Black Bullet

ブラック・ブレット BLACK BULLET ［黒の銃弾］

9.0(2)

Otaku Den

7.1(510,877)

MAL Score

Ranked #4544

Popularity #205

Action
Mystery
Sci-Fi
Military
Super Power
Urban Fantasy

Episodes: 13
Duration: 24 min per ep
Aired: Apr 8, 2014 to Jul 1, 2014
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

In 2021, humanity is pushed to the brink when a parasitic virus called Gastrea infects people and transforms them into monsters. Survivors retreat behind the Monolith walls—fortifications made from Varanium, the one substance capable of harming Gastrea.

To hold the line, the Tendo Civil Security pairs “Cursed Children,” girls carrying trace amounts of the virus that grant them enhanced abilities—officially designated as Initiators—with adult partners known as Promoters, who supervise and protect them in the field. Black Bullet follows Initiator Enju Aihara and her Promoter, Satomi Rentaro, as they take on missions in Tokyo amid an escalating Gastrea threat.

Otaku Consensus

Black Bullet is strongest when Masayuki Kojima’s brisk direction, gun-heavy combat, and the Cursed Children’s institutional mistreatment converge into genuinely bitter urban dystopia. Its promising early momentum deteriorates under a rushed 13-episode adaptation that omits connective material, leaves ideas underexplained, and jolts between harem comedy and child-directed brutality. The result is watchable and occasionally piercing, but far less coherent than its setting deserves.

Why You Should Watch

Watch Black Bullet if you want the siege anxiety of Attack on Titan filtered through the firearm tactics and exploited-child unease of Gunslinger Girl, without a multi-season commitment. Its appeal lies less in mystery-box plotting than in sharp contrasts: polished civil-security operations beside open discrimination, Varanium weaponry beside superhuman close combat, and playful character banter beside startling cruelty. The Kinema Citrus and Orange production gives its battles a practical, hardware-conscious identity, supported by dedicated mechanical and weapon designers rather than generic energy blasts. It is especially suited to viewers who can tolerate abrupt tonal shifts and compressed light-novel storytelling in exchange for a bleak 13-episode urban-fantasy thriller with kaiju-scale pressure, military maneuvering, and morally compromised institutions.

Key Characters

E
Enju Aihara(VA: Rina Hidaka)
Enju’s irrepressible confidence gives the series its emotional warmth while making society’s contempt for the Cursed Children feel especially vicious.
R
Rentarou Satomi(VA: Yuuki Kaji)
Rentarou is compelling as a capable but visibly strained protector whose loyalties repeatedly clash with the institutions employing him.
T
Tina Sprout(VA: Tomoyo Kurosawa)
Tina pairs a soft-spoken, sleepy demeanor with unnerving combat precision, a contrast that made her one of the adaptation’s most memorable additions.
K
Kisara Tendou(VA: Yui Horie)
Kisara’s polished authority and revenge-driven severity prevent her from functioning as merely the agency’s composed overseer.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
The anime is jointly credited to Kinema Citrus and Orange, pairing 2D character animation with a studio already known for CG production at a time when Orange had not yet become synonymous with fully CG series.
2
Takeshi Takakura and Satoshi Mori received separate mechanical-design and weapon-design credits, reflecting how strongly the action depends on firearms, specialized equipment, and engineered defenses rather than undifferentiated superpowers.
3
Its 13 episodes repeatedly place comedy, romantic friction, military action, and extreme violence in immediate proximity. That structural whiplash is one of the show’s most recognizable qualities and the source of its most persistent criticism.
4
The material involving discrimination against the Cursed Children is the series’ clearest critical success; TakaCode Reviews likewise identified the show’s depiction of harsh realities from their viewpoint as its strongest thematic work.
5
Its genre mixture is unusually dense even by light-novel standards: AniList’s prominent tags include guns, military, kaiju, pandemic, revenge, urban fantasy, monster girls, and a male-led harem element.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: Shiden Kanzaki wrote the original story and Saki Ukai created the source character designs, while Senbon Umishima adapted those designs for animation. Tatsuhiko Urahata handled series composition, the role most directly associated with fitting the source into 13 episodes.
Fun fact 2: Masayuki Kojima directed the series with Hiroshi Ikehata as assistant director; the production credits also list Isao Ishikawa and Hiroyuki Tajima in assistance roles.
Fun fact 3: Black Bullet aired in Spring 2014 alongside several prominent light-novel adaptations, including No Game No Life, The Irregular at Magic High School, and Chaika: The Coffin Princess, placing it in an unusually crowded season for the format.
Fun fact 4: Its audience reach substantially exceeds its aggregate standing: the supplied MyAnimeList data places it at popularity rank 205 with more than 510,000 votes, despite a 7.07 score and overall rank of 4521.
Fun fact 5: The reception pattern is consistent across major databases: AniList records a 67/100 score but 2,379 favourites, indicating a sizable committed audience despite broadly mixed reviews.