Black Bullet #03 — “I’ve Got a Triangle And I’m Not Afraid to Use It”

April 22nd, 2014

  

Why would you even need one the size of your desk?

Impressions:

Another action packed episode, but I do fear that they’re devaluing being stabbed and shot. Especially with his lightning quick recovery from both. Oh, and he had secret evil surgery or something in the past. Still, the writing’s not so tight that I can say for sure whether his ultra recovery is meant to be a part of that or just janky writing for convenience. The whole thing seems like it would have been better structured in general if it had just cut out the whole Enju disappearing thing and just went straight to her class chasing her away with the cliffhanger of Renny getting shot or even just palmed by the clown. It certainly would have flowed together a hell of a lot better.

Aaaand it’s still hitting the info-dumps a little too hard. The start was especially awful and unneeded. I’m sure their intentions were to say that all the horrible things have become boringly commonplace and see how dark our lives are? but following up a boring lecture with “That was all really boring” was not a stellar move. They could also stand to stop going on about how tortured but actually a nice guy Renny is. Still, I find myself often just tuning out when everything comes to a stop. It’s kind of like the Symphogear zen where I spent half of every episode in a daze as they blathered on about norse mythology and hating the moon, only with fewer breasts and no singing.

Still, I’m impressed that they’ve kept up the action and things outside of the admittedly many lectures continue to move at a pace that would make most other shows’ heads spin. The fights this week were better than the first couple episodes too, which is an impressive feat in itself given how budgets usually collapse. Granted, the yelling of attack names is still silly, but at least he got shot for it. And for all the wangsting they’re doing over how awful the settings are, the characters all continue to be forward-looking, confident, and all in it together against the obviously evil mass murdering clown. Hell, Renny shot at Enju to get her to run and nobody spent an entire episode insecurely sobbing in a corner over it.

Posted in Black Bullet | 5 Comments »

5 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • ZakuAbumi says:

    Man, Aroduc, you’re too soft on this. The entire discrimination issue is basically ham-hamded as fuck and fell fairly flat with Enju just frustratedly killing a Gastrea two minutes later, Rentaro telling her it’s okay because she has _him_ and all was right again. Until, you know, mask guy appeared, Rentaro died but didn’t and the show moved on to the next segment. That’s several segments already within a few minutes and things are basically so rushed that there’s no impact to anything.

    Sure, there was some action and it looked decent plus the track they were using for it is fairly good but at what cost? There’s little of a reason to care, Rentaro was confirmed to be alive just a few seconds after him getting shot to the point of a hole appearing at his back as well as the loli knifing him to ends and that ultimately devaluates the antagonist as much as possible: Within three episodes, he has fought against Rentaro every time, never leading any results. What is supposed to make me believe that next time is going to be any different? He loses points for the lack of competence as well. You certainly wouldn’t think that he of all characters wouldn’t be able to kill a severely wounded guy.

    The exposition was bad, sure (moreso the unnatural-as-fuck dialogue on the different Gastrea stages than the thing at the beginning) but that was by no means its only issue.

  • Haba says:

    Yeah, the pacing is a bit weird. I’m not saying it should be any slower – the speed is just right, but a little less pointless shouting and smarter order of things… The whole thing could probably be fixed with a new creative cut.

    For example: it was kinda supposed to be a big reveal that our protagonist is no longer fully human, yet…

  • algorithm says:

    The contents of this shows is but a pile of garbage. Crazy jesters and big monsters can only provide so much. And they are still rushing things like there was no tomorrow.

    “nobody spent an entire episode insecurely sobbing in a corner over it”

    No they spent half an episode sobbing about how hard it is to be a loli who has to kill people and how bad it is to get used to it. With violins and typical MC leaking moralfaggotry.

    • marvelous stan says:

      1) As far as things that characters get upset about in anime that was fairly legit and 2) that whole scene lasted under 2 minutes.

  • Yue says:

    The pacing is off but the interesting elements are to keep things moving forward. I guess I’ve gotten tired of too much cliffhangers like what they did in Shingeki no Kyojin.

    There are 5 girls shown at the start of the ED theme. 3 made their appearance, I wonder who the other 2 will be.