Amen-nuh!
Episode Summary
Rentaro defeats Kagetane, but a Stage 5 Gastrea shows up anyway. Rentaro sacrifices his Varanium arms in order to load a railgun, which he then uses to destroy the Gastrea. Afterwards, he puts Kohina out of her misery because the girl is about to become a Gastrea herself. Finally, he has some revealing talks with both Kisara’s grandfather and Seitenshi.
Notes
• Even though Shogen literally made her murder other Promoter-Initiator pairs, Kayo would nevertheless like Rentaro to save the asshole if possible. Awwwwwwwww. Without anime, I would have never gotten to see the true bond between a grown ass man and his loli.
• Unfortunately for Kayo, it looks as though Shogen is already done for:
What a pity.
• By the way, all the other Promoter-Initiator pairs have been defeated. They were probably all higher-ranked than Rentaro and Enju too. Nevertheless, it’ll be up to our hero and his loli to save the day somehow. Obviously, our heroes are not as useless as their rankings would suggest, but since this is so obviously the case, why did the anime even bother to bring up his low rankings in the first place? It ultimately added nothing to the story nor our understanding of it.
• We learn that Kisara’s kidneys are busted due to the stress she got from seeing her parents die. Right…
• Ah, Rentaro’s lost much of his body in an attempt to protect Kisara from a Gastrea. As a result, he’s more machine now than man. Nah, actually, Sumire replaced his lost limbs with Varanium. As such, our hero is the destined savior of Tokyo despite his poor ranking. Yes, that’s right. He, too, is a product of the New Humanity Creation Plan! He’s the next in human evolution! His augmented body heralds in a new age of transhumanism! Ugh, if only the petty concerns of common fleshlings didn’t make it so hard for him and Enju to be so kickass. In any case, the existence of an Ayn Rand character in this story is starting to make sense.
• Kagetane: “You will not retrieve the case. Because… We stand in your way!” Good dialogue.
• Kagetane’s philosophy is kind of stupid: “We were created to kill. If the Gastrea War were to recommence, the significance of our lives will be proven.” Or you could just use that big brain of yours to affirm your own purpose in life. But y’know, he’s the bad guy so he has to be blatantly wrong. After all, some viewers actually complain if the villains aren’t one-dimensional. The only reason Kagetane might even have a point is because the faceless masses in this show have been rendered completely retarded. If it wasn’t for the nonsensical hate against the Cursed Children, the villain would have no case whatsoever.
• So Rentaro was totally going to die, buuuuuuut…
Yes, the magical motivating powers of a loli’s words prevents him from giving up. Rentaro then remembers to stab himself with the those syringes Sumire had given him. They give him super regenerative powers like a Gastrea, but there’s a 20% chance he might become a monster himself. I thus have three questions/observations:
- How did they arrive at this number? Did they dare test it on a poor lab rat?
- Kagetane just stands there and gawks. 99% of the time, the good guys only win because the villain is either too arrogant or too dumb to react in time. Black Bullet obviously isn’t going to start breaking any new grounds.
- Why did Rentaro use all of the syringes? Wouldn’t it have been more prudent to save some in case he sustained another mortal blow? Did he somehow know that he needed all of them to heal himself back up?
• Oh hey, another 16 year old kid with a six pack. Man, those Japanese youths are really getting swole these days.
• All of a sudden, Rentaro single-handedly defeats both Kagetane and Kohina in a matter of seconds. Well, that was anti-climactic. Please don’t tell me those syringes gave him extra powers too. In fact, Kagetane goes down in basically two blows. That’s just how it is, I guess.
• The control room can somehow track the villain’s “signal.” As a result, they conveniently know that he has been defeated. 
• Wait, what? How the fuck would you know? What if she swears revenge on you and Enju for life? What if she goes into hiding, planning and plotting for the day she can murder you when you least expect it? But yeah, our heroes don’t do anything about Kohina. They don’t even detain her or anything. Well, it’s obvious: the lolis in this show are like HIV. Once you separate them from their hosts, they’ll die soon enough.
• So this is a Stage 5 Gastrea. Kinda looks like a disco whale or some shit. Not exactly the threat to humanity I expected it to be. Luckily, there’s a Heaven’s Ladder near by, which is a giant fuck-off railgun that our heroes can use to blow up the Stage 5 Gastrea. I highly doubt it shoots metallic projectiles at near light speed, however; that’s just ridiculous. By the way, this is all Kisara’s doing: “Seitenshi-sama has given her consent to my plan.” Everything was lost, but luckily, this high school kid walked up to a group of adults and told them exactly what they needed to do. They had this railgun the whole time, but nobody ever thought to use it in a way to defeat Gastreas. Thank god for those high school kids though.
• There’s just one problem… we have no Varanium rounds for the railgun. So guess what? Rentaro rips off his Varanium arm for the job! But then it turns out the control room is unable to fire the railgun from their location. Christ, can you guys actually do anything? Anyway, Rentaro will have to fire the railgun himself with the only arm he’s got left. So the kid beats Kagetane by himself, his right arm will be the bullet that defeats the Stage 5 Gastrea, and he’ll have to fire the railgun. Damn, what do they even pay the guys back at the control room for?
