The film starts with a battle between two scantily clad girls with swords fighting in a checkered world. The red-eyed girl stabs the blue eyed girl through the stomach and a blue eyed girl, Kuroi Mato, wakes up and heads to school for her first day of junior high. At school she meets and befriends Takanashi Yomi. Over the span of a year they become best friends. As we are getting to know them, there are occasional glimpses of the blue eyed warrior from the intro (who looks like an older version of Mato) battling with a green-eyed scythe-carrying version of Yomi. In their second year, Mato also befriends Yuu, her basketball club’s manager, which causes Yomi to feel neglected and jealous. Yomi then vanishes, which makes the police and her parents think she was kidnapped.
At this point there is a confirmation of the warriors as having a relationship with the normal world when the blue-eyed girl defeats and hugs the green-eyed girl until the latter disintegrates and leaves behind Yomi. At the same time, Mato receives a blank text from Yomi’s phone and decides to go looking for her. Mato is taken into a blue light and meets the blue-eyed girl that looks like her. The Mato-looking girl offers to help her find Yomi and says her name is “Black Rock Shooter” as they merge into one being.
The film ends with an epilogue of Yomi, Mato, and Yuu hanging out and Yomi being friendly with Yuu now acting neglected. Earlier there was also a brief glimpse into an otherworld version of Yuu’s character so there is an implication that Black Rock Shooter would be needed again, but the movie ends before anything happens.
The story becomes clear at the end in the sense that one can assume that the events of Black Rock Shooter’s world interspersed through the story happened after she merged with Mato. What did not really make sense was how real they were. Did Yomi really go missing? Is this some crazy fantasy/sci-fi anime, or were these just metaphors of the character’s mental states? It is hard to tell since the film is short and there are no real clear answers. That may be frustrating for a viewer.
I loved it however. The animation is gorgeous. Except for a few somewhat awkward movements from Mato when we first meet her, it all feels very natural. In the other world, the animation is even better. The battle scenes are inventive and fluid. The backgrounds are fairly simple for the most part during the battles, which make it easy to focus on the characters and their movements. If they had been animated poorly this would be a drawback, but the battle scenes are spectacular so this becomes a benefit. That being said, the animation style is not especially interesting. Cute girls with large weapons and large eyes are fairly standard in anime. Still, if you’re going to do something, you might as well do it well, so the praise is deserved.
The music is not especially remarkable, but it does not detract either. Mostly, I did not notice it, which means I was focused on the story. It also means that with a thin story like this, the music is just not especially memorable.
And the story is thin, but thin with potential rather than overstretched thin. I really wanted to know what happened next. I liked the characters and wanted to see some more junior high drama portrayed as battles with giant weapons. That seems like the best way to hash out problems people have. So is this the best anime I have seen in the last few years? Certainly not. But it was entertaining and I would recommend it to those curious and interested in seeing some good animation.
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