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.
Distant Paradise 
