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Numbers: Story: 5, Art: 6, Sound: 8, Characters: 4, Enjoyment: 4.

I don't think Black Rock Shooter was bad, it was not good either. Truth be told this was one of the most genuinely bland and uninteresting animes I have ever seen.

Short review:

The show was presented well enough, the art, while uninspired in both worlds, did it's job, while the sound was the strongest aspect. The characters felt bland and not once did I feel like I had any sort of sense of time, I never felt like I understood the character's motives, I never felt like I connected to anyone, and I never felt ... like I cared about anything happening at all. The anime felt very mediocre.

Long review:

The story follows a few girls, Mato, Yu, Kotori, and Yumi, doing... something. Find friendship, I suppose. The show never did a very good job of explaining anything anyone did in the show. On top of that the girls never had any reason to do anything they did in this show, besides that they were friends. Now before you go friendship is enough to do something for someone, listen, Mato and Yumi literally know each other for like a month probably (another thing the show didn't do a very good job of was giving you a logical sense of time) and the lengths Mato goes to for this girl are just not justifiable. The argument could be made that she's just a good person, but no. No one is that good of a person.

I can't fault them for what they were trying to do with the story, its something fresh and different, but it was executed quite poorly. The pacing was terrible (I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and say that it was only 8 episodes) and for a talky drama anime, all of the dialogue felt forced. They'd say things to each other, but it sometimes felt like they were robots. Also Mato is overly obsessed with a children's book, to the point of creepy, and talks about it constantly. She always stares off into the distance and says every color she sees, and wants to go see "the multicolored world." Of the children's book. Fiction. Which is stupid.

The characters were by far the weakest part of this series. They were the most wishy washy group of characters I had ever seen. At one point a certain girl screams at another that she can't take it anymore and wants her gone, and the very next episode she is bawling her eyes out because said character is gone. "I can't be friends with you," one girl says. Fifteen minutes later "Aight, lets be friends." It was like the characters couldn't make up their minds on anything, not to mention they were all archetypes, so they didn't have originality going for them either.

Mato is the kind caring protagonist, Kotori is nuts and a half, Yomi is lonely glasses-kun, Yu is the cheerful best friend, it goes deeper, but not saying because spoilers I guess.

The (Japanese) voice acting was pretty decent. The actors did the best with what they had. They did a good job conveying the seemingly unwarranted emotion brought on by the writing, and to that I give an applause.

Now before I poop all over undoubtedly someone out there's favorite anime, it isn't all bad. In fact it isn't even bad, just uninteresting. The music is fantastic, every song feels like it fits in perfectly to what was going on (except maybe the show's base, Black Rock Shooter by Supercell, but Supercell rocks so I'll forgive it), and when the show tries to do comedy and action they do them surprisingly well. Action was fast paced and intense, with plenty of flair. The CG is even done very well, its almost barely noticeable. When the show tried to be funny it was genuinely funny, like in a scene where they make fun of the popular shoujo scene of girls running with a piece of toast in their mouth. That stuff was good, but it wasn't there nearly enough, and the show suffers.

The art felt incredibly uninspired. The shoujo/drama part of the anime looked like any other shoujo on the market, and the main characters didn't even really stand out, except for Kotori, because blonde. The shonen/action scenes had some cool designs, but all of them could have been stripped of their color and thrown in any other shonen ever and fit right in. Except for Black Rock Shooter's design (which was what the show was based on anyway so by all means it should've been good) the other character designs were just bland cut and pastes.

Conclusion:

While I did not enjoy this anime all that much, and by all means I probably should have, but I didn't, I can see why someone would. Its something different, and while I can't wholeheartedly recommend this show to anyone who hasn't exhausted their resources, I can say that it wasn't bad. Just genuinely uninteresting.

5/10