Hunting the Elusive

Black Rock Shooter Visual Works 2 is a 32 page huke book released during Comiket 77. It is of course a follow-up to the eminently popular Black Rock Shooter Visual Works, but unlike the first volume, this staple-bound book is in the portrait orientation, and expands on the world of Black Rock Shooter, looking at some other characters. This might be a bit controversial, but I found it a bit less appealing than the first Visual Works due to huke’s modified pallet, resulting in less colourful pictures. However, this might be justified because the book has a sub-title of “Black Side”, so darker, more monochrome tones are to be expected. [Release][PNG]

Black Rock Shooter Visual Works 2 comes with a plastic book jacket which fits over the cover. I have not included this in the scan.

Black Rock Shooter Visual Works 2 has a high degree of page spreads. Because it is a staple-bound book this is not too problematic, but inevitably for mass-produced books, there are misalignments at the spine.

As always, huke’s style is marked by the judicious use of textures and the dominance of black contrasted with pale skin and bright-coloured eyes, giving his works an industrial/military quality.

In fact, if you follow huke’s musings and his other works, you can see he derives quite a bit of inspiration from the military.

Obviously, BRS stands for Black Rock Shooter. BGS stands for Black Gold Saw, DM is Dead Master (antagonist). STR is…well, no one seems to have figured that out yet.

We get an injection of colour towards the end of the volume. This vertical spread is for IBRS (Insane Black Rock Shooter), apparently a combined BRS and BGS.

Some of these pages aren’t displayed here in order, and of course there are more pages in the release.

A hint, I think, can be found by looking at the logos used for each character. BRS, DM, BGS, and STR each have their own fairly consistent logos. I.BRS uses a modified BRS star, and the picture above right seems to be another variant of the BRS star…like a white BRS version? Or perhaps it’s just stylised, since it doesn’t appear as one of the symbols on the back cover of the book.

In any case, it’s all very entertaining, and while I do feel the Black Rock Shooter thing has somewhat jumped the shark in terms of being commercialised, I’m still looking forward to the anime to clear up some of the mystery. I also want to see how much of a story it is possible to hammer out from a song video concept.