(L) BLACK ROCK SHOOTER TV series

[FlareKnight]

Originally Posted by Iby

Black★Rock Shooter 01
Being Black Rock Shooter is suffering...

If there is anything I took away from that episode it is this. I mean damn what an agonizing episode. Lost count of how many insane injuries were inflicted on her in this episode. Ouch .

[Marcus H.]

Episode 1's title is probably derived from a line in the Black Rock Shooter song.

Originally Posted by Black Rock Shooter (song)

How much longer should I scream?
How many more tears should I shed?
Enough already, I can't run anymore
The world I once dreamed of is lost

[SilverSyko]

Damn, I want to know what the deal is with that Kagari girl and why she has such a tight grip on Yomi. Yomi even seems completely afraid of her too. It's easy to guess that Kagari must have some sort of mental instability or something.

The "Otherworld" scenes were awesome to watch. Sure they don't make much sense at the moment, but one can tell that it's paralleling the situation in the "real world" in a different way. The part where BRS was rammed head-on by the doll-head spider mech I didn't even see coming. She really took a beating there and she didn't even try to fight back. I guess her state of helplessness was supposed to represent Mato's inability to stand against Kagari's influence.

Also, I guess that's Black Gold Saw's red eye that keeps appearing throughout the episode? I wonder what that's supposed to represent...

I'm already enjoying this. Looking forward to the next episode.~

[Elestia]

The first episode is kind of a let down. I'm wondering why they decided to change some of the character designs for Yomi and her counterpart Dead Master. Maybe it's because I do not have a meganekko fetish, but I prefer my seductive and bewitching Dead Master from the OVA.

Spoiler for Dead Master:

[totoum]

Enjoyed it overall,really like the action at the start of the episode.
Oh and that OP broke my Imaishi detector,need to get a new one.

Originally Posted by Elestia

but I prefer my seductive and bewitching Dead Master from the OVA.

I just figure that going by the plot of the tv show dead master is more of a victim/damsel in distress than anything else and the change in charadesign reflect that.

[Haruyasha]

Disappointing.. Extremely sloppy work.. but I guess you can't expect much better from a company who just started..

Spoiler for Episode 1:

Also..

Spoiler for Fanservice?:

[serenade_beta]

Spoiler for ep1:

Yeah, now that it is a TV series and has more time, it definitely will be interesting now!

*watches episode*

（　＾ω＾）..................

Broly: "In the end, trash is trash...!"


...Yeah... That was pretty bad, but there were two good points:
1. Black Miku's half-butt
2. Kitaeri's yandere(?) blond loli (who I think I've seen in Pokemon Black though...)

And the ED... Oh gosh... Badly done vocaloid FTL.

[kk2extreme]

I watched the OVA, I don't get the story line...

I watched the 1st ep, still don't get the story line...

[SukyAnime2]

I was a bit disappointed to see the series' formula to be heavily based on the OVA. Nonetheless it was still a great first episode. The action scenes were excellent. Will continue to look forward to more.

Also i didn't expect them to use a vocaloid for the ED. Completely caught me off guard, but i suppose that's why it was a smart choice (for marketing.)

[DmonHiro]

Welcome to Creepyville. Population: Everyone.

[Sol Falling]

That was fucking awesome, actually. Goddamn. Seriously luscious stuff.

Here's the first fascinating universe/setting point: the "other world" identities, as the counsellor person suggested, are actually different people. In the first Black Rock Shooter OVA, at the end, Mato meets Black Rock Shooter herself. So despite the mirrors and parallels of the "other world" to events in Mato's reality, it looks like they are actually separate people. Given this strange setup of Mato/other people's pain being pushed to their other world counterpart, then, I think we might be in for some mindblowing stuff if they ever interact.

Aside from that, the combination of that otherworldly, surreal setting and the narration was simply, poetic. I love this kinda shit. Still a bit blown away here.

I actually almost can't believe this kind of quality for a TV series. Are they seriously gonna keep this up weekly? Wow. Anyway, yeah, highly looking forward to the next episode.

[Kanon]

Duckroll perfectly summed up my feelings. The new scenes were interesting (and creepy), but the scenes taken from the OVA were weak and you could feel they were basically rushing to get to the new material. Mato and Yomi's relationship is dramatically cheapened as a result. They have zero chemistry. Their friendship in the TV series feels incredibly forced in comparison to the masterfully executed OVA. It might have been better to make the OVA the first episode and develop the story further from there.

Another thing I dislike is the chara design of the real world scene. Characters look, how should I describe it? DERP? Yeah, that's the best I can come up with at the moment. I miss the beautiful chara design of the OVA. The animation isn't that good either.

On the other hand, I loved the otherworld scenes. The CGI is good and the choreography was great. Nice fanservice too (dat butt). I hope the otherworld will have a plot of its own and won't simply serve as a metaphor for the conflict between the girls in the series. I'm curious to know who is Black Gold Saw (who seems to be the final villain)'s real life counterpart. The counselor? That wouldn't really make sense though.

Originally Posted by ars89

Spoiler for ep 1:

Did Kagari imply that Yomi caused her to be in a wheelchair? So in order to make it up to her Yomi can only be friends with her.

I believe that is the reason she treats Yomi as her property as well. Still, what a bitch. Mato did nothing to deserve to be treated that way. She should have spit those macaroon in her face. I don't think OVA Mato would have meekly put up with this bullshit like TV Mato did. That was fairly unnerving.

[Marcus H.]

Characters look, how should I describe it? DERP? Yeah, that's the best I can come up with at the moment.

