#Review in brief:

⁢Black Bullet features solid action, emotional scenes, and a great soundtrack to boot. However, it suffers from its blistering pace causing it to miss out on character development and fall flat with its attempts at humor. Your enjoyment hinges on how well you can tolerate its flaws, and while I'd argue that this anime has more good than bad it does straddle the line quite hard.

#Review in full:

Let's start with the good. Black Bullet's most frequent quality is its steady (but not overbearing) action scenes. The show does a good job of making action intense and brings out some admirable animation and music for these scenes. The fights felt varied from each other as a wide variety of battlegrounds, circumstances, and opponents (both human and Gastrea, the antagonist monsters of the show) prevented even repeating rematches from feeling repetitive. There are a few fights that feel like they were cut short to prevent important characters from dying though. Still, solid overall. The other strong point of Black Bullet are its emotional scenes, which are pulled off beautifully thanks to how the show uses its setting.

While others have criticized the setting because it doesn't convey a sense of imminent human extinction, I would argue that this was never meant to be the case. Humanity clearly suffered a heavy blow in years past, but the discovery and usage of the fictional metal "Varanium" is shown to have protected humanity and allowed it to get back on its feet. This is made bluntly clear by the fact that the "wall" protecting Tokyo is just an array of Varanium obelisks. Armed with the Gastreas' kryptonite, it's reasonable to believe that the remaining human enclaves (of which there are implied to be many in Japan alone) could exist as futuristic city states similar to Singapore in form and function (which in loose terms is what the setting is).

That said, humanity is still fighting the Gastrea, and it turns out that people who are infected with the Gastrea virus before birth (and survive) develop Gastrea-like abilities during their brief lives. This is the point that Black Bullet focuses much of its serious moments on; in a world where the main group fighting humanity's enemy are a bunch of child soldiers imbued with the genetic code of that same enemy, what happens when these children are inevitably distrusted & despised for their similarity to the enemy? When they are no longer seen as children but as weapons of war? How does this affect them and their worldview? Is it right, or fair? Black Bullet is just as much about a war between humans and alien-like monsters as it is about main characters Rentaro and Enju as they struggle to find meaningful answers to such questions. This turns what would have been merely a jadedly serious teenage action hero and an energetic young girl into surprisingly appreciable characters and solid main leads.

The reason I say "surprisingly" is because plot-wise Black Bullet took a lot of shots in rapid succession and not all of them hit (more on that in a bit). Black Bullet's touching moments are hits in this regard, and the serious scenes all hit hard. Expect many doses of emotion from this show. Everything is held together by the great soundtrack that feels right at home with the setting, plot, and whatever is currently happening on screen. It's even worth checking out on its own. The animation has both good and bad moments, but tends to be good on average. The CG is really hit or miss and is not infrequent.

Now for the not-so good. Black Bullet's main flaw is that its pacing is simply too fast. While this partially lends to the steady flow of its action it also pushes much of its humor flat on its face, stunts character development, and affects believability by skipping explanations. That's really it, but I'll go in depth for those wondering exactly what this affects.

Anyways, most of the jokes are centered around the loli characters and how Rentaro does a great job of (unintentionally) making a lot of them develop crushes on him. Not all of these jokes are inherently bad but the quick pacing means that these jokes often come shortly after serious scenes. I had to stop and take a breather at a few points when a touching scene was bulldozed by a poorly placed joke just to be forgotten by all characters involved. However, there isn't much fanservice outside of these jokes (and these jokes aren't frequent either) leaving things balanced to those who can get past them.

It does lead to another one of Black Bullet's flaws though; character development outside of the main duo is quite low and many backstories are explained in seconds. This isn't helped by how oblivious most of them are to the joke scenes. Instead of making you think "oh, so that scene wasn't serious" they'll often make you think "wow, that character is an idiot" thanks to this combination. Even worse is the fact that many characters have super-human abilities (a rather common thing in Black Bullet, even outside of the child soldiers) but don't so much as have their abilities discussed (with even less having their abilities explained well). It does come off as the sort of thing that is usually left to the viewers to fill in the blanks, but given how often these super-powers are relied on it does tug at the story's believability when so little of it is explained.

Lastly, the plot is rushed at points (especially during the last arc). Many crucial plot elements are given little to no explanation and there's a few lampshades to be had. Sadly, it all falls back to a lack of backstory for most of the characters, as most of these plot elements involve specific side characters that receive far less attention than their importance to the plot warrants. This affects the ending as well since it takes the time to set up for a continuation that seems quite unlikely at this point. At the very least the main plot points are resolved and the final scene is well done.

Verdict:

Black Bullet might have its problems, and many of them are glaring, but the things it does right are quite great. Its problems keep it from being easily recommendable though. It's the sort of show that you watch when you have nothing else planned at the moment, and only because you had a sudden urge to try it out. Then again, pacing is really its biggest issue, so if you can get past that you shouldn't have much trouble finding something worthwhile here.