Anime: Black Bullet

Black Bullet is a harem and SF anime about a cyborg high school student and his red-eyed mutant loli partner with super-human strength fighting against a virus that turns people into CGI monsters. You think it sounds bad? Don’t worry, it gets worse!

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Production-wise, it’s good

Animation and sound is what saves this anime from being complete trash. The voice acting is pretty alright if you can tolerate the protagonist’s constant yelling (it’s the same voice actor as Eren from Attack on Titan, by the way) and the lolis’ high-pitched voices. Music-wise the background music was good and there are even some tracks that are worth re-listening, such as Crisis Point and Hiruko Kagetane’s theme. The opening and the ending were nice, too. The fight scenes are done pretty well and the 2D animation is smooth and clean. The CGI doesn’t look very good, particularly the huge CGI monsters, but to be fair I’ve seen way worse. The backgrounds and props look good and are very detailed. However, the character designs aren’t great and look either very generic or very incoherent – they don’t really fit the story and the general mood of the series. There are also many times where the characters faces look inconsistent and ugly. But for the most part, it looks very good.

An Attack on Titan rip-off?

In their reviews and comments about this anime, a lot of people have said that it was a rip-off of Attack on Titan, but in my opinion, that is an exaggeration. Granted, there are some significant similarities in the setting: humanity is threatened by horrible creatures and people are living in “safe-zones” protected by a structure (monolith) that keep the creatures away, but that’s about it. Apart from that, they have nothing in common. In fact, this series has more in common with the average zombie apocalypse setting than with the masterpiece that is Attack on Titan.

A harem show with tons of lolis

The worst aspects of this show are the harem elements and the loli bullshit. Most of the female characters, lolis included, are madly in love with the protagonist and will fight to decide who gets to have sexual intercourse with him. As a result, the “comedy” in this anime is about sex, girls talking about their boobs’ size, but especially pedophilia – because pedophilia is cute and funny, apparently!

Yep, most of the supposedly comical and cute elements are borderline pedophilia: Enju, the protagonist’s loli partner, can only talk about how much she loves the main character and how she wants to marry him and “make babies” with him (so wholesome!), she calls him her “fiancé”, the protagonist says dumb stuff about her boobs size, Enju and the protagonist live together and sleep in the same bed, there are moments where Enju is half-naked and other moments where the protagonist looks below her skirt (so cute!) and then there’s also the fact that in the first episode, the anime jokes about Enju being covered in “white sticky stuff” (so funny!).

If that wasn’t bad enough, there’s also another loli that wants to marry the protagonist and calls him “big brother” (how unexpected!), and they go on a date together because… I don’t know… it’s not like your very survival is being threatened by a monster virus and you probably have something better to do than going to the mall and buying fancy clothes.

The story is complete nonsense

The job of the protagonist partner is to fight the monsters called Gastreas, but they aren’t soldiers, policemen or even employed by the state. They are “civil officers” who operate in pairs with a loli and work for a private agency and are sometimes called by the police or the government to eliminate Gastreas. Do you realize how stupid that is? They partner with red-eyed lolis with supernatural strength who are the only people capable of fighting the Gastreas. They are supposed to be humanity’s last hope, yet they are private contractors. Shouldn’t these people be under government control? Some of them even do this as a part-time job: the protagonist and his “boss” (a tsundere with big boobs, how original) are high school students, and it is shown that they aren’t remunerated very well, as they are struggling to get enough food. That’s right, the saviors of humanity are poor. How uncharacteristic and funny.

The Gastreas can’t be killed by regular weapons, only Varanium rounds can kill them. Varanium rounds are supposed to be expensive, but the protagonist gets them for free from his other female friend with big boobs who works in the weapon industry – how convenient! Why would she give them for free, you might ask? For advertisement, apparently… what a dumb excuse!

The character designs seem completely random. Seitenshi, the ruler of the Tokyo area, is clothed like a princess or a British woman from the Victorian era. She also lives in some sort of palace and has an advisor that looks like the stereotype of a Chinese kung fu master. One of the red-eyed lolis wears a huge and impractical dress, when she is supposed to be a sniper and a professional killer. Yes, the story takes place in the future, and fashion and clothing may have evolved. However the background characters and most of the secondary characters are clothed like people of today, so this is incoherent.

