Black★Rock Shooter (Developments)

This article serves as an introduction to the upcoming OVA series Black★Rock Shooter.

Black★Rock Shooter: Initial Designs
The first designs of the characters for the Black★Rock Shooter universe are created by Huke, one of the present members of band Supercell in which he works as graphic artist. These works are not related to Vocaloid and were conceived as original works from his days before joining Supercell.

Huke has an array of about 20 characters in the Black★Rock Shooter universe, most of them relatively unfamiliar names. This is because only 6 of them are featured in Anomaro-P's PV (see below).

Initial designs for Black★Rock Shooter herself has changed to fit Miku's image; she originally has no long twin pigtails, like her former identity as a normal high school student in the pilot video.

The Song and Supercell
Ryo, member of Supercell, gained inspiration to write the song after seeing huke's works. The song created was performed by Vocaloid Hatsune Miku, who also performs in the majority of Supercell's compositions. Because of this, huke makes a slight adjustment to Black★Rock Shooter's designs, adding the twin pigtails to her final design.

The song was first submitted in Japanese video site Nico Nico Douga, where it has two versions with differing video accompaniment: one is made by Anomaro-P while the other one is made by huke.

Later, the video embraced a wider audience when it reaches YouTube, where its two versions garnered a total of about 200,000 views. The song and the designs also started to gain a fanbase, and much later, was performed by famous members of Nico Nico Douga in a number of versions, including a band edition which is performed together with a chorus of human singers and, occasionally, including Hatsune Miku herself.

The OVA Adaptation
An OVA adaptation of Supercell's song was announced to be released in Spring of 2010, with the story based on Anomaro-P's video in Nico Nico Douga. This was confirmed in Black★Rock Shooter's official website.

The anime project will be supervised by Yutaka Yamamoto and directed by Shinobu Yoshioka; both have also worked anime series Lucky☆Star and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. The animation company who will handle the series will be Yamamoto's Ordet studio. Huke and ryo will also collaborate with Ordet in the project.

On September 30, 2009, about seven months before the OVA itself, a "pilot edition" of Black★Rock Shooter was made available in DVD and Blu-ray Disc formats. Included with the disc are artwork for the anime and a "live performance" version of the song Black★Rock Shooter.

In Tokyo Anime Fair 2010, an anime conference held in Japan, it has been confirmed by the production staff that the OVA will be made available in free streaming format as part of their campaign to advertise the show. It will be available between June 25 and August 31, 2010.