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.
 Alternative TitlesJapanese: ブラック・ブレット More titlesInformationType: Light Novel
Volumes: 7
Chapters: 29
Status: On Hiatus
Published: Jul 10, 2011 to Apr 10, 2014
Serialization:
None Statistics Ranked: #21342 2 based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded. Popularity: #2737
Members: 8,033
Favorites: 190 Resources | Reviews
Filtered Results: 2 / 3
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Apr 30, 2020
I'll give you a short criticism right away, but you may check for more details a bit lower on the page.
------------------------------------------------ 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 ... 
Jan 4, 2019
~ 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 ... |
