It’s going to be hard to talk about Black★Rock Shooter without first addressing what this even is.
Like the Mekakucity Actors and the Kagerou Project as a whole, Black★Rock Shooter is a multimedia franchise with its roots fairly deep in Vocaloid music. In this case, though, the first thing was actually just a piece of art, depicting the character Black Rock Shooter (You don’t pronounce the star, so I’m dropping it when referring to the character), which quickly inspired a vocaloid song that the artist collaborated to create the video for. Because its absolute base is much more nebulous, different Black★Rock Shooter properties, unlike different KagePro properties, can have not just meaty differences but entirely different premises and concepts. Because of that, I need to specify that I’m speaking only about the 8-episode television Anime.
That out of the way, let’s dive in.
Black★Rock Shooter starts out
starring Kuroi Mato, a girl going to, at the start of the show, her
first day of middle school. She’s seen with her friend, Yuu, and
tries to make friends with a mysterious, aloof girl, Yomi. Yomi at
first rebuffs Mato, but they end up bonding over their shared
favorite book, a picture book about a little bird that tries to see
the world and all its beauty and becomes painted by the colors it
encounters.
However, it seems that Yomi has
complicated circumstances, as Mato, on visiting her house, ends up
meeting Kagari, a wheelchair-bound girl who has an extremely bad
attitude and is jealously possessive of Yomi. Yomi, for her part,
seems bound to go along with whatever Kagari says, even if she seems
to resent and hate her lot. Mato, however, won’t be dissuaded from
making a friend so easily, and resolves to get through to Yomi,
knowing there’s a good person underneath.
While this happens, we get occasional
cuts to another world, one full of wild colors and abstract
symbolism. The action in this world is entirely without dialogue,
silent stories told through visual means. Those stories center
around Black Rock Shooter, the gun-toting, darker-and-edgier Hatsune
Miku doppelganger who started it all. She wanders through the
colorful world, and along the way encounters does visually-stunning
battle with the other strange denizens of that dimension, who look a
great deal like people we’ve met in the normal, mortal world. At
first, it seems like Shooter’s battles are visual metaphors, showing
us the conflict and inner turmoil that certain characters are
suffering, but gradually, through the framing of individual scenes
and strange interactions with the weirdly sinister guidance
counselor, Saya, the audience may start to suspect that there’s more
to the world of colors than there might appear to be at first.
Mato’s quest to befriend Yomi and see
her happy leads Mato (and the audience) to discover more about Yomi,
Kagari, and their situations. Yomi blames herself for the accident
that left Kagari in a wheelchair, and has a deep sense of obligation
to her childhood friend. Kagari, however, has fairly clear
psychological issues, considering that there’s nothing actually wrong
with her legs; the only reasons she can’t walk are psychological, and
in moments where she’s pressed or panicking, she acts on instinct and
momentarily drops her disability like a bad act.
This comes to a head after Kagari
injures herself (stepping out of her wheelchair to fall down a flight
of stairs, though she takes no real hurt from it) to punish Yomi for
daring to have anyone else as a friend, and solidify their
codependency. Mato visits the hospital room, and speaks to Yomi
through the door, an interaction that soon becomes an
emotionally-charged screaming match between Mato, Yomi, and Kagari
interwoven with the grand final battle between Black Rock Shooter and
Kagari’s alternate self, with Yomi’s alternate dancing on
Other-Kagari’s puppet strings. As Black Rock Shooter strikes down
her version of Kagari, the one in the real world breaks through her
freak out, collapsing as Mato’s words finally reach Yomi. In the
aftermath, Kagari mellows out a lot (though she still has a nasty
streak a mile wide), regains the use of her legs, and begins
attending school while Yomi is glad to finally have another friend.
Perhaps… too glad. Yomi, it turns
out, has some darkness in her as well. Her friendship with Mato
gradually turns into an unhealthy obsession; as Yomi was used to
Kagari relying on her for everything, she has trouble accepting the
idea that Mato had other friends or other interests, and that the
people around her don’t need her. While Yomi’s descent into madness
isn’t the traditional form in the least, and while her ‘love’ for
Mato doesn’t come off as necessarily romantic, I do think that Yomi
meets the qualifications of being a Yandere in this arc. She needs
to be needed, and when she doesn’t have the object of her interest
totally dependent on her, she enters a vicious, depressive spiral,
reaching the point where I as the viewer was deeply concerned that
she was becoming suicidal.
Yomi’s decline and fall is accompanied
by more developments in the normal and color worlds alike. This is
where Saya the guidance counselor really starts to show a sinister
attitude: Rather than helping, like she did for Mato at first, she
feeds Yomi’s decline, basically egging her on under the guise of
being a wise authority figure, saying the exact wrong things to
provoke her and drive her deeper into her spiral.
At the same time, we have Kohata, Mato’s basketball team captain, to worry about. She confesses to the boy she likes, and even worries about buying him a souvenir when the basketball team is on a trip, only to find that her love letter was later taken by the other boys and posted in a public manner to embarrass her. As Mato tries to comfort her friend in a time of need, we get an intrusion from the color world.
