess the sound wasn't too bad, but nothing ground breaking here.
The main character, or the guy with ... the eye patch, seems like an interesting person at first but after using his lame power, he can see five minutes into the future, you might want to reconsider. He has this vision of somebody dieing and thinks that it is going to happen. If it's going to happen you may as well give up because you can't stop it. This happens all the time in other anime. The Black Cat character is your cliché short badass who has super powers and just kills everybody. Then after Black Cat, or Train Heartnet his real name ( which is a really dumb name by the way), gets a cut on his face, which also happens in almost every other anime, some Homo (He is clearly a homo because he says" Oh you scratched Train's beautiful, pretty-boy face, I'll have to kill you for hurting my lover) comes over and kills the other guy that cut his face.
Well yeah I know "I only saw one episode, How can I say the show sucks after only seeing one episode?"Considering how many other better animes there are out there why waste my time with this one if the first episode sucks so much?

It seems I only end up writing reviews for shows I have a lot of negative things to say about. Black Cat is by far the least inspired Shonen (This was originally in shonen jump btw, for 4 years;; ) I have ever seen.

Take this review with a grain of salt. I was paying minimal attention through out the show, because it really failed to capture my attention.

STORY:

The setting and world building is AWFUL, I seriously don't know what they were going for... The setting feels like what a Japanese man would imagine the west in the 2000's to be like, but it makes 0 ... world building sense. (apart from it being WILDLY inaccurate in my European eyes) I JUST finished this show and I can't remember a single location accurately. (I feel like they fought at castles and mansions a lot?)

There are the Sweepers, Chronos and the Apostle’s, but you don't get the impression that any of these organisations influence the world around them, or that this world would warrent the existence of these types of organisations in the first place. The setting is so bland, that at one point I forgot that it was supposed to take place in a world with computers. (which is dumb because nano technology is a big part of the show)

So this world has Taoists and nanomachines, which enable the users grand powers. It reminds me of a certain magical index, where there is an opposition of magic and technology, but this story does nothing with these sources of power, they just exist as an excuse to have cool powers. But then you have Train who just has protagonist powers, which really cheapens the impact of any imbalance that nano technology or tao could have brought into the story.

Don't really care about the story, it's super tropey and cliche, which it no doubt feels that way to me as a modern viewer, but I doubt this was such an innovator even back then.

This show has a tendency to undercut serious moments with stupid bullshit that's just really fillery and boring. Like, something serious can happen, but the show turns it into a joke and all tension is lost. Train turning into a kid is a good example; it leads NOWHERE.

ART:

Not awful, but not good, certainly not for todays standards.

SOUND:

God, I hated the sountrack. Those arias in the fights were so annoying.

CHARACTER:

There aren't necessarily any characters that infuriated me or anything, but I didn't really love the dynamics between the characters either. Rinslet was absolutely useless, and it felt as if she was only there to have more female characters.

Train was just an angsty protagonist, with the blandest personality imaginable.

I liked Eve, but the show was mostly about Creed. Although I think the show didn't do him any favours, it was extremely pleasing for me to watch a male yandere character. It was the reason I started this show, if I'm honest. I don't think his development is the best, but he is the most memorable thing about this show.

ENJOYMENT:

I skipped through some parts honestly, it was so boring.

OVERALL:

I think in general, this is just a product of its time. It's not something that would be made today. I enjoy anime from this time period occasionally, despite it's common trappings, but this one really wasn't for me. I doubt many modern viewers can enjoy this show like people did when it aired. Even then I think something like Soul Eater or maybe even Fairy Tail (forgive me) that have somewhat stronger settings despite their faults.

This show doesn't have a good setting, lots of cliches, boring characters, bad art so yeah, nothing for me to love. Not the most incompetent thing in the world, but so not worth your time.

this anime is a side story of "To love Ru"

main character (black cat / train Heartnet) is not important/useless in this story.
(the story will still can run without the main character)

i think they sould change title for this anime
"Sven Vollfied" not "black cat"

if you watch this anime from eps 1 to 23 you will understand what i mean.

