Every now and then, you come across something so average that it's almost impressive. "Wow," you tell yourself. "How did this manage to be so okay at everything without managing to cross into good?" Black Bullet is one of these rare gems of mediocrity: the foundation is solid and everything built upon it holds up, but it's not quite well-crafted enough to truly be considered stable.

Black Bullet is the story of Rentaro Satomi, a young man working for the Japanese government as a "promotor" to fight against monsters created by the Gastrea Virus. Aiding him is the ten-year-old "initiator" Enju Aihara. Initiators are known as the "cursed children" due to their superhuman abilities. Also, they're all underage girls. Don't ask why they have to be underage girls. They just do. Shut up and let them do their blatant pandering to lolicons. Rentaro and Enju begin by combating Gastrea, but later a masked man called Kagetane Hiruko and an impending collapse of a monolith defending Tokyo both threaten to destroy the city.

If you think this sounds like an interesting concept, you'd probably be right. Conceptually, this is a very strong series. The animal-themed initiators make for an interesting magic system and the plot is solid enough. However, the show overall feels a bit lackluster, probably due to the low amount of character development. There are plenty of scenes that should be tear-jerking or emotionally powerful. The cursed children in particular get a raw deal and if the series had managed to follow through on what it was trying to do, it would have been filled with heartbreaking moments showcasing just how thoroughly these young girls' lives had been destroyed just because they were different. Unfortunately, when terrible things happened they usually happened to characters with little to no character development or plot importance, and it's hard to take the whole cursed children tragedy seriously when they're used more for cutesy fanservicey scenes than for a serious, mature story. Yes, there were plenty of times times that I said "that sure is terrible," but I said it when I should have been moved to tears.

Ultimately, Black Bullet just doesn't do enough. It's like someone drank a can of Darker than Blackweiser and said "you know, this is really good but it's a little too strong for me" and then went on to make Black Bullight and while it does still kind of taste like Blackweiser it's watered down and has this sort of skunky loli taste to it but it's still enough to get you buzzed and once you've had a few you don't really notice the loli taste that much anyway. And frankly, if I wanted to see that, I'd just rewatch Darker than Black: Gemini of the Meteor oh snaaaap but no seriously that's basically what Black Bullet is.

If you're really into action anime, particularly ones with sci-fi or urban fantasy elements, you'll probably like Black Bullet. But it falls short of better shows in its genre and it doesn't bring much to the table. It's definitely not a bad show. It has solid writing, a great magic system, a few interesting characters among the sea of uninteresting ones, and a bit of humor along the way. It's just brought down by a few unfortunate pitfalls and an overall unwillingness to capitalize upon its full potential. If you like this type of show, go ahead and watch it. But if it's not your usual thing, give it a pass. It's not that it's a waste of your time. It's that there are shows your time is better spent on. Three stars.