Black★Rock Shooter (OVA)

OVA – Black Rock Shooter – ブラック★ロックシューター (Burakku rokku shyuuta)

After rewatching this OVA for a second time (watching a 52 minute OVA twice takes quite a long time >.<;), I think I finally got the story completely down.

What makes this OVA somewhat unique is how the creators decided to execute the story for Black Rock Shooter. Rather than show the scenes to the story chronologically, they alternate between two particular types of scenes; the slice of life scenes, which chronologically happens first, and the black rock shooter fight scenes, which chronologically happens after the slice of life story. Only the first action scene does not seem to occur chronologically; I’m assuming it instead happens far into the future (Edit: after reading one of the comments down below, I realized that the first fight scene might actually be in chronological order).

At first, I was confused as to why they were showing random fight scenes sporadically in between the slice of life scenes of this OVA, but once you think of the proper timeline, it makes perfect sense. Later on in the post there is a summary of the story in chronological order.

Quite honestly, it would’ve been much, MUCH better to just put things in chronological order to prevent confusion. Most likely though, they spaced out the action scenes to disguise how little action there actually was (Note: I’m excluding the random bits where Black Rock Shooter is simply walking around in the other dimension). Spacing out the action scenes gives off the illusion that there was more action scenes than there actually are. To be honest, I would’ve been fine without the story, and instead, having the creators devote those resources to the main draw of Black Rock shooter; the action.

The characters and story were fairly one-dimensional, with little or no real depth to them. The conflict pretty much went along the lines of “girl makes friend, then makes another friend. The first friend gets jealous, and all hell breaks loose. Eventually, they make up and are friends again.”

A fairly uninspiring and generic story. I get the feeling that the creators tried to portray the main characters similar to the K-ON!! cast; as a friendly bunch of close friends that are both fun and amusing to watch. It would’ve been much easier to sympathize with the main cast if this were the case.

Unfortunately, probably because of time restraints, the creators couldn’t really get that image across. If they had more time, the creators could have developed the characters more before all the drama started to kick in (>.>);;

Besides that though, this OVA was solid. The animation and musical score were both excellent; part of the reason why I sat through this OVA again was because I liked the music enough to rewatch it. The animation, especially during the fight scenes, was swift, fluid, and overall pretty awesome.

I would’ve rather seen the majority of the OVA consist of such awesome action scenes, but the creators somehow managed to tack on a middle school slice of life story to this OVA. Although an enjoyable OVA, Black★Rock Shooter definitely did not live up to the hype it had surrounding it’s release.

Overall Rating: 8/10

Production Quality: 9.0/10

Characters: 7.5/10

Story: 8/10

Screenshots and story summary are later in the post.

OVA Story Summary (in chronological order):

Part 1: Slice of life Part

Our main heroine, Matou Kuroi (黒衣 マト), heads off to her first year of middle school. There, she meets Takanashi Yomi (小鳥遊 ヨミ), and they pretty much become best of friends. Kuroi joins the basketball team, while Yomi goes and joins the volleyball team. Kuroi gives Yomi a little star cell phone key chain as a token of their friendship, with Kuroi having an identical key chain on her own phone. They hang out together all the time, during the summer, winter, christmas, throughout the year. I swear, I would’ve thought that we had a yuri pair here if I hadn’t known this OVA wasn’t a yuri OVA >.<;;

However, when second year comes around, Kuroi and Yomi end up being separated into separate classes. The classes were right next to each other, so they originally figured that everything would be fine since they were so close to each other. The basketball team manager, Yuu, starts to get close to Kuroi, and it eventually turns out that Kuroi is hanging out more with Yuu than Yomi.

Yomi ends up getting jealous, and Dead Master takes advantage of these negative emotions to possess her. Yomi disappears in the middle of school in a weird fuzzy black cloud (o.O);;, and only later do people realize she’s actually missing.

After Kuroi was informed about Yomi’s disappearance, she was worried sick and wanted to get in contact with her somehow. After getting a text message from Yomi, Kuroi ends up running up to the place where she had first given Yomi that token of their friendship (the star-shaped cell phone key chain), only to find Yomi’s cell phone key chain abandoned on the floor.

There, Kuroi starts worrying even more, and the keychain starts to glow in a mysterious blue light. Black Rock Shooter had responded to Kuroi’s feelings, and started to descend from the sky. They eventually merge and become one.

Part 2: Black rock shooter fight scenes
After becoming Black Rock Shooter, Kuroi is in some sort of gloomy alternate dimension, where she journeys a long distance to eventually reach an old gothic style church. It is there where Kuroi meets up with Yomi, now possessed by Dead master. After a long and fierce fight, Kuroi corners Dead master, but rather than kill Dead master, Kuroi embraces her in a big hug. Yomi’s emotions somehow manage to overpower Dead master, and ejects Dead Master from her body. She returns to her normal appearance.

Part 3: Return to our world
Yomi and Kuroi return to the real world, now good friends once again. This time around, though, Yuu gets jealous of their rekindled friendship.

SPOILER: it is assumed that Yuu becomes the other fighter briefly seen in this OVA, STR.