Here’s a change of pace, a relatively new game I found myself really appreciating during a recent replay. (EDIT THIS DRAFT IS TEN YEARS OLD) (I suppose people following the sketch blogging would probably be able to tell when exactly my playthrough was in progress.)
Black Rock Shooter: The Game is the imaginatively-titled game adaptation of the BRS franchise, and I bought it out of sheer curiousity. It was licensed by NISA, then sat in limbo for about a year, just long enough to have pretty much given up on it, then suddenly revived right as the PSP was in its death throes. Or possibly starting to cool. I cling to old systems so long perspective is kind of hard to keep. I had watched a few Youtube videos early on to try and figure out how the game worked, but couldn’t really suss it out from video alone somehow. Between that and BRS existing as “a thing on the Internet” alongside Tohou and Vocaloid fandom, I figured I would give it a shot.
As an act of charity, let me explain the phenomena that is Black Rock Shooter: Some guy drew a girl, people thought it looked cool, then a Vocaloid song got based off her. And that’s basically it. It’s like a fictional universe born through media elements drifting into one another, then accidentally igniting like a cell phone at the gas pump. Further reinforcing my impression is that the BRS Wiki (of course there is one) is chock full of stub articles based on random character illustrations from the artists’ DeviantArt (seriously- wait, I’m not allowed to snark about that if I have one too) such as “Maid Gunner,” who “may exist in the BRS universe.” I actually really dig the aesthetic in a lot of the art and designs- lots of pale skin, black clothing and armor, with bright highlight colors to sort of help ‘theme’ a character. I’m not alone in thinking this would be a great basis for the game being a Mega Man knockoff where BRS’s ‘accent color’ changes when she uses a borrowed boss weapon. (Unfortunately, that’s not what the game *is*, but obviously I still like it if I’m spotlighting it.) The anime adaptations are less my cup of tea- there’s some weird metaphysical context to the girls fighting in another alternate world as a result of the conflicts between a few schoolgirls in the real world. Not the worst concept or anything, but there’s a reason there are Youtube supercuts of every fight in the series with nothing in between, and I think that intersects nicely with the initial impression I get of the franchise- this looks cool, so let’s run with it. The OAV is really too short to accomplish much, the TV series is okay. But we’re not here to talk about that, we’re here to talk about The Game!
Black Rock Shooter: The Game has a more straightforward setting- aliens have invaded the Earth and wiped out mankind to the last dozen, and their last hope for survival rests on a genetically-engineered super soldier. This super soldier just happens to look like a waifish teenager with improbable strength for her frame, but you take what you can get. The game itself has an interesting kinda-realtime battle system- You can aim and fire freely with your default cannon and watch for enemy ‘tells’ to use a dodge move, but doing either builds up a heat gauge below your life bar, and should you overheat you are left completely helpless until you cool off completely. You also have item and special attack menus that rather intuitively pop in from the left and right sides, triggered by L and R. Since the game freezes when you bring up the item menu, it almost seems abusable, but your maximum carry of each seems to prevent that.
Admittedly, I’m not going to call this game a complete masterpiece. The fighting system gets pretty old by the later stages, and the enemy attacks seem to get cheaper (in particular, I loathe the big Gunner mechs that zig zag erratically while firing off short bursts of gunfire you more or less have to take or dodge) and more numerous. It’s actually a bit of a shame because the last two areas in particular take their design cues more directly from the original artwork and feature mazelike layouts, checkerboard tiling and haphazardly strung chains. The final area in particular is made up of chunks of moon rock and palatial architecure tethered together by more chains, as if it was some crude attempt to hold a demolished mansion together after being launched into space. The most annoying part of the game for me are the motorcycle stages, which are about as sophisticated as a “runner” game on a phone. You shift between three traffic lanes, and if you dodge an enemy at the last moment, you kill them with the blades on the front of your bike (technically, trike.) They just go on for entirely too long, and one of the unlockable skills/achievements is dependent on you passing all three of them while taking no damage.
What the game does have are a lot of little moments that add up into something I’d consider an overlooked gem. Well, I don’t want to oversell anyone on it- when I say that, I feel like this is a game that critics/collectors/niche afficionados would be heralding as a lost classic if it had come out in the PS1 era. The big blocky gauntlets the villains tend to wear and the flat anime-style face textures kind of bring to mind a more serious take on Mega Man Legends’ graphical approach. There’s also a wealth of gimmicky post game content like alternate costumes, character fleshing chapters, and bonus missions that kind of lend the proceeding a feeling like the team putting it together gave a crap about.
For one thing, there is an underlying theme about the importance of memories. BRS herself of course, begins as an amnesiac, but when she demonstrates that she can form new memories, it proves to set her apart from the other soldiers of her line, dubbed “Greys.” (Before the second boss fight, MZMA, the alien writes talking to her off as useless, but when she intervenes in his attempt to shoot down one of the human survivors, he quizzes her over the movie trivia he had just rambled on about.) The aliens themselves have a custom called “neblading” which, while it comes across as basically cannibalism, actually somehow allows them to absorb and carry on the memories of their comrades and prey alike. The fact that the alien leader integrated herself into human society and shared their technology both in data-recording and cloning seems to hint that these aliens maybe have a deeper purpose behind them. It’s possible that their drive makes them living arks of the societies they’ve encountered and absorbed, preserving them in a weird and unpleasant way. Still, it’s also shown to have a meaning beyond ‘food’ to at least some of them as well. SZZU has a sympathetic streak and allows BRS time to say her goodbyes to some dying comrades, since she has been around enough humans to know they don’t follow the “custom” of neblading. Most interestingly are the pair of MEFE and LLWO, who are heavily implied to be lovers of some kind- MEFE only wishes upon death for LLWO to be the one to absorb her, and he in turn self destructs himself upon defeat to prevent anyone else from having her/them.
Also, the main villain’s motivation turns out to be letting humans clone her to make the Greys until a perfect copy appears, then kill and eat ‘herself,’ which is so wacky it’s permanently registered into my mind as either the greatest or dumbest villain motivation ever.
Unfortunately, at time of writing I am not sure if BRS: The Game is available any more. It was a download only title in the US with a physical release in Japan as well as a premium edition that came with a White Rock Shooter figma. It was actually harder for me to find the domestic ISO than the Japanese one which is annoying since I legitimately own the game and wanted to stream it a while back. It is probably the most straightforward BRS ‘thing’ to exist to my knowledge- I didn’t play the mobile game or watch the newer anime, but the jet powered wings simulating her long coat make The Game version of her probably my favorite design of the character. If you get the opportunity to try it out, by all means! It’s at least interesting.
