robb36 - 2016-01-08 00:02:57

First off, I really love the animation style. It is nice and colorful. The CGI and action scenes amazing and the character designs are wonderful. The story itself is pretty nice with drama and psychological elements at the end. If I can name one thing that I think could've been improved, it would be to have a bit more Black Rock Shooter action and a little less slice of life so it would be a bit more balanced. The last scene at the end where Mato merged with Black Rock Shooter was a really mind blowing but just as epic. To sum up, I would recommend seeing this OVA, Black Rock Shooter fan or not.

schaefer.sabryna - 2015-07-30 20:41:22

A great and dramatic OVA that shows the struggles of life, with a touch of action.

grimes.shanel - 2014-10-17 16:48:39

Losing friends is not an easy process. And when I say friends, I don’t mean the people whose exiting your life would make you go ‘awww’ or ‘that sucks.’ I’m talking about the people whose absence from your life leaves you speechless, only for your voice to come back as heart wrenching stutters after your mind has caught up with the fact ‘this person is gone.’ It’s a feeling we don’t want to experience.

Unfortunately for Kuroi Mato, she shares this sentiment a little over halfway through this tale. Yomi Takanashi is suddenly missing, and no matter where Kuroi looks, she’s nowhere to be found. Not at the sidewalk where they meet each other in the morning, not at the train station, not at their school, not even on each other’s cell phones. The piano piece in this moment speaks Kuroi’s emotions, but lingers with enough restraint to let dialog go undisturbed.

Later, the police bring their investigation to the Mato residence, as they believe Kuroi, being Yomi’s closest friend, might give a lead on where Yomi might have gone. But as Kuroi hears the words ‘closest friend,’ it’s all she can do to stay composed and answer their questions. The sudden lack of music puts the focus on their dialog, and the natural lighting of the room creates a sense of normalcy that contrasts and highlights Kuroi’s tearful face. It’s a frighteningly believable scene.

Fortunately for us, believably evoking a moment of loss is a testament to what the rest of the story has gained. But to call this moment the pay-off to the rest of the story wouldn’t be accurate. Pay-off implies the rest of the story is watched for this moment, but this moment is just another thread in a fabric of powerful scenes. Some loud and dramatic, others a whisper of the everyday, but all connected by the Golden Heart of a little-known OVA called Black Rock Shooter.

Of course, how a story about two friends in an everyday setting can conjure a title like Black Rock Shooter is bound to be confusing. But the tie-in between the title and story is the least confusing thing about the OVA. Several times throughout this anime, fight scenes between two characters—who I’ll call Blue Eyes and Green Eyes from this point on—are spread throughout the otherwise normal tale of Kuroi and Yomi’s friendship. There’s a lack of relevancy between the two concurrent story threads.

Or so it seems.

Now, the location of these fight scenes is never stated, but they’re less about the ‘where’ and more about the ‘what.’ ‘What’ they stand for. They’re not meant to be taken literally, but as a reflection of Kuroi and Yomi’s friendship, and of the characters themselves. Think I’m overreaching? Well, studio Ordet wouldn’t bother making Kuroi and Yomi resemble Blue Eyes and Green Eyes—or maybe it’s the other way around—without reason. The results are visuals that reinforce—reinforce, not creates—Kuroi and Yomi’s characterization.

Let me describe these characters. Kuroi is the outgoing one of the two, being the one to break the ice with Yomi while easily warming up to another character introduced later. She tends to easily show her emotions, from her bemusement meeting Yomi the first time to her later anguish. Then there’s Blue Eyes. She reaches out to Green Eyes, her weapon is a gun, and her outfit is revealing. Who reached out to Yomi? Kuroi. What does a gun do? It reaches out to things at a distance. What does a revealing outfit do? It shows a lot of skin, reflecting how Kuroi shows a lot of emotion.

Playing the foil and friend to Kuroi is Yomi. Her aloofness at the start believably melts into familiarity, as the reason she acts distant betrays her want for a friend. But she only opens up to Kuroi, and even then she holds back her feelings at the worst time. This creates the story’s conflict and justifies the fights with Green Eyes. Green Eyes herself wears a modest dress and fights with a scythe. What does a scythe do? It marks the end of things, and Yomi thinks their friendship has ended. What does a modest dress do? It doesn’t show much skin, mirroring Yomi’s emotional reticence.