In that place, the alternate version of
Yomi, referred to as Dead Master, begins to awaken, more so the more
Yomi suffers. Kohata’s alternate is a little different: a collection
of fairly helpless waifs, which Black Rock Shooter comes across and
up against. Shooter offs the alternate Kohatas, and then we follow
up with Kohata in the real world. Her crush tries to apologize to
her, and Kohata… has forgotten.
It’s not that she doesn’t forgive him
after the public ridicule, she honestly doesn’t seem to remember
either her embarrassment or her affection. After the death of her
color world self, she loses all her critical feelings, emerging as a
happier person, but also one robbed of something precious.
When we’re first introduced to the
colorful world of Black Rock Shooter and see its action play out
alongside the scene in the hospital, it’s easy to assume that what
happens in the real world has an impact on the color world. Now,
there are deep inklings that cause and effect may not be that simple,
either being reversed or a two-way street.
And, with the possible consequences of
the Color World’s action established, the fact that Dead Master and
Black Rock Shooter are cruising for a confrontation takes on ominous
overtones.
These are confirmed when the show
enters its next movement. Yuu (Mato’s friend, recall) vanishes, and
indeed it seems that most people have forgotten she even existed.
Mato tries to seek her out, and though her trip to Yuu’s house leads
her to a strange place, she does find Yuu, who clues us in to the
truth of the world.
The beings of the color world are
manifestations of the thoughts and feelings of people in the real
world. How they come into being or why are never addressed or
explained but, frankly, they don’t need to be. What’s true is that
these clusters of emotion knew basically nothing but fighting,
existing as unthinking vectors of conflict. When they die in battle,
their original is purged of some of the pain they’ve experienced,
earning an unnatural catharsis by losing the feelings connected to
their trauma. This ramped up with the arrival of Black Rock Shooter
in the other world, an unfeeling alpha predator who hunted down the
other denizens of the colorful world, bringing an artificial end to
suffering.
This horrifies Mato, who believes that
true growth doesn’t come from the magical destruction of pain and
especially not of the memories and feelings, bad or not, that led to
it, but rather from talking with your friends and working out your
issues with words and understanding. This is somewhat ironic,
though, because Black Rock Shooter is Mato’s alternate, her
relentless rampage born of Mato’s kindness and desire to have the
people around her not suffer. Yuu offers Mato some agency in what’s
to come, sending her into Black Rock Shooter to, hopefully, prevent
Shooter from finishing off Dead Master and destroying Yomi’s love and
pain. She is, however, a little too late, and finds herself trapped
deep inside Black Rock Shooter at the very instant Shooter delivers a
mortal blow to Dead Master.
Mato, then, suffers the pain of seeing
that happen to her friend and, thereafter, thanks to being bonded
with Black Rock Shooter, the physical pain that Shooter suffers in
battle as a new foe, Black Gold Saw (Saya) battles Black Rock Shooter
and actually inflicts some damage. In the real world, Yomi retruns
to school, healthy and content, and seemingly now indifferent to
Kagari or Mato.
From here, we get more reveals,
unraveling the true motives behind events. Saya, it seems, was once
friends with her junior, Yuu. She was Yuu’s only friend, though, as
Yuu had a very tortured existence in an abusive home, until the day
that home burned to the ground and Yuu was the only survivor.
Except, at some point, that survivor
wasn’t exactly Yuu. Yuu’s alternate in the color world had survived
long enough to “awaken,” gaining thoughts and feelings of her
own, and Yuu somehow managed to make contact with her other self.
Not only did Yuu make contact, she had an offer: she wanted to switch
places with her alternate, her Strength, feeling that an existence of
endless battle and only physical, rather than emotional pain, would
be preferable to her waking world of endless torment, while on the
other side living in the real world would broaden Strength’s horizons
and allow her to experience an existence apart from the color world’s
endless cycle of violence.
So, that’s exactly what the two of them
did. The Yuu that Mato knew wasn’t the original Yuu at all, but
Strength. Saya, for her part, has been trying to protect Yuu by
seeking to weaken, defeat, or at least prevent the awakening of Black
Rock Shooter. She pushed Yomi over the edge in part because she
believed that Dead Master had a chance against Black Rock Shooter if
charged up with excess grief.
With that having failed, and Strength
having introduced Mato the Color World, and Mato lost inside Black
Rock Shooter no less, it’s time for a new strategy. Yuu appears as
well, and it seems like the final battle is on as Strength dives back
into the color world to try to wake Mato up, even though that may
cost her her own existence.
In the real world, it seems that the
destroyed feelings may not be totally gone as the search for the now
missing person Mato strikes a chord with Yomi and Kagari, and the
defeated remains of their other selves begin to stir.
In the end, after Mato awakens inside
Black Rock Shooter, she fissions, resulting in a Mato BRS and Black
Rock Shooter fighting against one another in a battle of both
excessive guns and the ethics of pain and bonding.
Mato gathers the feelings from her
friends (represented as a swirl of color from their alternates,
forming and loading an impossibly massive gun) and ultimately,
proclaiming that they’ll be able to hurt together, obliterates Black
Rock Shooter with rainbow devastation. After that, it seems as
though the residents of the color world who have reawakened are
singing different tunes, no longer being bound to endless violence.
