Mato is a cheerful girl that has never experienced hatred or other negative feelings she meets Yomi on their first day of school and attempts to befriend her only to be reproached by her in the end. Mato being our heroine of the story keeps attempting to befriend her until they find a common ground that being the story of the Little Birds At Play, Yomi tells Mato that she also has the book but the first edition of it and invites her over to her house to see the book. Slowly Yomi opens up only to have Kagari (or what I call evil Taiga) show up and give off a yandere complex towards Yomi and intimidating Mato in the process which eventually leads to her leaving the house. Later that night Mato has a dream where the characters of the other "dream world" reside and see's Black Rock Shooter fighting Chariot and thus our weird story unfolds.
Izuriha Kagari (Evil Taiga)
First off this is one of the more iconic characters in anime even if you don't know the name of the anime/character you've probably saw the image of Black Rock Shooter at some point in time. The anime starts of by having Black Rock Shooter recite parts of a story from the book about the Playful Bird while she's falling down a precipice and this is the point where I'm already iffy about this. The transitions between the "dream world" its never addressed as to what the name of said world is, since later in the anime it transitions into said world even while Mato is awake. When it came to the theme of the show it was getting scrambled around from being there for each other then to loneliness and further down to pain and how people deal with it. There were also some minor lesbian undertones that shouldn't really have been there since it made it somewhat awkward.
The "real world" characters were somewhat forgettable while the "dream world" side was probably the best part of the series since it also had all the action in the anime. I kind of wish they had a longer season than just 8 episodes to flesh out each girl or have a completely different plot involving a more in depth story regarding the "dream world."
There isn't much to complain when it comes to the animation, clean and crisp animation and amazing fight scenes that blended some 3D elements in the "dream world" sections. The regular world stuff was basic stuff nothing popped out to much.
My rating: 2/5 -Watch it if you have time to kill or if anything watch it for the fight scenes.
Black Rock Shooter felt a bit weird for my tastes, the pacing was a little off the theme kept getting scrambled throughout and the plot was trying to be something more than what it was. If it had a longer season or more fleshed out story it probably would have been way better. If I remember correctly this also was a game to anime sort of thing so it might have suffered in the transition.
Minor vague spoiler here but there is a character that Saya the school counselor met when she was attending high school (?) that Mato also knows at her current age. Which brings the point why does it look like said girl is still the same age?
Side note: I do feel that my review on this is also somewhat sloppy and shorter than normal so apologies in advanced for that.