At some point, the loli with a weird dress that I mentioned earlier is arrested for doing bad stuff – murder of a policeman and assassination attempt on the ruler of the Tokyo area, but they forgive her so that she can join the protagonist’s harem and play the little sister fetish. Hilarious.

In one episode, the protagonist, who became the teacher of a classroom of red-eyed lolis (not commenting on that one), decides to go on a field trip, even though Tokyo is on the verge of being annihilated by a huge Gastrea.

Then there’s the fact that they never explain why they don’t use weapons of mass destruction against the Gastrea. True, normal bullets can’t kill them, but a nuke or some napalm should do the job.

But the thing that makes the less sense in this anime is the systemic racism against the red-eyed lolis. Yeah… That sounds pretty stupid – and it is! The “cursed children” are discriminated against by the vast majority of the people because they are mutant lolis who carry the Gastrea virus and have supernatural strength. In many episodes the anime shows citizens mistreating them and killing them. It is shown several times that it is not just the people who despise them, but also the government and the institutions. The red-eyed lolis live in an abandoned district, separated from the rest of the people. In one episode you see two or three policemen beating and then shooting a red-eyed loli who stole food. This isn’t very believable. That people are scared or suspicious of children with supernatural strength is understandable, but why would the state discriminate them too, when the “cursed children” are the only ones who can defeat the Gastrea and when the government could actually use their supernatural strength to assert their dominance over the masses? This makes no sense.

Rushed plot

Stuff happens way too fast in this anime. Some characters die one or two episodes after being introduced. Then you have Hiruko Kagetane, who is presented as the main antagonist in the first episodes, tries to bring the protagonist to the dark side as early as episode 2, and gets eliminated by him in episode 4, only to reappear towards the end of the series as the protagonist’s ally. The last episodes are even more rushed than the rest of the series: one of the huge Gastrea that is supposed to be very strong and dangerous is killed in a matter of seconds, the protagonist becomes a commander and suddenly turns into an authoritarian tyrant for like 5 minutes and then goes back to normal.

The characters are either cliché or incoherent

The protagonist is a high school student with a cyborg body made of Varanium, making him pretty overpowered and almost immortal – how convenient for the plot! By the way, why would a 16-year old high school student have such an expensive enhanced body? Good question! Probably because he needs it to hunt monsters with his red-eyed mutant loli “friend”. Right, that makes no sense. This character always gets angry and is constantly yelling for no reason. He also has a weird tendency to yell the name of his attacks which is a bit annoying. Well actually, he isn’t the only one. The antagonist, too, likes to spout nonsense like “Allelujah” or “Gospel” while fighting with the protagonist.

As I already said, this show is a harem and most of the female characters just want to have sex with the protagonist for some unknown reason. This automatically makes them bad and predictable characters with overused archetypes such as the tsundere with big boobs, the evil and bloodthirsty loli, and other boring clichés seen hundreds of times in anime. Then you also have Seitenshi, the ruler of the Tokyo area, the “too young too simple, sometimes naive” idealist who is clothed like a princess and somehow ascended to a position of power. How did she managed to do it when she is such a naive and stupid 16-year old girl? Good question! Go ask her advisor who looks like a Kung-fu master. Right, that makes no sense.

Then you have the cartoonishly evil characters with distorted and overly evil faces like Seitenshi’s bodyguard, whose only purpose in life is to be super angry at the protagonist, and the ruler of some other area in Japan who is nothing more than your cliché villain that wants the world under his boot.