And for Strength and Yuu, they get to meet face to face again,
Strength (at least in this incarnation) crumbling away as she gives
Yuu the will to face the real world once again. Below, things are
questionable, but above, the girls can move forward as friends,
having reclaimed their precious feelings in more healthy forms.
In a sense, this sequence in specific, and the show in general, feels like someone had the same general idea as Kiznaiver but had more skill in its execution. Both have clear themes of pain being important both to define who we are and to help us connect with others, but while Kiznaiver was often stilted and unemotional, Black★Rock Shooter goes the other way, ending up melodramatic where it drifts out of the comfortable band of emotional expression. Which, given the charged nature of the subject matter, is more what’s needed.
There are a couple of other things I
want to say about the show. First, the animation. This show won an
award for its technical aspects, and I would be lying if I claimed I
didn’t see why. The Color World is gorgeous, and the action,
especially in the second half, is very good both in terms of its
choreography and in terms of its flow and visuals. Black★Rock
Shooter has a very unique look, and the work on it captures a solid
contrast between the mundane and the otherworldly. Both the ideas
and execution are great, as befits a show that started with a piece
of art to work from, and the character designs for the otherworld
characters is spot on.
Second, the emotional stakes in this
show. The overworld has to keep the show going, and is a very muted
experience next to the color world in terms of its visuals and
technical action. Therefore, it has to move itself along with other
elements. And one thing the show does is keep the emotional charge
and personal investment in the stakes very high throughout. For all
the charged scenes I mentioned, there are far more that occur
inbetween. Kagari, tormenting Yomi and Mato when she arrives while
the latter is visiting. Yomi cutting her hair in the middle of her
depressive spiral (a very brutal, even violent act with how it was
framed). There is a lot of loss, despair, and pain throughout the
show, and while it could risk sliding into melodrama at times, I
think that’s ultimately what the show needs, both to keep us invested
in the people rather than just the silent action of the color world,
and to properly build up its message about pain, catharsis, and
coping.
Third, the fact that this show is only
eight episodes. It’s an uncommon choice, breaking from the general
pattern of shows being somewhere in the range of 12 or somewhere in
the range of 24. Diverging from those numbers by more than one part
out of twelve (so 11-13 or 22-26) is very rare, but in this case I
think it was the absolutely right choice. Eight episodes is what
Black★Rock Shooter needed to tell its story; no more and no less.
As it stands, the episodes feel very long and meaty, but despite
getting a lot in there they aren’t rushed or overstuffed. And the
show as a whole flows nicely from reveal to reveal and event to event
without rushing or waiting around puttering. If the show took a more
standard episode count, such as 12, it would probably be
problematically stretched, and slow in places. As it stands,
Black★Rock Shooter is able to keep the energy high and flowing, and
present a more powerful package because of that.
That said, though, the show does have
some downsides. The Color World’s relevance could have been
established, if not conclusively with words than by implication
sooner. I spent a few episodes wondering if it was ever going to
amount to anything, or if we were just being shown cool fights
representing the emotional struggles of the characters for no reason
other than, well, that’s the only way they could work in Black Rock
Shooter. And those emotional struggles, though largely
well-executed, do feel a little overwrought or manipulative at times.
Yuu’s story needed to be big, bold, and painful because it
ultimately drove her to choose a world of brutal combat over the
earthly world… which is weakened somewhat when Kagari and Yomi also
have a pretty uniquely terrible situation. I wish there was more
stuff that was powerful for those involved but objectively low key
like the Team Captain’s failed romance, though I wouldn’t know how to
work it in.
And the overworld, in general, can feel a little thinly sketched at times. Like several Shaft productions (Madoka Magica, Mekakucity Actors, the Monogatari series) the “normal” world has a somewhat empty and ethereal feel to it. And in those series, it often works to the show’s benefit because the setting they want to portray is weird, ethereal, and perhaps a little uncomfortable. Even Mekakucity Actors, which also has a magical other world (the Heat Haze/Kagerou Daze), wants to portray its normal world that way, and does so in an intentional manner. Here… I’m not sure it’s as intentional or as fitting. The drama in the real world is not (for the most part) the supernatural stuff intruding, it’s girls dealing with natural, emotional problems – even exceptional ones like Kagari’s psychosomatic paralysis and Yomi’s yandere insanity – which want to be more grounded in the normal world.
Perhaps, though, it has to do with the
perspective of Mato: she seems like a somewhat odd person with a
philosophical bend, given how she remarks on the colors of things and
how we, seeing the world through her eyes, focus on these still
details.
In any case, my issues with the show
are small in comparison to my respect for what it does well. In my
mind, Black Rock Shooter earns an A-. It is flawed, and strange, and
sometimes wanders out of a consistent quality band. On the other
hand, it does reach for what’s great and grasps it at least some of
the time. As a short sojourn into a bizarre realm of pain and
healing and an exploration of some damaged people and a supernatural
circumstance that they have to overcome together, I think it’s more
than good enough to recommend fairly highly.