The story follows high school student and "Promoter" Satomi Rentaro and his loli partner Enju, who uses her kept-in-check gastrea powers to kill full blown gastrea. Rentaro starts off being pretty mediocre as far as Promoters go, but he quickly rises through the ranks because of his inherent superiority and a sudden powerup.
Although the story tries to be serious and mature, it fails miserably. We start off with the usual generic villain who wants to let the gastrea kill everyone in Tokyo because apparently anyone who can't defend defend themselves from giant monsters ought to die and it doesn't really get much better. There's an evil scientist named Ayn Rand, loli assassins, bad guys who have an irrational hatred of Rentaro, and a guy who built one of the varanium monoliths on the cheap so he could pocket the extra money. Sorry if I'm making this sound good because really, it's not. Even when we get a big gastrea battle at the end the real action takes place off screen. All we get to see is the aftermath.
The biggest problem with the show is that it has absolutely no idea how to have any kind of emotional impact on the audience. Minor characters are introduced only to die an episode or two later. Rentaro cries because he cared about them, but the viewer hardly knew them at all. Little girls in particular are subjected to brutal violence because what's worse than killing off an ordinary character? Killing off a child! This happens multiple times throughout the show and it serves no purpose other than to be "shocking" and briefly make Rentaro pause and wonder why he protects Tokyo. There's a death toward the end that annoyed me because of how it happened so nonchalently. When someone dies it should feel like they made a meaningful sacrifice. This felt like the character had such little regard for their own life that it wasn't really a sacrifice at all.
Black Bullet has very little character growth. It may be that the show's rushed pacing gave Rentaro very little time for introspection, or that the story is basically one crisis after another. Either way, every character gets a dark backstory but that's pretty much it.
Rentaro starts off as a mid-tier Promoter before he suddenly unlocks his potential and becomes ridiculously overpowered - except when he gets physically restrained by two guys right after a fight where he was demolishing concrete walls. He is always morally right and he demonstrates his superiority by triumphing over characters who hate him for very flimsy reasons. When a character unfairly persecuteshim, something conveniently happens that removes the obstacle and increases Rentaro's prestige. Everyone in a position of authority acts like a retard just so he can show how clever and perceptive he is.
Kisara is Rentaro's tsundere friend. Her family is basically the Rothschilds of Japan except instead of banking, they teach their children absurdly overpowered martial arts and weapon techniques. You'll know this because the characters announce the name of the attack before they use it.
The loli harem is there for comedy relief and pandering. The kind of "humor" here entails a gastrea-spider shoots sticky white web on Enju and constant flirting with Rentaro.
If you like B-movies then boy, have I got the show for you. It tries to be deep but the pacing is so frenetic that all the characters come across as being extremely shallow. There's even a scene where a guy gets cut by a sword but doesn't realize it until his head EXPLODES a minute later. Varanium may be black, but Black Bullet is comedy gold.