• But first, a pep talk from a child. It turns out Rentaro is scared that he might miss. How? The target is huge as hell, and since the railgun supposedly fires objects at near light speed, you don’t even have to lead the target. It gets better though:
Rentaro: “Enju… I don’t want to lose you, no matter what…”
Enju: “May I interpret that as a proposal?”
Yeah, sure, an 10 year old really talks like that.
• When they finally fire the railgun, it sure as fuck doesn’t look like it’s traveling anywhere near light speed. Goddamn liars.
• Afterwards, Rentaro leaves Enju behind to nap as he goes looking for Kayo. The injured girl is about to turn into a Gastrea herself, so Rentaro ends up having to put her out of her misery.
• Kikunojo was the one behind Kagetane’s actions, and Rentaro’s pissed. Remember the new law that had just gone into effect? Y’know, the one that would protect the Cursed Children from discrimination? Yeah, Kisara’s grandfather hates the Gastrea so much, he aided Kagetane in an attempt to summon a Stage 5 Gastrea… that makes sense.
• But then Rentaro simply walks away just because the old man had once saved his life. Yo, you just accused this guy of trying to destroy an entire city with a Stage 5 Gastrea. Do you honestly think him saving your life makes up for that? Are you kidding me? Let’s not forget he wants to kill all of those Cursed Children too, which includes your precious loli. Ugh, this is laughable.
• More twists upon twists. The case that everyone had been fighting over contains nothing more than a tricyle. Yep. Seitenshi has the answers that our hero wants, but she won’t tell Rentaro anything just yet! He’ll just have to rank up first!
• We then see that Enju is nearly at that critical 50% stage where a person becomes more Gastrea than huma. Despite this, Rentaro lies to the girl and tells her that her number hasn’t changed whatsoever. I’m sure this won’t bite him in the ass.
Moe Sucks 
Simply saying, a lot of things were cut out from the anime when adapted from light novel to anime which is unfortunate. About Kisara, she has diabetes so the stress from that event caused her to go into somewhat of a seizure and her kidneys started acting up.
In the source, he actually used one syringe but it did not work. He then at critical ends just did a gamble by injecting the rest of the drug. About the railgun, it’s also all explained in the source but not here sadly. Kisara knows about it due to her connections to Tendo, the old man. The reason why she’s living on her own is related to his desire to use the railgun for other purposes and also related to his views on the cursed children. The two are basically enemies. This is explored further later on. Unfortunately, it probably will never get there since this is only 1 cour series.
Also to note, Kisara’s grandfather HIRED Kagatane. It’s not the other way around. Seems the same but actually quite different.
They keep saying the bullet will run at near light speed but in the source iirc, it’s traveling at most, 0.3 of light speed. Yeah funny how that is changed here. He’s also worried about missing simply because of the stress that’s out on him. It doesn’t matter if the target is large as hell but when everything depends on you or else the entire cities die, you don’t really think logically anymore. Stress is always a problem so I understand how he felt that.
The source is actually full of tear jerker moments, tragedies, and quite philosophical. There were almost all cut out. So I say this before but any adaptation have always been meant to be used as a complement to the original source material. The sad thing is the light novel is not translated so the anime is the only “source” that’s available to the audience who does not understand Japanese.
I don’t believe I said otherwise: “Kikunojo was the one behind Kagetane’s actions….”
Anyway, my standard response to all of this is that I don’t care about the source material, I only ever judge the anime by itself, blah blah blah.
This doesn’t make the anime immune to criticism. If anything, it sounds like a cop-out as anime has had great adaptations before and will continue to do so.
You seem a bit too defensive here with how you’re responding to my post and “blah blah blah”.
Anyways, yeah it deserved critisms and I have nothing against that. It’s frustrating for me as well and adaptations have always been frustrating for light novel readers.
It’s really depressing when you don’t have a choice in the matter in how much money an adaptation will get behind it. It’s clear that Mahouka this season has tons of money behind it so that it could be done well while Black Bullet does not.
On the positive side, this does not reach the atrocity levels of something like Mahou Sensou… if you’re one the unlucky people to took a look at that. It’s atrocious. Nothing makes sense.
It means I’ve said something similar before a thousand times. I simply don’t care about any adaptation’s source material. If you want to take this as being defensive, so be it.
Oh I don’t know about that…
“It’s clear that Mahouka this season has tons of money behind it so that it could be done well”
“Oh I don’t know about that…”
Well it’s 2 cour and the visual quality is actually quite good. Also it’s been advertised actually for quite some time now. The first time it was advertised was when Accel World was being broadcast in 2012. So from that and a couple other things, I would say it has more financial backing then compared to a lot of other adaptations.
What’s still funny though is the group that is adapting Mahouka is the same group that did Mahou Sensou. There must be an F team and an A team in there.
Well, Hallelujah! Enjoy what you can I guess!
Haha, I’m not referring to its financial backing. I’m implying that the Mahouka adaptation is terrible regardless of its financial backing.
The facepalm bit for me was when Rents reveals his ‘super varanium’ arm and leg – with comedy “doing” noises just so you know they’re metallic. And the fact his newly revealed eye is back to normal the next frame (and for the rest of the episode).
How the fuck does that eye work anyway? Didn’t seem to be of any use with targeting the railgun. Guess ideas that work on paper don’t translate so well to a visual medium.