YMMV / Black Bullet

• Americans Hate Tingle: Audience reception for the series is far more negative in the west than in Japan, mainly because of Enju Aihara, the Little Sister Heroine theme prevalent in the series, and the massive amounts of Too Bleak, Stopped Caring it can generate in the audience.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: Many viewers who watched the first episode got turned off by Enju's (a 10 year old girl) hitting on Rentaro (a 16-year-old teenage boy) and the notion of a Berserk-level grimdark Lolicon action series. The hopeless tone of the rest of the series doesn't help.
• Awesome Music: The opening, "black bullet" by fripSide, and the ending, "Tokohana" by Nagi Yanagi.
• Base-Breaking Character: Aside from the generally well-established fan love for Tina, debates about Enju can send shockwaves through forums. Some see her as an annoying little sister character whose idealism contrasts too harshly with the world she lives in (not to mention her Precocious Crush towards Rentaro), while others consider her a solid character with a lovable personality, a pleasant divergence from the cynicism and ambiguity of many main characters in anime, and which only increases her Woobie status once the series kicks off with it. However, most of them are unanimous in that she is quite adorable.
• Broken Base:
  • The anime adaptation. Some believe it's a good anime with strong political and philosophical messages and themes, along with well-developed characters and action. Others find it to be either So Okay, It's Average or a dark shōnen Attack on Titan ripoff catered to the lolicon fanbase. It's even more base-breaking within the light novel readers, some of which felt the anime drastically changed many scenes or cut out a lot of content, while others say that it stays true to the mood and theme of the light novels.
  • In the light novels, The Fugitive Arc (volumes 5 and 6). The infamous NTR arc where the antagonist forced Kisara into marriage, framed Rentaro for murder and put Enju and Tina through hell (such as the implications that Enju suffered physical and emotional abuse and torture by "buddy killer") has caused a lot of controversy among readers. Some said the Fugitive arc adds a lot of Tear Jerker drama and appropriately deconstructs Rentaro's utilitarian ethics. Others find this story arc to be Facepalm-worthy, feeling it was created just to piss the readers off.
• Draco in Leather Pants: The Hiruko pair has some fan following and support. Kagetane for his opinions towards the government and his daughter, Kohina, for being as equally cute as the main young female character, Enju Aihara.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Shougen Ikuma, despite being Killed Off for Real and his Dying Moment of Awesome, has garnered a large fanbase mainly because of his manly appearance. It doesn't help that the manga adaptation makes him a bit more of a likable character.
  • Similarly, Shougen's Initiator, Kayo Senju, has also received a big fan following.
  • At least in the anime, Kagetane is extremely popular, sometimes moreso than the protagonists, because of his entertaining personality and the fact that he's totally justified in believing that Humans Are Bastards.
  • Kagetane's daughter, Kohina, isn't too far behind because of her being a Cute and Psycho Creepy Child.
• Escapist Character: Tina Sprout. Even among folks who hated this show, it's generally agreed that many want Tina as their little sister instead of Enju (especially in America). It also doesn't help to note that Tina's personality does not fit into the typical Japanese stereotype of an American.^note While Americans are often portrayed to be brash, loud, Hotblooded and sometimes arrogant, Tina is the complete opposite, being quiet, airheaded, and a very friendly girl at heart.
• Fan Nickname:
  • "Lolis Getting Killed Left and Right: The Light Novel": The very nature of this series involves a lot of cursed children (a race of lolis) getting indiscriminately killed off.
  • Also, "Loli Death Simulator" thanks to this video.
  • "NTR Bullet": Volumes 5 and 6. It's infamous for having the main antagonist forcefully kissing Kisara (Rentaro's love interest) and forcing her into marriage. Said antagonist later frames Rentaro for murder, ruins Enju's life by having IISO take her away and forcefully pairs her with a stranger named "buddy killer" (and it's later implied that she suffered a lot of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of this person), and gets Tina Sprout sentenced to death row. Apparently, this caused many of the Chinese light novel translators to drop their translation plans for this series due to how dark and depressing the later novels become. Not to mention all these plot devices were seen to be really trollish. Fortunately, volume 6 ended with the villain's plot foiled, Rentaro's name cleared and him reunited with Kisara, Enju, and Tina.
• Fan-Preferred Couple:
  • Despite Rentaro and Kisara being an Official Couple, many folks at /a/ on 4chan prefer pairing Rentaro with Enju Aihara. This is mainly due to Enju's The Woobie status, sweetheart personality, her being a cute young girl that fits perfectly with the Little Sister Heroine archetype, and being one of the most lovable characters in the series. There are also those that don't like the Childhood Friend Romance because they think it's overused.