Edginess

As I said earlier, towards the end of the series, the protagonist somehow becomes commander of the “civil officers” who must stop an incoming Gastrea invasion, and turns into a dictator, or at least that’s how the anime tries to portray him. In fact, the only authoritarian stuff that he does is shooting the leg of a deserter. But seriously, what kind of armed body allows desertion? Armies don’t, paramilitary groups don’t, mercenaries don’t. Why would the “civil officers” be allowed to desert when Tokyo is about to be destroyed by thousands of giant monsters? In times of war, desertion is punished way more harshly than this. During WW1 the French Army shot at least 918 of its own soldiers for cowardice, and we’re talking about reality here, not a post-apocalyptic world where giant monsters decimated mankind. So the protagonist only did what all commanders would (and should) have done, and I would even say he was pretty kind, as there wasn’t even any execution. Yet the anime tries to portray him as a tyrant, and the protagonist himself thinks he is being a tyrant when acting like this. What does that mean? That the anime tries to make the protagonist cool and edgy, but fails miserably and it ends up as ridiculous.

But that’s not the only time they fail at making their characters look cool. The ending actually manages to do worse than this. In the very last scenes of the last episode, a very evil dude is introduced. Very evil dude is Kisara’s (the protagonist’s tsundere boss with big boobs) brother. Very evil dude did very bad things that I will not explain here because the review would be too long. As a consequence, Kisara is very angry at him, and challenges him to a duel. She slashes him with her Japanese sword. Again, the anime tries to portray her as evil and dark, and she acts as if she is evil, even though the man clearly deserved his punishment. But the worst thing in this scene is that Kisara, who until now, acted as the typical tsundere who supports the protagonist and is in love with him, suddenly turns into some sort of crazy woman. There is no explanation as to why her personality changed so suddenly. What does that mean? That the anime tries to be very dark and edgy, but fails miserably and it ends up as hilariously bad. The anime ends on this unexplained personality change and on Kisara’s exaggeratedly evil looking face. A fitting ending for this dumb series.

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Conclusion

As a conclusion, Black Bullet is yet another dumb harem show with a nonsensical plot and cliché characters. Yet another anime filled with “cute” lolis to appeal to the ped- I mean the “lolicons”. Yet another anime that tries to be dark and violent to impress the teenage anime fans who think that violence means maturity. Yet another light novel adaptation that had too much effort put into the animation and the music when the original story was garbage.

Review
Black Bullet. A hyped show for hyped fans.

Before starting, be warned: unless you shut your brain off or take pleasure in watching and fantasising about ten year old lolis, you are in for a rough ride, and I mean a truly rough ride. In a few words, Black Bullet makes most shows in the recent season look like masterpieces of characterization and plot progression.

Anyway, the background here is appearantly quite heavy. In the near future, humanity is nearly decimated by colossal bugs known as Gastrea and forced to live in places protected by huge walls of varanium, some sort of metal capable of keeping these monsters at bay. Within this apocalyptic world, Rentaro, a young promoter, is tasked to hunt down a man who plans to destroy the Tokyo district, one of mankind's last bastions.

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1. Yes, Shingeki no Kyojin all over again
   You read it right. Huge invincible monsters, walls, mankind's last stronghold, bla-bla-bla. It's Shingeki no Kyojin (SnK) set in Tokyo, but with cute lolis and an even more stupid protagonist. However, unlike SnK, in this setting we simply have no damn sense of any danger from the outside. People are more scared living in São Paulo or New York then in this Tokyo that is supposedly surrounded by colossal bugs capable of killing them in the blink of an eye. There is no darkness, fear, despair, or any kind of sensation given by the atmosphere of the show, only some gore followed by quirky comical scenes or...
   
   Shingeki no Kyojin. Ah! With lolis!
   ...some naked ten-year old girl trying to have sex with the protagonist. Yup! So much for doom, apocalyptic setting and gore. We haves lolis! Who cares for the rest?
   
   Nah. You see, in this setting, there are some girls infected with the virus that created the Gastrea. They can at any time become a terrible threat or so people believe, but they are also humanity's last hope. However, instead of just trying to get along with kids that could save them, adults prefer to treat them as trash, kick them from public places, and force the poor little girls to the outskirts, slums, or whatever.
   