Rolling the third wheel is Yuu Koutari. She’s the friend Kuroi makes later on, and serves as the catalyst of sorts for the story’s main conflict. Unfortunately, her relative lack of screentime, even for a side character, makes it hard to get a read on her, or get a general sense of her mindset and personality. It’s hard to tell if Yuu plays the ‘antagonist’—at least, Yomi sees her as such—by accident or whether she has ulterior motives for befriending Kuroi. The result is she becomes nothing more than a force to drive the story, which is one of the faults against the OVA.

The other fault of the story—but also one of its strengths—is how a year of Kuroi and Yomi’s friendship is shown as a montage. Their friendship would be more believable if it unfolded more in ‘real time’, but their development before the montage is believable as is. This pre-montage development covers what it needs to cover, from their first time passing each other by to Yomi believing Kuroi’s words. And the montage itself glosses over mundane stuff that would needlessly slow down the story. If nothing else, the light beats of the guitar-like track gives a peaceful, everyday feeling.

Speaking of which, the music is one of the overall stronger points of the OVA’s aesthetics. Pieces are either perfectly timed for whatever the mood is, or withheld entirely to bring focus to the dialog. Special mention goes to the tracks used during the three scenes at the town’s overlook. The instrumental in the first scene is upbeat and carefree to match Kuroi’s mood. The vocal track in the second scene mirrors Yomi’s melancholy AND Kuroi’s optimism in reaching out to her. And the piece during the third scene is understated, but helps to make a powerful statement about Kuroi’s character.

Now, I say the music is strong ‘overall’ because I was only talking about the music during the normal moments. The pieces during the fight scenes, save for the very end, amount to uninspired rock tracks. They set the mood for the action, but they’re all virtually identical. And with the fight scenes being spread throughout the story, the sudden change in music from soft to rock makes the action sound jarring. Thankfully, all the action only adds up to 10 minutes of a 52 minute OVA, so going back from action to normal doesn’t hurt the latter too much.

But while the soundtrack stays strong, the same can’t be said for the visuals. The normal scenes look nice, but the fight scenes have standard choreography and fluidity. The real strength of these visuals is what studio Ordet does with them. The fight scene backdrops are stylistic complements and echoes of the normal scenes. Blue Eyes is usually on lower ground than Green Eyes; Kuroi brings up Yomi’s height. When Kuroi is emotionally vulnerable, Blue Eyes takes a heavy blow. The final fight takes place on an overlook; the town overlook is significant to the story.

See, it’s the details within the fight scenes that link the action to the rest of the story. The biggest hurdle to overcome watching Black Rock Shooter is how the action seems thrown in for the sake of action. But as I might have pointed out, it—and the character designs—echo what happens in the rest of the story (except for that first—and only—scuffle with Red Eyes…) and don’t take up much time anyway. Of course, lots of thought being put into the visuals won’t mean much without compelling characters. And Kuroi and Yomi are genuine as characters and sincere as friends.

And it’s that authenticity between Kuroi and Yomi that makes Black Rock Shooter so strong, despite how it seems to misfire. Its story keeps firing forward without Kuroi and Yomi being reduced to mere story triggers (Yuu). Action that seems aimless has a lot of thought going into its design. Add music that’s on target most of the time, and the end result is something to keep your sights on. Its steadiness isn’t perfect, but all it takes to hit the mark is a Black Rock Shooter.

pfeffer.wilson - 2013-07-05 20:35:05

Story(7): Yomi is a all new Junior high school girl in a all girls school, all of a sudden she meets Yomi who is nice to her and everything goes well until. After the first year of school, they went to different classes with each other.Things getting twisted over there in the school.Meanwhile in the fantasy world, a girl with a black cape named Black Rock Shooter is on a adventure to fight this girl named Dead Master.The story is not that all exciting but it is unique because it is similar in to the real life of Mato, and the fantasy of BRS also the ending makes it pretty cool.The problem that everyone don't like is it is confusing to understand the storyline. Though, it doesn't get too much confusion of that once you try to think through of it, and pick out the pieces of the events.

Art(10): The art is fantastic, with bright colors, and detailed backgrounds. Even the fights in this ova are awesome. The art makers did a very good job at making it.

Sound(9):The first problem of the sound is there was no talking when you hear the fights. That makes it weird that you suspect that normal shows use talking while they fight but in this show, it doesn't have it in there.If you like fights without the talking than you may like the action fights in this one. But the only good thing for the sound is that the soundtrack is pretty good. The ending song is good with some rock rhythm.Voice acting is nice but not the greatest.