... the nature of the main character suddenly changes unclearly
from cold and heartless.
changed to be weird man only for jokes that are not funny

so many time skip

i hate no kill rule , the enemy kill many people and his friend but he let them alive ~

at the first episode of Chronos and black cat looks strong.
but when the episode continues until it's finished.
suddenly Chronos number 1 became very, very weak

This review is coming from someone who read and loved the manga, and was hoping to see it translated at least decently into an anime.

In my humble opinion, this anime was awful. Just dreadful. It completely messed with the plot of the manga, changed up time lines, and over-all made the series seem like a joke.

I saw depth in the manga. The manga made me feel anything from laughing out loud to anger to sadness. The anime made me feel embarrassed to be watching it.

If you want to see a manga translated respectfully into an anime, this is ... NOT the one to choose.

I will just say one thing this shit was so bad I was considering suicide because of this piece of shit show, at the first few episodes when Train was wearing black I was interested and I was like "Maybe this show isn't that bad" and I finished watching it and I was just like finally it's done and I don't have to kill myself, and if you think I'm exaggerating on how bad this show is I dropped it more than 8 times, but some of the fights were amazingly animated like the fight between train and zoolander or whatever his name is, and ... the only reason I watched this, because this anime was by the same studio that did full metal panic which is one of my favorite mecha anime and I was like oh maybe I should watch whatever this studio that did full metal panic and maybe I should watch their other works which was black cat, and i feel like i wasted two months trying to watch this fucking show, in summary of what i wrote don't watch this, watch something else that you think is actually worth your precous time.

Black Cat started as an edgy and serious anime with a mediocre plot that soon turned into a happy-to-go all after a time jump showing how amateur the writer was. The anime never had anything good to keep it going so they just start to randomly throw characters to forcefully keep the plot going. The original story was about 12 episodes long; all other episodes were just sidetracking from the main story.

The characters were lacking many things from writing to development; everything was in a mess. The main protagonist and antagonist were written so horribly that the series got so hard to keep watching the ... development was based on the death of a character that had no point being in the anime except for that. The powers that are shown in the anime have a lot of inconsistencies and poor explanations. Eve's character that was supposed to be important was butchered so horrendously that one loses all interest in it. The random jumps in the story, all over the place plot, amateurish writing, and force character building this anime has all of it. The art was alright and the animation was pretty nice but these were the only positive things about the anime

There were hints of intriguing things in the few last episodes but once again the horrific writing skills destroyed all the momentum. At times it seems the writer tries to put everything that came into their mind without thinking about how it will affect the plot. Many things that happen in anime are either rushed or left unexplained.

All and all the anime had barely minimum potential; it was wasted by the amateurish writing and forced moments. I would not recommend the Forced Cat to anyone.

Black cat is a cheesy action, comedy and drama with a little bit of everything: superpowers, magic, nanotechnology, martial arts, bounty hunters, shadowy organizations, railguns and all sorts of super-weapons.

We follow Train Heartnet, a powerful assassin working for the world leaders at Chronos, he decides to trail his own way, and separating himself from the organization won't be easy. The cast is overall likeable but not that deep. I love the "ragtag family" relationship the bounty hunter team has going, and it is such a breath of fresh air to see a child being treated with respect instead of her being sexualized.

If you treat its ... story less seriously, try to take it for what it is and turn off your mind a bit, black cat is a comedic show with unserious action, focused on being showy, having monologues, lots of explosions, big showdowns and all types of eccentricities.

The animation and sound are dated, the pacing is beyond bad, the characters have good personalities but lack depth, the villains are horribly written, there's too many characters to keep track of and without much screen time, we don't get enough world building, we don't get an explanation for the powers, technologies or organizations that we see clash, groups of people come out unscathed from direct machinegun fire, people survive without a scratch after having an entire building collapse on them from an explosion... But the first half was really enjoyable, the biggest issue with this anime is that, halfway through, it diverges through from the source manga, from there the drop in quality is noticeable.

