Despair. I think that's the easiest way to sum up this story in a single word. Released in 2014, Black Bullet is a sci-fi/post-apocalyptic anime about what little remains of the human race after being driven to near extinction by a parasitic organism known as the Gastrea virus. In this show, we get a main character who might just be (at least to me) the most depressing main character to watch in any Dengeki Bunko anime ever, Rentaro Satomi. He has suffered more than many main characters prior to him even being shown on screen. His family, his arm and his leg, all gone before we even see him as a fully-fledged teenager for the first time. The only form of connection to anything he has left to cling to in life is the friends he can make now. In place of his lost limbs, he now has a cybernetic arm, leg, and a pistol that shoots bullets made of Viranium (not to be confused with Vibranium from Marvel), which nullifies healing factors (which makes it more like Carbonadium from Marvel). This is relevant as he would be useless to the series without these.
The secondary main character for this series is a little 11-year-old girl by the name of Enju Aihara who, at first glance, looks to be nothing more than an overly-annoying stereotypical anime girl who jokes about marrying the main character someday. However, there are an awful lot more royally screwed up things going on that we find out about her as the series progresses. For starters, her genes have somehow been naturally infused with the Gastrea virus from birth which is constantly life-threatening, as if she is exposed to the virus for too long, she dies. She doesn't die in a peaceful way, either, no, it's rather brutal. Her entire body would literally explode into mush. This is also true for literally thousands of other little girls found in this series as well. They are all commonly referred to as, "The Cursed Children". Secondly, as she shares common genes to the same thing that nearly made the entire human race go extinct, humans nearly everywhere resent her and her fellow Cursed Children, blaming them for being part of the entire reason humanity is so royally screwed over to begin with. This results in the vast majority of the Cursed Children literally being forced to live the rest of their lives away from their parents and - in many cases - the rest of civilization.
Now, I for one enjoyed many things about this show, starting with the relationships between pretty much every last character. I found myself unable to refrain from being happy when characters were happy, sad when characters were sad, and angered when characters were angered. If I had to pick just one pair of characters I especially liked, it would definitely be Kagatane Hiruko and Kohina Hiruko, who were not only father and daughter, but also partners just like Rentaro and Enju. Unlike those two, however, Kagatane and Kohina were completely murderous psychos. They had a noble goal in my opinion, they just went about pursuing said goal in the wrong ways.
Another thing I enjoyed was how well the storytelling painted this absolutely horrendous picture, that being one of a future that had humanity falling apart, or, to quote a line from one of my all-time favorite video games, InFAMOUS, "Civilization committing suicide." The survivors try to uphold daily life as it was before the apocalyptic outbreak of the Gastrea virus, but ultimately, I feel like that was an illusion, as I could feel for even the nameless random citizens. I could feel the fear, the despair, the overall hopelessness of their situation. Even the main characters shared in this abysmal aesthetic, especially towards the end of the show. Rentaro in particular perfectly captured the mood of this series in pretty much every scene he was ever in.
Quite frankly, there wasn't anything I really disliked about this series, as anything I would have had major issues with normally found a way to counteract said potential issues. For instance, the relationships between certain cursed children and Rentaro. While the fact remains that he is 16 and the cursed children are apparently unable to age past being little kids (likely due to the healing factors), one might think it would seem apparent that Enju hitting on Rentaro even as a joke would be inappropriate, but I found it tolerable more often than not, considering they do seem to think of each other as surrogate family. As far as the other Children go, Rentaro is more acting out of charity due to knowing what it's like to be an orphan.
Another thing I enjoyed disliking about this series was just how damn gruesome it was. Sure, it was disgusting and all sorts of nasty whenever the Gastrea were involved in pretty much any way, but I somehow found myself able to watch the series more intently knowing that this graphic imagery aids in illustrating this bleak and hopeless situation. I think the show pretty much takes every chance it can get to tell the audience that this is just how it is; nothing can save these characters if they die or get close to death. And I, for one, appreciated that aspect of it, as it means this show isn't afraid of showing that bad things happen, both to the protagonists and antagonists.
All in all, Black Bullet was an extremely well-executed series despite only getting 13 episodes, and didn't shy away from showing bad things that somehow made me care about the show even more.
