Black★Rock Shooter (TV Anime Character)

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 spikier 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.

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.

She seems to be more brutal than any other B★RS incarnation, having beheaded Chariot and Arata's possible other self, and killed Dead Master.

Manifestation
Many years prior to the anime's start, 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.

Pursuit for Dead Master
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 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 on top of 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 a blade, but Black★Rock Shooter quickly activates the blue flame on her eye and beheads Chariot.

Confrontation with Black★Gold Saw
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.

Climax of Battle
At the climax of the battle, Mato Kuroi merges with her in order to save Yomi Takanashi; however Black★Rock Shooter has already killed Dead Master by the time she arrives. The shock of having killed Yomi's "other self" causes Black★Rock Shooter to combine red flames into the blue flames around her eye, resulting in a 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). Following the battle, she reverts back to normal.

Reconciliation
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
Her attacks focus more on offensive and evasive maneuvers. Although she shows weakness in combat often, she can be skilled enough to defeat even more powerful oppnents than her. Other than her skill with ranged weaponry, she proved to have great prowess in wielding close-quarter weapons. She also uses her athletic abilities in combat.

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.
 * Even though she becomes I.BRS, She still gets beaten easily (namely by STR). She would've never survived STRYuu's wrath if it not for YuuSTR.
 * This incarnation of BRS appears in the game Lord of Vermillion Re:2, all dressed in her attire in the anime series.