  • Meanwhile in America, the Tina Sprout/Rentaro ship is preferred more than the Rentaro/Enju AND Rentaro/Kisara ships combined.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • Developed this with Attack on Titan because of the similar premise of humanity in a defensive war against a monstrous threat.
  • Also with No Game No Life for the spot of "Best Loli of the Spring 2014" season, as both Black Bullet and No Game No Life have male leads with young girls as partners seen as Little Sister Heroine in the eyes of the said protagonist.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Tina Sprout isn't seen as unpopular in Japan but just another character. In America, however, she has received a much larger fanbase than in Japan.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Kinema Citrus animated the adaptation. Shortly after, they would make Under the Dog, which also exhibited numerous similarities with this.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Captions of Enju putting on an annoyed face were popular as reaction shots in other contexts, especially with the exploitable if morbid line "you know you liked it" (originally a response to Rentaro advising her not to throw high kicks while wearing a skirt).
  • After its heyday in 2014, the franchise became somewhat known as "the series whose author retired to open a restaurant" or some variation. Author Shiden Kanzaki disappeared from social media the following year and left the series orphaned since, and as he was working in a restaurant prior to that, many assumed he lost interest in writing and retired to focus on his job. Although this theory has become accepted to the point of sites officially claiming it's true, it is still complete speculation; the fate of both Kanzaki and his series might be unironically considered one of the biggest mysteries of 2010s anime.
• Nausea Fuel: ANY of the Gastrea transformations, in addition to being horrific.
• Spiritual Successor: Many readers consider Black Bullet (and the light novel author, Shiden Kanzaki) to be the Spiritual Successor to Gen Urobuchi's works (more particularly, Fate/Zero and Puella Magi Madoka Magica ^note coincidentally, the Black Bullet light novels first debuted on the same year Puella Magi Madoka Magica aired). The light novel author is even a fan of nitro+ and Urobuchi's works, and Black Bullet takes a lot of inspiration from Gen's works. Kanzaki has even mentioned that Rentaro originally was going to have a personality similar to Kiritsugu Emiya. The themes in Black Bullet are also similar as well, as it focuses on utilitarianism, dark imagery, and suffering (and much like in Gen Urobuchi's works, young girls in Black Bullet receive the worst end of the suffering). Much like Gen Urobuchi, the light novel writer has a habit of being a Trolling Creator as well.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: The setting is so very crapsack and the main characters are hopelessly ineffectual in stopping the Gastrea threat or the segregation against the cursed children, not to mention the author's tendency of killing off a good number of characters before they receive sufficient Character Development and putting main characters Rentaro and Enju through sadistic hell. Detractors accuse the author of putting too much emphasis on sadistic treatment of the characters while failing to clear up several plot points such as Enju's high erosion rate. It doesn't help that the story appears to get worse at some point, with moments such as the massacre of the cursed children school. This reached its apex with the Fugitive arc (volumes 5 and 6), where the author decides to put every main character through the worst possible suffering he can come up with. The group that hates the cursed children seems so irredeemable while the heroes look so ineffective in the long term that there are fans who end up rooting for the Hiruko pair.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: A very interesting case. Many fans think Black Bullet is a typical dark shonen action anime ^note Since many anime fans are quite used to seeing shonen anime incorporating seinen like themes and elements such as Attack on Titan, Deadman Wonderland, and Death Note. The series itself is seinen and the anime aired at Otaku O'Clock.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?:
  • The light novels show a lot of strong political overtones throughout the series. Namely, the status of the cursed children can easily be compared to the Jim Crow segregation laws in the United States and the apartheid government in South Africa. Should a small minority of young girls born with an incurable parasitic virus be treated as low lives in society, even being lynched and murdered in public, or should they be treated as equals to normal humans? Are the cursed children by nature destined to be evil since they'll turn into Gastrea monsters anyway, or has the circumstances of society pushed the cursed children into a life of poverty and crime? Are the cursed children the key to defeating the Gastrea and funding the cure to the virus? Can the cursed children and humanity live together side by side in peace? Many of these points are explored throughout the novels.
  • Seitenshi can easily be compared to civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela for her fight for the cursed children, as well as her strong pacifistic stance and belief that there can be nonviolent change in society.
  • Black Bullet also has a very strong left-leaning political plot; Rentaro and Seitenshi want to reform society to grant civil rights to the cursed children so they can be treated with dignity and respect. The series puts a lot of emphasis on and deconstructs Rentaro's utilitarianism, while the antagonists are either named after libertarian philosophers such as Ayn Rand, or a secret Right-Wing Militia Fanatic organization wanting to unite Japan under their ultranationalist fist and use genetically modified Gastrea to Take Over the World.