   And all lolis love the protagonist!
   Because he is the protagonist, of course! Aside from the heroine, the initiatior Enju, who sincerely wants to bed with the protagonist (she is ten, remember that), there are tons of cutie cutie lolis, all of them forgotten by society but loved by the samaritan protagonist. As a result, obviously, they all have desires not fit for ten years-old. Anyway, it is kinda nice to see some sort of prejudice thrown in the show and the protagonist even does act like a good guy to deserve all the "love" he gets, but...
   
   He is also a jerk, liar, and sends everyone to their deaths
   Whoa! That's it. Behind the good guy who cares for cute lolis is a guy who just don't care. Right at the start he meets this masked villain who wishes, amongst other things, to destroy this society who banishes cute lolis, and for about half the show the protagonist keeps finding him, fighting him, and losing with tremendous ease. During these encounters, people die, a lot.
   
   However, with some insane ass-pulling, the protagonist reveals he is a badass mercenary with mechanical body parts and former member of whatever and instantly beat the crap out of the masked villain. Seriously? After all the dead allies? NOW he decides to fight for real? What a fukn heartless bastard!
   
   Ah, and he is a school student!
   What? SCHOOL? God, once again... lolis and school setting, they go hand in hand, eh? Black Bullet throws in a school in this survival struggle with loli weapons because, dawn, why not? Giant bugs, lolis, overpowered dude, boobs, harem, big guns... this is Black Bullet.
   
   A decent production, at least
   If there is something to dig from all this mess, it is work from the animation guys and the sound direction. The former offers quite a deal of nice action scenes and makes up in terms of mindless fun for the lack of characterization the entire cast of lolis and the protagonist has. Even the character design feels a bit less generic then the norm, with a mix of your default anime cast with those dead eyes and bright coloring. It doesn't mix well with the dark setting, but is good nonetheless. The same could be said to the voice-acting, themes and sound effects in place, not giving us a masterpiece, but helping to make something salvageable
   

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Comments
I thought I was done watching shows like this, but perhaps the 13-episode size kept me until the end so I could at least warn others about everything it has. Black Bullet is a disaster if you take anything of it seriously, but surprisingly can be a "decent" mindless shounen watch. The pace is fast, things progress quite a lot, everything that matters is plot-protected or thrown out of coincidences, even explanations are spit onscreen with no care whasoever, but the action scenes can be quite fun and are decently frequent.

Why the hell was this even slightly hyped? That is a tough question. If you desperatly want a shounen action or loli comedy and has absolutely nothing else of the kind to watch, then maybe Black Bullet may entertain you. However, if you are looking for any sort of depth, a drama, or even a mediocre comedy, better watch whatever else is on your list or waste your time on facebook or twitter.

I started to watch this show expecting more of a slice of life in a strange situation type story arc. Even from the original first episodes you get the idea that this is going to be the struggle of the main characters against impossible odds to try and better themselves and their position yet as the anime progresses you realize it is more about surviving an ever changing world. There are some other shows like Attack on Titan that have a similar principal of living in a walled in community and there are some plot developments that seem far to familiar between the two but it is a very unique show. The ideas that bring them all together and the heartbreak and the way everybody is fighting together make this a very fun anime to watch.

HYPE

Oh such joy, a story based on a light novel; what could possibly go wrong when nobody could shut up during the pre-airing hype? Although Mahouka, which aired along with it, got most of the attension, the ones who wanted to steal a slice of the pie went as far as describing it “Attack On Titan in the near future”. Oh such joy; what could possibly go wrong when you plagiarize as much as you can get away with, by mentioning one of the most overhyped shows? Notice how it has a somewhat similar opening song, the same voice actor for the protagonist, and came out in the same season.

PREMISE

Let’s dig into the wonders of this anime. First of all you are never given the impression that humanity is on the verge of extinction by huge bugs and that there is some sort of horror/survival theme going on somewhere in here. Nobody cares about it. In fact, we don’t even see the population having anything to say about the bugs, since the plot centers immediately on the protagonist trying to stop some masked dude who wants to destroy the world for some contrived reason. What an amazing start that is definitely not building a story on weak foundations.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Speaking of the protagonist, during his introduction, mere minutes into the first episode, we get one of the most retarded one-liners ever: “If you don’t want to die, survive Rentaro.” Yeah, and if you don’t want to be hungry, eat Rentaro. Turns out it was a very bad fansub translation but whatever; it was more than enough for the cracks to start appearing. Because immediately after that we get a time skip, which automatically means shit happened out of screen and all character progression jumped over a cliff to its doom.

