Black Bullet

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~ Spoiler-free review of the Black Bullet's novel ~

Story : I find the story interesting , it is evolving at a great pace. The main problem to me is that the author has stopped writing after the anime arrived in 2014. So the story does not seem finished and it can be irritating, especially because the author doesn’t give news about this title.

Art : I appreciate the style of the few pictures in the books and covers. I think it gives a great representation of that world and the characters' own styles.

Characters : There are three main characters in the story, with a few more side characters ... that are around them regularly.

Rentarou, the main male, has had a difficult past and it still makes him suffer but made him think about their world and his friends. He may seem a bit cliché, in the way that « all the lolis » and teen girls want to be with him but he isn’t as dense as most of the characters responding to that cliché, hopefully.

He works with Enju in a private company of security. Enju is a child with a great fighting-power thanks to her genetical biology. Her mood is mainly like a child’s one, rather happy and curious about things. She also likes to pretend that Rentarou is hers to make the other children jealous.

Finally, there is Kisara, the boss of the company where the other two work. She had a hard past too and it made her take a different way that Rentarou, a darker way. She sometimes reacts as a « tsundere », saying the opposite of what she thinks really. Otherwise, she’s a rather honest person and says things directly. That side of her is seen in the professional world.

I think these three characters are rather well-balanced.

The side characters are also fine according to me, bringing interesting things to the story, in order to know why the characters are like that today. They also are interesting « for themselves », they don’t appear only once to say « Hey, do you remember that time when you did that ? » before disappearing.

Enjoyment : Black bullet has been the first light novel that I’ve begun, so it may not be 100 % neutral but I appreciate that title. The story is moving forward without forgetting to give informations about the world and the past. It’s done at a nice tempo. For a non-otaku reader, I think Black Bullet can be appreaciated because there aren't too much references to the otaku subculture and nearer to what we can see in american movies.

Overall : Even if I have a short experience with light novels (As for today, 7 series begun and 0 finished yet), I can say Black bullet is my favorite title in that media. The world described may not be liked by everyone but it works well for me. The english translation is fine I think (But English isn’t my native langage, so people with a higher level may see the translation differently)

The only problem that I see is what I told sooner, the fact that the author wanted to stop because of the amount of work asked when the anime was made, and it seems the author turned that page once for all, from what I read online.

If I had to give a score, it’d be 8 or 9.

I'll give you a short criticism right away, but you may check for more details a bit lower on the page.

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So, first off, I saw the anime adaptation before I read the light novel and that may have had an impact on my point of view.
Black Bullet has brilliant ideas to create stressful situations and horrific monsters and has quite the dark plot, even if there are lighthearted moments. The problem is... the way the world was designed and thought out makes no sense.
If you can't make abstraction of these things, you will shout at all the people living in this world because their actions ... will feel artificial.
The characters are probably better written then most light novels, but it's not brilliant. It still feels like having a harem anime protagonist getting into a heavy and dark drama. The combat may feel cool, but fuck physics and anatomy (well, it is essentially an anime, so it is understandable).
I really like the artstyle with greatly contrasted base lines and interesting poses as well as inspired clothing.

BUT despite all these flaws... I really enjoyed the ride. And that may only be due to interesting ideas on the part of the author. He may be bad at worldbuilding, but the Gastrea-virus and the way he managed the mystery part was quite interesting. You may not be able to believe everything he throws at you, but it feels like a wide world shrouded in darkness where humanity is slowly dying out. The situations you go through are tough and may give you chills for the characters that are going through it and that is perfectly right. I enjoyed it way more than my logic would have aknowledged it. The atmosphere and the great ideas behind it are that good. Too bad everything else isn't up to my expectations...

Would I recommend you to read it ? If you don't expect a sequel, yes. If you are not too picky, yes. If you want logic and a well written and thought out world... probably not...

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Let's get into details. I'll only comment on story and characters, since I don't have much to say about the rest.
MINOR SPOILERS ON THE WORLDBUILDING MAY BE AHEAD !!!

Story____

The greatest problem of this light novel is probably its worldbuilding. A minor spoiler is that humanity was nearly wiped out by a terrific virus that forced the remaining humans to live in secluded areas surrounded by metallic structures that hold gastrea-monsters at bay. So okay, humanity is near extinct... but since they really want to commit suicide, they have decided to stay in a capitalistic system, even though acting egoistically in that kind of era is synonym to DOOMSDAY.

So yes, it was kind of hard to take it seriously at first. Because despite the flaws of the worldbuilding, the idea on how the virus works, and the whole plot around the initiators (children beeing able to exploit the gastrea virus) as well as the constant threat that tomorrow, the gastrea may flood one of the last havens of humanity and push them a bit more towards extinction is indeed a nice place to have a slightly different story.

And that's kind of why I gave 6/10 to the story despite the worldbuilding beeing mediocre in my opinion. It has huge flaws on the way humans would live when faced with that kind of problem, but the way the virus itself and everything that comes from it is portrayed is very interesting.

Characters_____

Characters...

They are not fundammentally bad, but the protagonist is kind of a shonen hero that got trapped into a post-apocalyptic world. He will be annoying, will lack a strong personnality and will be surrounded by girls of many different ages that really want
him to become their lover... but since this is anime... it won't happen and it will never go really far. STILL, the characters have inner conflicts and most of them are driven by strong emotions in different directions.
I really think, the protagonist is one of the weakest assets of the cast, and many side-characters are more like manicheistic plot devices that lack any charisma. (There is more love poured into the potential love-interests and more central/reccuring side-characters, but especially the antagonists are really not noteworthy.)

