Anime Analyze: Black Rock Shooter (OVA)

 So, having looked at the 2012 anime Black Rock Shooter, I took a look at the OVA of the same name using a song title featuring Hatsune Miku, also of the same name.  It was made in 2010 and was taken in strongly by the public which eventually led to the creation of the mainstream anime series two years later.  Though the OVA series itself only lasted one episode, which created some flaws in it believe me, it was fun to watch and I am going to go more in depth with it now, so lets take a look at Black Rock Shooter the OVA.

The video starts out kinda the same as the original series, having a girl named Mato who is going to school and meets up with a girl named Takumi (sound familiar?).  Well considering that the show is based off of this movie, this should not come as a surprise to anyone.  If you want a more complete series (and I will get to why I say that soon) then go to my Black Rock Shooter Anime review and you will get a more complete story for it.  Just sayin' that now as a warning.  Anyway, the story basically goes on the same, with Takumi and Mato becoming friends and going on with their lives, however the other characters that were featured in the anime are not present in the series, which, although this takes away some of the annoying creeper-ish annoying drama, this does take away from the awesome fights that happen in the other world.  They do mention Strength once in the entire video, and it can't even be called mentioning it considering they showed her for two seconds before she jumps away and is never seen again.  Kinda lame movie, kinda lame.

The one time we see Strength
(Still really mad about that)

Needless to say the video goes on and tells of how the relationship takes a weird turn when Takumi suddenly disappears and Mato is left to wonder as to where she has gone, and although she has no idea, as she is walking around one day, she suddenly gets sucked into the other world where she meets Black Rock Shooter offering to help her to save her friend.

Through the first part of the series, in the other world, the alternate versions of Mato and Takumi, Black Rock Shooter and Dead Master are fighting it out to the death, though it seems that there is no clear cut winner as they fight on and on, while destroying the scenery around them with their massive attacks.  It isn't until one of them starts to lose the upper hand that the girls in the real world are dragged into it and, guess what?

That is where the video ends.

Yeah, no kidding the video ends on one of the biggest cliff hangers I have ever seen.  It seemed like they were gonna go and make another episode of the OVA in order to continue but that is not going to happen, especially since they went ahead and made an anime series based on the same concept with the same characters and they finished that one out.  Kinda lame.

I digress.   But, not looking at how the story kinda disappointing, lets look at the rest of the video.
As with the anime series, the animation is amazing, especially in the other world.  Even in the real world, the animation is colorful the movement is fluid and the scenes are put together well.  The fighting scenes are freaking awesome and this video despite its failing plot at the end deserves to watch this simply for that fact.

The characters are still lovable even though there are like three of them and the delopment of the friendship between Mato and Takumi is great to watch as it progresses from a very careful one to more of one where they can rely upon one another and had they taken the OVA farther, they could have done some great things with it.

Overall, the video was good from a technical standpoint and a premise standpoint, but like I said before they stopped making it and so it left a huge cliffhanger for the people who watched it and I know that they made the anime series, but still when this came out, people must have been furious that they weren't making more of this show so, I am giving this OVA a final rating of 7.4 because of everything else being awesome, but the cutoff of the plot after one episode was the huge downfall of this OVA.

Gonna have more reviews up soon, although I will be working on an AMV that needs to be done by Christmas so they may come out slower than I want them to, so have a nice week!

Final Rating 7.4
                        Premise:            8.5
                        Plot:                  3.0
                        Animation:         9.5
                        Character Dev.:   8.0
Total Episodes: 1
RVF: Japanese Dub with English Sub
MRS: www.nwanime.com