TIME SKIP

And no, they didn’t use a time skip so they can remove all the boring parts. They skipped all the superpowers the protagonist got in that time period, just so they can fool the audience to think he is a normal teenager everybody can identify with, which is a very common trick in badly written stories. They try to make you think the protagonist is an average person like yourself. He is not that strong and tries his best to climb the lower steps of the power level hierarchy. Who wouldn’t identify with such a normal person? And then they gradually keep revealing super amazing skills only he was possessing since the beginning to make the audience think he is amazing for being a Jesus figure they are already rooting for as an otherwise normal person.

MOOD SWINGS

As if that wasn’t enough of a problem, the story is trying its best to be as inconsistent as possible. Suffering from the same syndrome most edgy anime do, it thinks it is great to be dark and violent in one moment, followed by being light and comical in the immediate next moment. Having people screaming in horror as they are butchered to pieces, at the same time as having naked little girls who want to have sex with the protagonist, are clear signs of depth and maturity. What else could they be? Jump scares? As if investing time in making something only sad or only happy for more than five minutes will make the otakus to close the tab or something. I mean, who gives a damn about atmosphere or characterization anymore? Modern anime are all about naked little girls and senseless gore.

APATHY

So you would think the anime would be mocked as soon as it began, but no, half the anime community was defending it with passion. They were saying if you live in a world where giant monsters attack daily and kill people, everybody will have normalized it and won’t react to it with fear. This is why running to buy beans with a discount right after you witness a guy killing your friends and almost yourself, is completely normal to them. It even makes it easier to explore the setting this way, since the characters will be reacting to everything in an apathetic way. It’s almost as if nobody thought IF THE CHARACTERS DON’T CARE, THE VIEWERS DON’T CARE EITHER. We don’t want them to be apathetic to their impending doom. We want them to react to it so there can be theme exploration. Not the absence of it.

RUSHED PACING

The anime also rushes to adapt multiple chapters per episode, to the point the pacing becomes frenetic. Everything happens in seconds and we then move to the next thing with no downtime to soak in what just happened. As a result, nothing has an impact on you.

BAD WRITING

And don’t assume the anime would be fine if it had proper pacing, since the script is random bullshit. Especially the whole theme about the lolis being mistreated by evil adults because they have superpowers. Man, the people of this world are really asking for it; they know the only thing that can kill the monsters comes from those girls, and yet they kick away their only chance for survival, without ever explaining why. This is not a cotton plantation in southern America, ok? The girls are not after your jobs and you don’t hate them because their skin has a different color. They are the only thing that keeps you alive. Hell, they are strong enough to kill you all at the age of ten. So why are you being such assholes for no good reason? Because they are cartoony villains in a badly written story, that’s why.

DEVIANCE

As you can probably guess, the only reason this stupid thing happens, is for victimizing the girls, and making the protagonist seem like a Good Samaritan whenever he helps them out as one of the few people who is NOT a stupid adult with a death wish. He loves these lolis and does his best to make a pedophile’s paradise out of them. And the show promotes that as funny instead of cringe worthy. Because Japan is being Japan.

MEANINGLESS ELEMENTS

So, anyways, he is a teenager and he goes to a Japanese high school. Why is there a high school in a post apocalyptic setting? Because light novel writers are incapable to write a story without one. Is he at least learning martial arts or something useful for surviving in that place? Nope, the school exists for no reason at all. And the person who gives him jobs to go around killing monsters while making sure not to be late for school every morning is a school girl with huge bouncing boobs who is obviously in love with him for no reason other than light novels. So, when he is not killing monsters or going to a school where he learns and does nothing, our heroic protagonist spends his time home, where he has endless excuses for hentai doujins to be made, since he is constantly being sexually assaulted by either horny little girls, or big breasted high school girls.

