Summary: Mato Kuroi is excited to start her first day of school but nervous to meet all the new people. After building up the courage, she gets herself to talk to Yomi Takanashi, and the two of them soon become best friends. All is not well between the two friends however, and as Yomi becomes jealous of a growing friendship between Mato and Yuu, she suddenly disappears. What has happened to Yomi, and can Mato solve the problem and save her friend?

Review

Plot: After reading the summary, you may be wondering what this has to do with Black Rock Shooter and the franchise that spawned from nothing more than a Miku Hatsune Vocaloid music video. Well, when Yomi disappears, she has been possessed by Dead Master, and only by joining with Black Rock Shooter can Mato save her. The story is told through flashed vignettes, essentially telling two stories at once. While the story of Mato and Yomi plays out, so too do the struggles of Black Rock Shooter, with the revelation that the two are connected only appearing toward the end. The Mato and Yomi segments consist of their school life and budding friendship, while the Black Rock Shooter segments take place in a post apocalyptic world distortion and consists of combat between Shooter and others.

Characters: The names and stories behind the actual combatants of the show is never given, nor is any back story. Black Rock Shooter and Dead Master appear and fight with little words, which was likely a deliberate choice by the director, but because of that they have little to no character. Mato and Yomi on the other hand have a surprising amount of depth considering the whole OAV is less than an hour long. They both have one major element, their friendship with each other. The OAV does a great job of showing that friendship and the emotions the two feel given the time constraints. There is a hint at the end that Yuu might be falling down the same path as Yomi, but that is not fleshed out before the OAV's conclusion.

Presentation: This was, at times, a very difficult movie to follow. The scenes of Mato and Yomi's friendship and Black Rock Shooter's fighting are intertwined to create a mess of a story. Every time there was a sense of continuity between Mato and Yomi, there would be a scene with Black Rock in it that would disrupt the story. Eventually, it becomes clear that whenever there is turbulence between Mato and Yomi, the fighting segments appear, but all in all it is hard to follow. Done very well however are the sound effects. During Mato and Yomi scenes, the music is light and fits what is on the screen, while during Black Rock Shooter segments it is mute and eerie, nearly silent.

Entertainment Value: For being less than an hour long, I found Black Rock Shooter to be surprisingly entertaining. The characters and story are done well, if disjointedly, and the music and animation lighting flow in and out very well with the events. I'm not sure who I can recommend this to though. The action itself is fun to watch, but brief, while the schoolgirl story of friendship develops very quickly. Unfortunately, I fear these are both shortcomings caused by the length of the show. I hate to penalize the OAV for its length, but it just seems like there was so much more that could have been done with it, but the director was unable to due to time constraints.

Rating: 6.5/10 - This OAV does a few things quite well, but the lack of coordination between the school and combat segments can make it hard to follow early on.

Black Rock Shooter OAV - 1 episode (about 55 minutes)

Note: For those who don't know, Black Rock Shooter as a character is based on a Hatsune Miku, the Vocaloid (ie. virtual idol), music video. It is so popular in Japan, there is a full length anime on the way, and recently a PSP RPG was released. The fact that Hatsune Miku herself, is a virtual creation made by Yamaha to promote a PC synthesizer, makes this even more amazing.