Black★Rock Shooter (Developments)

The Black★Rock Shooter concept is conceived by huke, a graphic artist who has been working on the concept even before he joined the band Supercell.

Due to exposure brought about by fellow Supercell member ryo, the concept introduced itself to the Web as the song of the same name. The Vocaloid Miku Hatsune launched the character Black★Rock Shooter into fame, and eventually, she evolves into numerous forms of media.

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 characters in the Black★Rock Shooter universe, most of them relatively unfamiliar names. Only six of them are featured in Anomaro-P's PV (see below).

Initial designs for Black★Rock Shooter herself has been 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

 * Main Article: Black★Rock Shooter (Song)

Ryo, member of Supercell, gained inspiration to write the song after seeing huke's works in his Pixiv account; at this stage, huke has already joined Supercell as part of their creative team. The song created was performed by Vocaloid Hatsune Miku, who also performs in the majority of Supercell's compositions. To tie in Miku with the song, 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 in June 13, 2008, with the video made by huke. Eventually, fanmade videos based on Black★Rock Shooter are uploaded to the said site, the most famous one is made by Anomaro-P using the program MikuMikuDance (posted in Nico Nico in February 8, 2009).

Later, the video embraced a wider audience when it reaches YouTube, where its two versions garnered a total of more than 2,500,000 views. The song and the designs also started to gain a global 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.

Upon the release of the Black★Rock Shooter OVA, Hatsune Miku performs another version of the song, this time, Supercell utilizes Miku Append, a complement of the original Vocaloid program with additional features. This version is entitled "Black★Rock Shooter 2M Mix".

The OVA Adaptation

 * Main Article: Black★Rock Shooter (OVA)

An OVA adaptation of Supercell's song was first announced to be released in Spring of 2010, inspired by the original song. This was confirmed in Black★Rock Shooter's official website. However, there are no confirmations of the content of the plot itself.

The anime project was supervised by Yutaka Yamamoto and directed by Shinobu Yoshioka; both have also worked in anime series Lucky☆Star and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. The animation company who handled the series was Yamamoto's Ordet studio. Huke and ryo also collaborated 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, with the extent of the broadcast (if it would reach countries outside Japan) still unconfirmed.

However, due to unforeseen circumstances, the release of the OVA's DVD was postponed to a later date, with the intent of expanding or improving on the promotion of the Black★Rock Shooter Project. To compensate on the delay, all copies of the DVD format included with the August issue of Hobby Japan, Animedia, and Megami magazines was given a certain merchandise item unique to each magazine brand.

At the start of July, the promotion campaigns continued, starting off with a collaboration between blogger Danny Choo and Good Smile Company to launch "exclusive footage" of Black★Rock Shooter in simultaneous events in Japan, Los Angeles (through the LA Anime Expo 2010) and Paris. In the said footage, it was deemed official that the Black★Rock Shooter OVA will be released in July 24, 2010.

The OVA is eventually released in both streaming and free DVD formats, with the latter bundled with Hobby Japan, Animedia and Megami magazines in their respective August 2010 issues, and with orders of Figma and Nendoroid figurines of Black Rock Shooter. These DVDs have subtitles for seven languages included. On December 17, there will be retail versions of the DVD (and a special Blu-ray+DVD bundle), with a collaborative video with Linkin Park's Joe Hahn.

On November 14, 2010, at the AFAX convention, Aki Takanori (president of Good Smile Company) revealed at Kana Hanazawa's Q&A session that a sequel would be made. However, Takanori quickly added on his Twitter that while they were very eager about the project, nothing has been confirmed.

Black★Rock Shooter THE GAME

 * Main Article: Black★Rock Shooter THE GAME

A month after the release of the DVD of Black★Rock Shooter, the domain jrpg.jp posted in a new site brs.jrpg.jp a teaser video related to a game based on the Black★Rock Shooter concept. The teaser contained very few details regarding the game, including a possible scenario of the story and the character involved, who is none other than Black★Rock Shooter herself.

It was three months later that more information regarding the Black★Rock Shooter game was released. In a conferece held by video game developer Imageepoch on November 24, they announced that Black★Rock Shooter THE GAME (the tentative name of the game) is to be one of the projects of the company. Kazuya Niinou (Trauma Center, Last Ranker) will direct the project and Kazushige Nojima, who has worked on several Final Fantasy games and both installments of the Kingdom Hearts series, will be in-charge of the scenario.

The game, according to Imageepoch, will have role-playing and third-person shooter elements, and will be set in the distant future, where an alien invasion has exterminated much of the human civilization.

A release for the PSP console is confirmed for Summer of 2010, with NIS America handling the distribution of the game in North America (and possibly Europe).

Merchandise

 * Main Article: Merchandise

Various plushies and figurines featuring the Black★Rock Shooter and Dead Master have been released, a majority of them produced by Good Smile Company, who is one of the major sponsors of the project.