PASSIVE PROTAGONIST

By the way, do you know what his objective in the story is? He has none! He is just following orders by the very retarded adults who want to be exterminated, thus in effect he is a boring public servant with no vision or goals in life. And the story is so badly written that he never explains why he doesn’t just join the masked dude and kill all those racist idiots. This way he can create a just nation of super lolis with him as the emperor. He is strong enough to do that, he obviously fights for justice, and really likes those super lolis, SO WHY DOESN’T HE DO IT? No reason given. Why is this guy even the protagonist?

LOLI SIDEKICK

His super loli on the other hand is a far better character. Cute, powerful, has a tragic life, and is even willing to be naked all the time and have sex with you just to show you her affection. Who wouldn’t like that? By the way, she is ten. But love knows no boundaries, right? Anyways, whatever drama they were trying to build around her being mistreated for being special is magically resolved after a few minutes, so all the interest you could have shown about her as a character instead of a jailbait evaporates fast.

VILLAIN

The only other character who is barely worth a mention is the masked evil dude, and only because he was OP for 3 episodes. Seriously, this guy could brush off any fighter in the show and keep going on his quest to destroy the world because… err, discrimination shit and because he was made to destroy stuff. But hey, he was awesome as a cartoony villain and it’s complete bullshit how he got defeated the fourth time he fought the protagonist. That’s right, the fourth. He had the chance to kill him three times in a row and didn’t because the script said so. He killed everybody else who stood in his way, but not our hero who is protected by the plot armor of bullshit.

ASSPULLS

And the way he got defeated was one of the biggest asspulls in history. The protagonist reveals out of nowhere that he was a cyborg or some shit, and kicks the crap out of him. Not only it was completely anti-climactic, it also made it seem like Rentaro was all-powerful since the very beginning and yet didn’t use his skills to trash the masked dude since episode one. By not doing so, hundreds of people were killed, and the city was almost destroyed. And of course his booby supervisor didn’t bother to tell anyone about it all this time. She just allowed hundreds of innocent people to have undeserved deaths. Nothing to see here, people, moving on.

AUTISM

And of course, nobody bothered to accuse the hero for doing such a horrible thing, which led to the easily avoidable loss of half their military defenses against the bugs. But it’s ok, since they also didn’t reward Rentaro for saving the city. Seriously, the next episode begins and everybody acts like there never was a masked dude or they never were a step away from annihilation. Why is everybody ignoring this walking atomic bomb? Why is he going to a school where he does nothing, instead of being the elite protector of the city? Because light novels are being light novels.

RETARDED DRAMA

Special mention to how despite all that bullshit, the author is still constantly trying to present Rentaro as some tragic figure who is insecure and afraid he is not capable enough. There is a scene where he is about to shoot a huge monster that is about to destroy the city. He is a proficient gunner, he has a clear shot, nobody is trying to throw his aiming off, and yet out of nowhere he is acting scared and doubts his overpowered skills. With him having shown no weaknesses, and with no time invested on his fears so far, that scene was trying to create drama out of nothing and came off as completely retarded.

EXPOSITION

All this time I didn’t mention the worst problem this show has that completely eclipses all the other issues, and that is its terrible exposition. Everything is told, nothing is shown. And by everything, I mean even the most fundamental information is thrown at our faces. Everybody talks in a completely fake way, telling us things that normally would never be mentioned. A simple scene would play out like this:

“Hello woman of the organization that gave me the bullets. What are you doing in my apartment, on the fourth floor, during the afternoon? You want me to cook you some fried fish because you are hungry? Ok, sit next to that sofa that was given to me by my uncle. In the meantime I will start cooking. Look, I am cooking. I cook the fish. See? Fish.”

IN CONCLUSION

Plain ridiculous. Black Bullet is a very good example of everything that could go wrong, goes wrong. There is nothing to like in it, unless you are not thinking while you are watching, and all you care for is to laugh at the harem lead trying to run away from horny naked ten year olds who want to have sex with him, before he pulls a magic trinket out of his ass and saves the day. Light novels in a nutshell.