Please Note: This review is part of a recent school project that my daughter was involved in. Last week, she was involved in a Shadow Day project where kids go to their parents jobs or someone else that they know and shadow them. Amethyst chose to go to work with me and she learned the ins and outs of the job over the course of the day. One of the things that I assigned her to do to understand a big part of it was to watch a new anime series with its first episode and write a review that would be published so it could be seen on her project for the class. This is the result of that project.
You should be afraid of these bugs.
What They Say
In the year 2021, mankind has been decimated by a parasitic virus, Gastrea. The human race has been forced to live inside monoliths made of Varanium, the only material able to subdue the Gastrea. Rentaro Satomi, a high school student, is a part of Tendo Civil Security, and receives a secret mission to prevent the destruction of the Tokyo area.
Content (note that content portions of this review may contain spoilers)
Based on the light novel series by Shiden Kanzaki, Black Bullet is a new spring 2014 anime series animated by Kinema Citrus and Orange. Black Bullet starts off in a less than happy way. The main character, Rentaro Satomi, is a young child running from a gastrea, a large and parasitic virus that has destroyed much of the human race. The gastrea are large, bug like, creatures, who have invaded the world and deterred the human race. Then, we cut to the opening sequence, which shows off the gastrea and the main characters, Rentaro and Enju. Rentaro and Enju are a Promoter/Initiator pair. Initiators are the cursed children, who are born with the gastrea virus. Due to the virus, cursed children can only be female. Promoters serve to lead the cursed children, paired up with one Initiator.
Within the first minutes of the episode, I had decided that I would end up loving this show. It showed aspects of utopian society on the way to dystopia, science fiction elements, and huge ass bugs. I already liked the main character, since him seeing the gastrea nearly kill him at a very young age, he would either be the traumatised main character, or the badass who’s hellbent on killing the gastrea. And then, with the introduction of Enju, one of the cursed children, the first thing that came to mind was Shota? Enju and Rentaro are promising characters, with well defined attributes and faults.
The episode has a few surprises up its sleeve, with introductions of other characters and villains, such as the mysterious clown masked man, and a display of the Gastrea. The two main characters, Rentaro and Enju, have a curious relationship, as Enju is ten at the most, and Rentaro is 17 and almost out of school. Enju has a very weird and shota-like infatuation with Rentaro, while he is constantly brushing her off and trying to keep her from attempting anything romantic.
In Summary
This show is certainly worth getting into, as it shows promising plot and characters. Rentaro and Enju have an amusing relationship, and the plot is well on it’s way to developing. The aspect of the original novels being written by a newer writer brings a fresh perspective and new ideas to the genre. Black Bullet shows great promise, and I eagerly await the next episode, and can’t wait to see where it goes.
Grade: B
