Black★Rock Shooter (ブラック★ロックシューター) is the incarnation of the Black★Rock Shooter character appearing in the 2012 anime. She is the "other self" of Mato Kuroi.
Appearance
The original concept of Black★Rock Shooter was redesigned for the anime, with some new elements possibly inspired by the designs of White Rock Shooter and Black★Rock Shooter Beast, as her new jacket and boots (which are now more blue than black) have similarities to both WRS' and B★RSB's clothing. Like Stella's appearance in the PSP game, her hairstyle is more spiky compared to her other incarnations. Unlike her original concept and her OVA incarnation, she does not have any scars on her midriff. She wears her trademark hood more often than she does in other media. She is a little short for her age, standing at about 158cm (without the high heels on her boots), close to Yomi's height. She has a very small and thin disporportioned figure, as she is very skinny. She is supposedly said to be rather light, weighing about 90 lbs.
Like all of the "other selves" appearing in the anime, her blue eyes have a circular pattern in them.
Personality
She is very calm and silent while fighting, but tends to have a rather savage side to her. She professes herself to have no feelings and to work only from her nature. She seems to say things exactly as they are, being very blunt and rather proud.
She seems to be more brutal than any other B★RS incarnation, having beheaded Chariot and Arata's other self, and killed Dead Master, and as Insane Black★Rock Shooter, attempted to kill Black★Gold Saw and Strength.She appears to be rather mentally unstable, often making unpredictable decisions and actions. She seems to have no regard of anyone's feelings as she coldly mocked Mato's feeble attempts to fight and continued fighting Strength regardless of her human self's cries.She is a very mysterious, yet sadistic person and can actually be quite taunting of her enemy in battle. She seems very confident in her ability, almost to the point where she thinks she can defeat anyone. She becomes noticably irritated if she is not winning a battle. She does not seem to care if people die as long as she achieves her goal.
History
Many years prior to the anime's beginning, presumably sometime around Mato Kuroi's birth, she appeared in the Otherworld as a manifestation of Mato's desire to help people while ignoring her own pain. This desire gave her a large amount of physical ability.
She fought Strength on a ledge, and while neither had the ability to feel emotions, Strength could sense that Black★Rock Shooter was exceptionally powerful; they fought, and Strength was defeated.
At the start of the anime, Black★Rock Shooter is at the Sky Gates. After walking around, she comes upon some green mist, and is led into a strange area where she is tormented by mysterious spider-like robotic creatures and Chariot. At one point, she screams in pain as one of the robots stabs and drills into her stomach.
She is then accosted by Dead Master and is chained up, but she quickly reverses the chains. However, a horde of spiders surrounds Dead Master and carries her away, causing Black★Rock Shooter to pursue her.
She finds her in a floating house in the sky, hidden within a doll and chained up. She reaches for her but is stopped by Chariot and her spider robot. The robot begins to fire macaroons (a motif associated with Chariot's other self) at her, but she takes out her gun and shoots at them; the robot fires a torrent of macaroons at her, and she upgrades her gun to a machine gun-like contraption that blows them all away and destroys the spider robot.
During that time Dead Master begins to break free from her chains, and Black★Rock Shooter gains the upper hand. The chains recede into the sky, causing the world to fall apart. However, this is driven to a halt as a large red blade is driven into the sky, stopping this and suspending the destruction in midair, as if time had been stopped for the destruction. She and Dead Master find Black★Gold Saw with Chariot.
Black★Gold Saw cuts a fissure into the ground, dragging Dead Master into it and apart from Black★Rock Shooter, and vanishes. Chariot takes the opportunity to charge at Black★Rock Shooter with her blade, but Black★Rock Shooter quickly ignites the blue flame on her eye and beheads Chariot.
Later, she breaks into Black★Gold Saw's lair, and causes rocks to fall onto the mysterious hooded figures that she has created. She shoots at Black★Gold Saw, who dodges and presumably escapes. She approaches one of the hooded figures, which resembles Arata Kohata, and holds a hand out to her. However, the figure recedes and trembles in fear, and in response, she ignites her flame, grabs the figure, and beheads it.
When Dead Master starts to become unstable, she goes to investigate. When Dead Master summons a castle and minions, she attempts to shoot her but is hit by one of Dead Master's floating skulls and hits a wall. She then readies her gun and fires at Dead Master.
