I’m becoming more and more convinced with every episode of Black Rock Shooter that the writers managed to paint themselves into a corner about halfway through the series. Unsure of how to satisfactorily resolve the tangled mess of plot threads that they’d created, and too far deep in the production schedule to simply junk everything and start from scratch, they decided to abandon all pretense of narrative coherence and just go for brazen surrealism and emotional manipulation. After all, if the show’s “real world” is just a carefully prepared lie, who’s to say that all the obvious inconsistencies aren’t intentional? It’s like someone took Lost and decided to cram its basic structure into eight episodes. I can’t even bring myself to be angry that they’re doing this, because it’s actually working – if they tell me the story doesn’t matter any more, I’ll just let them pelt me with pretty pictures ’til the cows come home. This is Guilty Crown made by people willing to admit that they just can’t write an epic. Goddammit.

By request of @unyieldingsteel, Mato’s embarrassed sway from side to side during Black Rock Shooter episode 3.

(I had the same reaction watching this, Yuu. Same reaction.)

Takanori Aki of Good Smile Company and Hiroaki Matsuura of Sanzigen talk about the 3D CG process used in Black Rock Shooter on last week’s edition of the NHK World program imagine-nation. The refinements shown here do seem blindingly obvious in hindsight, but I’m glad to see them starting to make their way into the mainstream.

Via a post by Kagayaki on the AnimeSuki forum.

Positive things I have to say about the first episode of the new Black Rock Shooter TV series:

1. The 3D animation during the otherworld scenes is some of the best-looking I’ve ever seen in anime. If I hadn’t read previously that the visuals weren’t hand-drawn, I would never have guessed.

2. … um, hold on, I’m sure something else will come to me.