Black Bullet Anime Review

The anime adaption of Black Bullet produced by Sentai Filmworks ran over 13 episodes from early April to late June this year. Sentai Filmworks has been responsible for anime of the likes of Another, Angel Beats, the upcoming Akame ga Kill and many other successful titles. The studio has poured some serious money into this anime, featuring a line up of award winning voice actors of the likes of Yuki Kaji (Eren form Attack on Titan) and many others. Black Bullet is a very enjoyable anime however it is fundamentally flawed with a confused target audience that inhibits it from being a real master piece of an anime.

Story

The story in Black Bullet revolves around an apocalypse type situation where the majority of the human race has been overrun by the monsters known as Gastrea. Humanitie’s only defence is varanium, a type of weaponizable metal and a race of genetically mutated young girls known as the cursed children. Black Bullet gets very brutal very quickly, deaths are frequent and children are no exception. At times it can be very confronting to see these children whom are submitted to brutal discrimination, physical abuse and inevitably sad ends.

Black Bullet tries to portray the darker sides of humanity into the series and it does this quite effectively. From discrimination, selfishness, hatred and revenge the show covers it all, however it doesn’t not blend well with the theme of cute littler girls. In short the story has excellent pacing, development, is simple and easy to understand while still being unpredictable, however it suffers from an identity crisis.

Characters 

Rentaro is the main character in Black Bullet and carries the show extremely well. He quickly distances himself from the typical harem protagonist that everyone is expecting, displaying a vey fatherly like attitude towards the cursed children. Rentaro is the base of all interactions, even more so than most protagonists. Side character to side character interaction is almost inexistent as the show is mostly focused from the first person perspective of Rentaro. This can be effective at times however sometimes it feels as though certain characters are simply not getting enough screen time for the audience to properly understand their actions.

Art and Animation

The art and animation in Black Bullet is generally very nice. General scenery and character designs are nice to look at, but on occasion the quality can drop in detail. The battle scenes however, are very, very good and consistently so, however, some of the movement animation of the monsters could be improved.

Music

The music in Black Bullet in generally well implemented into the show, however at times it felt that silence would have been better suited to some of the more dramatic scenes and the volume of the music during action scenes needed to be increased. The openings and endings of Black Bullet are also nice but nothing outstanding.

Conclusion

Overall I give Black Bullet a 7/10, perhaps I am being too critical but there are certain critical factors that conflict with what the show is trying to achieve. The series is well adapted with nice animation however a few inconsistencies prevent it from been taken to the next level. I would recommend this series to those who enjoy Senien but also enjoy a little light heartedness here and there. Black Bullet is a nice series that I generally enjoyed and I’m sure many others will as well.

-PandaSlayer