At the climax of the battle, Mato Kuroi merges with her in order to save Black★Rock Shooter; however Black★Rock Shooter has already killed Dead Master by the time she arrives sending Mato into shock. The shock of having killed Yomi's "other self" causes Black★Rock Shooter to become unstable and combine red flames into the blue flames around her eye, creating a large amounts of purple flame. A red light appears in her pupils and she seems to go insane, transforming into Insane Black★Rock Shooter. In this form, B★RS goes on a deadly rampage until defeated by Mato (in B★RS's normal form), with the help of the revived other selves. Following the battle, she reverts back to normal.
She next appears on a cliff as Strength tells Yuu that the other selves fight because they love and wish to protect their real world counterparts, echoing the sentiment to Mato. After Strength's death, she jumps off the cliff, her words echoing to Mato as she leaves the Otherworld.
She later appears on a cliff in front of the reformed Strength, stating that she won't stop fighting or bearing the pain in the Otherworld.
Abilities
Although she shows weakness in combat often, she can be skilled enough to defeat even more powerful opponents than her. Her attacks focus more on offensive and evasive maneuvers, having skill with ranged weaponry and great prowess in wielding close-quarter weapons. She also uses her unique athletic abilities in combat, being shown to be able to do many flips and dodges. Black★Rock Shooter wastes no time in her movement, taking in every single aspect of the fight. When she kills her opponent, her left eye causes a blue flame to emerge from it. Her motif seems to have blue flames. Many of her abilities are either vaguely shown, or unknown.
Black★Rock Shooter's endurance is immense, being able to survive merciless pounding, impalement, slicing, bullets, being crushed, grinded, and many other things. Despite this, she still manages to stand up and fight effectively.
Black★Rock Shooter has displayed superhuman feats of speed and agility, being able to run at impressively high speeds, leap long distances, and jump high.
While Black★Rock Shooter has shown no obvious signs of possessing superhuman strength, she seems to be able to wield her Rock Cannon, which looks quite heavy, with great ease.
Trivia
- Even though Black★Rock Shooter's character artwork shows her without her jacket on, she is always shown wearing it throughout the entire anime.
- One possible reason she does not have any scars on her midriff would be because the injuries the "other selves" receive heal much more quicker than humans in the real world do, as she stated to Mato.
- This is the first time that Black★Rock Shooter becomes an antagonist due to her becoming I.BRS.
- This incarnation of B★RS appears in the game Lord of Vermillion Re:2, dressed in her attire in the anime series.
- Her belts are colored differently in each of her artworks; sometimes her other belt and the belt on her jacket is colored brown, while in other artworks (you can see it in her concept art), those belts were colored black.
- In some of her artworks, her crooked belt is in a straighter position.
- The sole on her boots are also black in her initial concept.
- Though it appears her jacket is colored blue, it's actually the hue of the background that makes her jacket blue.
- Unlike Yuu (as Strength), Mato as B★RS doesn't move her mouth when talking, only using B★RS's telepathic ability to speak.
- Her figma has the exact same eye flame accessory of the BRS2035 figma. Also, the upper portion of her figma has the same mechanism as the White Rock Shooter figma, albeit without the White Wing units.
- She is said to be about 18 years old (at least mentally for an otherself's true lifespan is unknown) while her human self, Mato is 12 years old.
- She seems to be one of the shortest otherselves.
- She is shown to heal alot faster than the other otherselves. This is displayed most prominently when she is insane.
- In many references and fanworks, Black Rock Shooter is said to be a demon, both metaphorically, and literally. Her behavior in the anime supports this most of all.
- Black Rock Shooter does have fangs even though she is said not to. They are rarely shown but can be spotted in episodes 7-8 (both as Insane Black Rock Shooter, and in regular form.
- In the anime opening, she is shown to have a power similar to Black Gold Saw's observing, large "eyes". No evidence for this is shown in the anime or anywhere else.
- She is very often depicted to have either a blue flame or a white star motif. A rather rare theme of hers is also black strings and/or chess pieces.
- The most debatable aspect of Black Rock Shooter would be her height, as multiple heights have been stated for her and her designed drawings sometimes show her to be the same height as Mato Kuroi or Yomi Takanashi (not to mention she wears high heels and appears taller). She should be around 158cm (more or less). (Her template is in need of some editing as well)
- Black Rock Shooter's blue flame is only ignited when she defeats an enemy, but after her transformation to Insane Black Rock Shooter, her purple eye flame seems rather active than her blue flame.
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