Since there are many underaged girls in the cast, you may find this light novel even cooler if you like the "lolicon"-wibe in comedy/romantic light novels/anime.

Conclusion_____

In the end, this light novel feels like the world and the way the characters and story are portrayed don't work that well together. A more mature story with better characters may have driven this light novel on new hights, but unfortunately, this one here seems childish. Many consequences and problems in this light novel arise because the worldbuilding allowed these problems to arise, where a logical world wouldn't have inner conflicts of this size when the survival of yourself and all the rest of humanity is at stake. Yes, humans make mistakes, yes humans are not perfect, but humans understand what is at stake once they nearly get wiped out by an uncontrollable disease. They resort to strict regulation and drastic measures, not capitallistic suicide and mutual hate.

But despite all its flaws, I really liked the ride. You get to see unconventionnal situations and get to think about why something doesn't make sense. You get to experience nice battles even though you know deep down that he should have died with the first hit because his organs should have ripped apart under that kind of pressure. You laugh at the lighthearted situations in the dark world where imminent death is omnipresent. That is why even though it is flawed, even though it is far from beeing perfect, I really liked reading BLACK BULLET.

Even though my enjoyment was more on the 8-8.5/10, I can't give it more than 7/10 overall, because it is fundamentally flawed...

BLACK BULLET has something special, an atmosphere that isn't unique, but different from what you are usually seeing.

Where to start... First time writing a review so my sincerest apologies if its crappy.

(Story)
Well let`s start with the story i guess.
So the story is about humanity in the near future that had gotten their asses handed to them about 10 years ago by these close to immortal parasitic Gastrea beings that either infected or killed humans close to extinction. And now after barely escaping while managing to set up walls into small territories made of the only material Gastrea are weak to, the story focuses on our main characters Rentarou and Enju in the Civil Security which specialize in fighting the Gastrea, as well ... as on other humans coping with the hell they had to experience 10 years ago and the after effects (which aren`t too pretty mind you).

*MIGHT contain some slight spoilers down here but i want to give you the idea perfectly*
Personally i love the story and it sucked me right in, people having gone insane thanks to war, discrimination from fear of the ones growing in power trying to save them, people having experienced the war and wanting the war to continue to feel needed and thinking humans deserved to die of extinction, smartest scientists finding the situation amusing doing research on the Gastrea while observing the paranoid humans going at each others throats, powerful politicians and clans wanting to secretly get their own way for selfish reasons or hatred fueled by the war manipulating people from behind the scenes, people wanting to avenge their dead loved ones long since killed by the Gastrea and wanting to destroy every last one of them and lastly the Gastrea themselves intelligently outsmarting and evolving beyond humans to fight back.

Also im a sucker for series about fighting and clashing wills and especially sad series (yet i hate drama how ironic).

(Art)
Well art won`t take that long cause Light Novels, art is done by Ukai Saki, in my opinion her art is pretty damn amazing even if this is biased coming from me this being my first Light Novel, i don`t know there`s just something about her work like look at the first volume`s cover, doesn`t that sky just look extremely beautiful? And when you compare the art in general to the anime adaption it just looks more "realistic" if i can use that word in anime related stuff without getting killed*cough*, you can just overall tell better what they feel or what their personalities are like in my opinion.

(Characters)
As for the characters, Rentarou the main character might slightly hit the cliche of Light Novel main characters though i might sound like a hypocrite having not read any other Light Novels yet but if its anything like the anime, manga series or the Light Novel anime adaption`s main characters are like im pretty sure i can take a guess, however in Rentarou`s case i`d say its not that bad, as a matter of fact him not always getting his way makes him more relatable, though he suffers a lot too from the get go so that part depends on you if its relatable which in my case is.

Then there`s Enju, Rentarou`s partner who`s happy go lucky to balance the depressive stuff although easily saddened sometimes, also just a freeloader because she can`t even cook, but she`s important in daily life to him as well as in battle because she is very strong.

There`s also Kisara, their company boss, a character i can imagine most people liking for some reason, she always gets her way and is just downright sadistic towards Rentarou at times, also the person to envy for Enju because of her big breasts, what`s not to like in a character who`s clearly better than others*cough*

Still gonna introduce you to Sumire the scientist since she`s my favorite of the bunch and i`ll bet she`ll grow on you too, being so overwhelmingly smart she hates humans not in some grudge kind of way but simply because she finds them predictable and stupid, also she likes to troll and torment people especially Rentarou yet somehow by the end of your chat with her she somehow makes you feel better, like how does that even work?

Already probably gave you an idea on what kinds of characters there are in the story so let`s just leave it at that.

(Enjoyment)
For the enjoyment i enjoyed the hell out of this series because its a sad series about fighting, internal conflict, war and survival.

(Overall)
Overall i scored it 10 as a masterpiece feel free to sue me, i recommend this to anyone who likes their post-apocalyptic action series with sadness and despair. Anywho watch out for those flying body parts it`ll get cruesome (also the autnor is a troll), the series is still ongoing but there`s probably zero hope of it coming back from hiatus of 5 years now, since the author started a cafe or something, i`ll wish him the best.

Thanks for taking your time on this disgusting pile of text.
Peace out.