Black★Rock Shooter - Episode 7

Saya's turn from villain to almost-hero in an attempt to save Mato from Black Rock Shooter's world seems to have failed, so what next for our protagonist as the fighting within that world continues?

Once Saya has given up any hope in her own rescue efforts, it seems that the only hope of bringing Mato back to reality lies with Yuu, and it's she who is next to enter the show's other world to call out to Mato.  Indeed, this move meets with some success, bringing some level of realisation from Mato as to her circumstances - however, while Mato wills the fighting to stop, it seems that Black Rock Shooter has other ideas and has no intentions of bringing her battle to an end, even if it means taking some drastic measures to do so.

As news of Kuroi's disappearance reach her school and begin to resurrect painful memories for Yomi and Kagari, so Yuu's dabbling in matters in the other world come to the attention of Black Gold Saw... or should we say, they come to the attention of Yuu thanks to the rather fluid arrangement of personalities between Black Gold Saw/Yuu and her "Strength".  If you thought that Yuu was a pillar of sanity in this series, think again, as she gets her opportunity to prove how bat-shit crazy she is on account of the pain and suffering levelled upon her.  Regardless, it seems that only a more powerful outside influence can save Mato now - no prizes for guessing who that is.

Despite its best efforts to explain a little more about the link between its two worlds, as well as how both Mato and (more substantially) Yuu fit into its equation, it doesn't really stop this episode from further backing up the idea that the series as a whole is a story-telling mess.  With no real threat of death from its action scenes unless the plot explicitly requires it, there's little tension in anything that we see on-screen, while the show's drama proves to be as overblown as ever as it desperately tries to wring some emotion out of a scenario that ultimately feels heartless at a fundamental level.  If we didn't know it already, this instalment seems like the final evidence that Black Rock Shooter simply doesn't work - it's an attempt to shoe-horn a story into a concept that was never created or designed to have one, and it shows.