I wouldn't recommend this anime unless you want to get a glimpse into what was popular in the light novel/manga scene of the early 2000s, because this has a poorly executed mish mash of everything. It is also a window into something that happened all the time in the anime scene during those times: Stolen intellectual property! So many good stories taken over by studios to meet deadlines. The ending is infamous due to how rushed and undeveloped it was, it's even hard to keep track of what's happening, totally chaotic and hollow.

So this anime I thought was not very good. It started off pretty kick ass but soon turned to a point where I felt like I was forcing myself to watch it. A certain turn of events developed the plot of the story but also lost interest for me as well. Some people really like this anime, just not for me I guess. It's one of those ones where u could watch the first 5 episodes and be done with it- u get the idea of the story pretty much. I would not recommend this one- didnt overly enjoy it very much at all.

Let me be frank. Black Cat is one of my all time favorite manga's. I love the three main character, I love the artwork, and I'm a sucker for "guy saves a young powerful girl" story trope. It's just pure adventure and fun.

The anime on the other hand is a grave injustice to it's source material. Lots of things were cut out of the original manga and a lot of characters/villians/story arcs were either removed or changed. The ending was extremely rushed where as the manga had a cool buildup and showdown at the very end with a decent emotional payoff.

Stick to the ... manga folks. Please.

Black Cat

Edit: I have now read the manga as a comparison. Actually has to say that the manga was better than the anime for the first 50%, but actually got worse than the anime adaptation from the halfway point onwards.

The manga starts and runs fundamentally different, even if the main events at the beginning, are initially the same.

-
-

I used to be a fan of this work as a child and wanted to rewatch it. Of course, it is much more negative to me now than before. But for a shounen, still positive.
...
The action of the Black Cat adaptation is quite simple and one will understand in some episodes what the Shounen typical action amounts to.
The implementation is also just average. However, the style of implementation was quite personable.

The characters also had their own traits and were entertaining. Only her actual character received much less attention than he should. This made the characters no less likeable, but they lacked depth of character.

For my part, the anime was entertaining to some extent.

Story


The Plot was a simple one, and as I said, it differentiated it from the manga, at least the process.

The story is about Train, his change of heart, the consequences and just his adventure. A story that moves linearly from A - to -> B, with a few minor scenes. However, the episodes remained mostly important and it didn't drift into the filler area.

Unfortunately, the episodes from c. 17 or 18 were really disappointing. It was recognized that the adaptation should clearly take a different path than the manga. However, towards the end everything was quickly thrown into a pot. The finale, the later events and the end were simply processed somehow. Many scenes were skipped completely, which created gaps that made less sense. Everything has been thrown over the table just so that the work can quickly come to an end in the last few episodes. They originally took their time, but apparently they drastically reduced the number of episodes, which led to such a terrible theater. Couldn't look at the end because it was really, just sad.

Animation / pictures:


The animations, dynamics, lighting effects and co. were hit very well here. In particular, this fluid combat animation, along with the dynamics, has been a good approach to dominant combat.

Characters:


The characters were neat, but only in terms of sympathy. The only character that was really addressed was Train. The rest just stayed the way they were and they just lacked depth of character.

Sven was a simple womanizer as he is in the book and, as I said, just personable.

Before his change of heart, Train was quite interesting, after that he only became a gobble, which is not surprising.

Eve was also .. just a girl who didn't really understand her emotions and yes, like the rest of her, she was just there and done.

The only thing Creed did was really positive. Never seen a character exude such an obsession. I'm not saying that it was well written. But he was all a charismatic chunk.

Music:


Black Cat's first intro was nothing too special musically, but was a good intro to the work.
The outro was ... let's say it was very strange. Still there was something nice about it.

The Osts in this plant were really noteworthy. Professionally designed Osts, who could beautifully underline every scene, something like that is a pleasure to see.

My conclusion


A decent shounen for in between, which you can definitely look at. The characters were personable enough, the music was fine, the animations dynamic and smooth and the representation of the genre was impressive enough.

Only the end was a disaster