Don't remind me that the character designer for the OVA (who left Ordet to work on the character designs for the iDOLM@STER) needs to get punched in the face.

[Kagayaki]

Originally Posted by Sol Falling

Here's the first fascinating universe/setting point: the "other world" identities, as the counsellor person suggested, are actually different people. In the first Black Rock Shooter OVA, at the end, Mato meets Black Rock Shooter herself. So despite the mirrors and parallels of the "other world" to events in Mato's reality, it looks like they are actually separate people. Given this strange setup of Mato/other people's pain being pushed to their other world counterpart, then, I think we might be in for some mindblowing stuff if they ever interact.

I always thought that the scenes in the BRS OVA were just out of order. So in chronological order it went: real-world scenes, in the order they were presented -> last scene (Mato meets/becomes BRS) -> BRS action scenes, in the order they were presented.

On the other hand, the fact that the TV series has the events in both worlds run more parallel to each other suggests that yours might be the correct interpretation, and I agree that it's definitely more interesting this way. I also like the color symbolism.

Part of the reason I didn't like the OVA was that it really should have been something more like an arthouse film, but its premise and style ended up being more mundane than I was hoping. In particular, I thought the real-world scenes kind of sucked and didn't really even try to do anything notable. Some people seem to be fans of the character drama in the OVA, but I wasn't much of a fan since it wasn't really trying to do anything interesting.

As far as the TV series goes, first of all my expectations have been dramatically rescaled, and second they actually seem to be trying to do something interesting with this in several ways. The surrealism is better, the action scenes are better, there's more symbolism, the storyline is somewhat more unusual, the relationship between the two worlds looks like it'll be more nuanced and better defined, etc etc. So I'm pretty happy with what I saw in episode 1.

---------------------------
edit: the ep2 preview is up at http://www.noitamina-brs.jp/

[Marcus H.]

Now that I've thought about it, the change of character design is not really an issue... unless Dead Master's is concerned; there's probably a reason why she now dresses like a bride. We'll soon find the reason behind the wardrobe change. I do think that she is dressed more like a child who rules a toy world or a Gothic maiden instead of a bride though; that ties up with the mysterious wisp that entered that mysterious chained-up house floating in the clusterfuck of doll body parts.

@Kagayaki
I actually thought the same thing when I watched the OVA for the first time. If they could, they would have shown the two worlds simultaneously just to prove a point that the events in the real world and the events in the Otherworld are happening chronologically. But since that's impossible, they just showed us the immediate effects of Mato's struggles in BRS in the Otherworld.

There's still one mystery though: the powerhouse that is Black Gold Saw.

In both the OVA and the anime, she appears as the "nemesis", even more so than Dead Master to BRS. I hope that the anime reveals to us her obsession towards BRS.

[klare]

Originally Posted by kk2extreme

I watched the OVA, I don't get the story line...

I watched the 1st ep, still don't get the story line...

so far the TV looks just like a longer version of the OVA, scenes are still changing without warning, at least the TV may explain more later

so much torturing for BRS-chan... Yomi looks cuter here tho, the feeling is: more figures are on the way

funny that BGS has big eyes, literally

[Haak]

I am disappointed that the more grounded and down to earth friendship that formed between Yomi and Kuroi has been changed to something more melodramatic and I agree that the faces look derped up, but overall I enjoyed the episode and I hope to see where this goes. The wheelchair kid certainly was creepy and the fight scenes were pretty well done. I could see how much those hits must've hurt, the way BRS was being smacked around like that. I also like the addition of the counselor and hope to see more of her pep talks.

[Miraluka]

Originally Posted by serenade_beta

Spoiler for ep1:

Yeah, now that it is a TV series and has more time, it definitely will be interesting now!

*watches episode*

（　＾ω＾）..................

Broly: "In the end, trash is trash...!"


...Yeah... That was pretty bad, but there were two good points:
1. Black Miku's half-butt
2. Kitaeri's yandere(?) blond loli (who I think I've seen in Pokemon Black though...)

And the ED... Oh gosh... Badly done vocaloid FTL.

I never thought of Broly watching anime .

Sigh... its not like that will change my opinion about the episode but making fun of it makes it better.

[Nerroth]

I'm actually kind of hoping at least one of the other-world characters shows up on the same side as BRS, and not just be yet another enemy. (Maybe Strength?)

Also, it's interesting how Miyuiki Sawashiro is the voice of both Yomi and Gray (from the game). Doubt there'll be any game-character cameos here, though it would be a nice easter egg to see at some point.

[Dextro]

All I can say after the first episode is this: why were people afraid of the CG in this one? It was actually amazing in the first episode! I haven't seen anything so well executed for quite some time: the animations were mostly flawless (I did manage to see a couple of quirks here and there but very minor) and the shading was spot-on. In fact I'm more worried that they have spent so much in the 3D bits that the 2D ones seem like they were done on a shoestring budget leading to all kinds of derp faces.

As for the plot I'm afraid to even comment on it as it's, for me, even worse than the OVA so far. If the OVA had the not so minor problem of failing to make clear to the viewer for most of it's runtime what the true meaning of the otherworld scenes was at least it had a relatively well built relationship between the main chars and even a bit of drama to spice things up. This TV adaptation on the other hand seemed to hell bent on skipping all that essential development done in the previous work to avoid repetition and yet, given the major changes to the characters, that's a pretty big omission in my book.

Let's hope that the next couple of episodes are able to clear things up a bit and set this show on the right track.