Characters(7):Now the characters I have a minor problem is this one is they aren't really interesting,that you want to stay focused on the fantasy characters and not the slice of life characters.Also the development of the characters are nonexistent, except for Mato who at least she works on her development on the ova version not the tv version.

Enjoyment(8):It gets interesting for when you first watch this with great fighting, but after you see the fights it gets a little boring because of how the characters make it somewhat boring. Aspect these issues it still makes me entertained through the whole ova.

Overall(9):The ova is great. With 52 minutes of time to spare, I recommend you to watch this.Only thing to remind you to watch this is to pay attention to the storyline, and suspect it to have great fights with some no talking moments.

dskiles - 2013-07-01 04:41:58

I thought this was gonna be awesome chicks fighting each other but all we got was like 10 minutes of horribly animated chicks fighting and 40 minutes of slice of life yuri shit. I wouldn't have minded the slice of life stuff if the story wasn't just retarded. I heard there was a lot of hype behind this and it was supposed to be good but it was probably the most boring 52 minutes of my life. I also heard that this was supposed to have something to do with Vocaloids? I was expecting a bunch of good songs but there were literally only like 4 songs in the whole show. Overall: Boring story, Ok art, bad fighting animation, ok music (for what music there was), and stupid characters.

santos32 - 2013-06-07 20:18:11

Black Rock Shooter, a 4 minute PV made into an OVA. One may wonder how this can be possible, its pretty hard but Ordet gave it their best shotThe story of Black Rock Shooter is divided between two worlds, the world of BRS, and the real world. In the real world we get the story of Mato and Yomi, two friends who grow closer as time passes, and things are great until a new girl comes along begins to get friendly with Mato. This is a completely new story that seems to have nothing to do with anything related to BRS, its a slice-of-life story that actually stands well on its own. It does however feel like its going nowhere most of the time, and it kinda doesn't, not until the end at least. Its pretty enjoyable to watch even if at some point it feels like its trying too hard too be like 5cm per second. The problem with it seems to be that we don't really get any character development, despite taking place over a year, none of them really seem to grow, they all start somewhere, but end at the same place.We also get the world of BRS, a desolate wasteland. In this portion we see BRS roaming around and fighting Dead Master, but really not much else. You don't really see any plot in this world, just shots of the surroundings, and fighting. The fight scenes are well choreographed but they are just too short and far in-between.Which brings me to the main issue of BRS, over the course of the plot we switch between scenes of the real world, and of the BRS world. The problem is that too much time is spent on the real world and the friendship between Mato and Yomi, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but we came expecting BRS, but we hardly get any of her, and when we do, her scenes are much too short and have the tendency to cut off when it starts getting good. This does however make you anticipate her next scene, even if its doing it in a pretty cheap way.Visually this is a mixed bag, in the real world the backgrounds look pretty good as well as the characters, however its not really all that great, its not bad in any sense, but there are better-looking shows out there. In the other world however, the visuals are amazing, the backgrounds are beautifully drawn and the character designs are amazing. As I mentioned already, the fight scenes are amazingly done in terms of visuals, and in animation.The best part is the sound, the cast does a good job playing their parts, but nothing spectacular. The soundtrack is what really won me over, with great music by ryo playing in both worlds. There is rock and roll playing during fights and it does a great job setting the mood, the same can be said for the melodies playing during the real world scenes, they set a calming mood for these scenes and even help immerse you in them. Unfortunately Black Rock Shooter (the song) doesn't doesn't play at all except for a piano rendition near the end, but the rest of the soundtrack, and the ending theme, are enough to make up for that.Ultimately Black Rock Shooter feels like a rip-off, you come in hoping to see Black Rock Shooter (duh), but most of it is spent on a seemingly unrelated group of people (keyword seemingly). However this doesn't mean that you won't enjoy both stories, they're very enjoyable even if most of the time nothing happens, the BRS segments are really fun to watch, and the Mato/Yomi parts are pretty good themselves. Personally I enjoyed it, I love the song,the original PV, the 3D PV, and Supercell. I really was exited to see this, but i do wish there was more BRS scenes, but the visuals, sound, and better-than-expected sub-plot, made this a pretty good watch. A definite watch for those who anticipated it, and maybe even those unfamiliar with Black Rock Shooter.The ending sucks though, but it does leave it open for a sequel