YMMV / Pacific Rim: The Black

• Alternative Character Interpretation: When Ford Travis finally made it to Sidney, was he unable to return for his wife and children because it was deemed too dangerous to leave? Was it because it could risk luring other Kaiju to Sidney? Or was it because the PPDC did give him permission for a rescue mission but they didn’t have the resources to go into an apocalyptic field?
• Broken Aesop: The idea of Bunyip Man attempting to tame some kaiju with food only for them to turn on him and kill him once the food runs out seems to be an aesop on how wild animals can never be tamed...except the Kaiju aren't wild animals, they're bioweapons and enemy combatants deployed by the Precursors. In fact, the very idea of a Kaiju allowing itself to be fed by humans contradicts established lore of them being controlled by Precursor directive.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: Boy is actually a Kaiju in human form. The fact he's Immune to Bullets, is attracted to the breaches, can communicate with other Kaiju, has incredible strength, and even draws himself as a giant makes his transformation into his Kaiju form at the climax of the season one finale very predictable.
• Complete Monster: The High Priestess of the Sisters of the Kaiju is in league with the masters of the Kaiju, having helped unleash them on Australia to kill millions. Kidnapping women to be painfully brainwashed into new servitors while sacrificing men, the Priestess is behind the conditioning of the innocent Boy, intending to make him the Kaiju messiah to lead the monsters in the genocide of humankind.
• Ensemble Dark Horse; Marauder Zeus only has a scant few seconds of screentime before being killed off, but is well-liked by fans for their design, Awesome Aussie pilot, and willingness to go against orders to help Hunter Vertigo and just to kill some Kaiju.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Taylor, Hayley, Boy, and Mei make it to Sydney. The Sisters and the Breacher have been destroyed. All's well that ends well, right? Well, kaiju still control the continent if not the world, and losing so many allies and Atlas Destroyer means they're less able to fight off the rest of the dominating kaiju before Sydney's overrun.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: One complaint about that anime is that there's only 7 episodes in its first season. While many hoped the second season would alleviate that issue, the second season was also relegated to seven half-hour episodes to wrap up all the plot points — leading to criticisms that its short length led to the story being rushed.
• Memetic Mutation: The Boy being called..."Boy" has invited many comparisons between Taylor and Kratos.
  • The Boy's kaiju form resembling a Gremlin has had some jokes about "feeding him after midnight".
• Moe: A majority of fans find Boy as this, finding his childlike inquisitiveness and mannerisms cute and endearing.
• Narm: Taylor's completely inexplicable refusal to give The Boy a name results in everyone referring to their new companion as simply "Boy". The complete and utter lack of an explanation for why he considers naming the child to be over the line makes it seem like Taylor is just going out of his way to be pointlessly obtuse. The result is otherwise somber scenes cut through with the characters sounding like they're referring to a sibling with an insulting nickname.
• Special Effects Failure: While the models are reasonably detailed, the animation is as stiff as it is weightless. Battles between giant behemoths have all the weight and fluidity of styrofoam models bumping into one another, which was also a complaint with Pacific Rim: Uprising; and the humans have the same Unintentional Uncanny Valley frame-skipping animation as typical of Polygon Pictures' other titles. Some viewers have wondered why the framerate for the humans weren't switched with the Jeagers and Kaiju.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: General consensus by both critics and general viewers from the first season is that this series is much more watchable and entertaining than the much maligned Pacific Rim: Uprising, which it follows the events of, with much higher ratings than Uprising on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb.
• Tainted by the Preview:
  • The reveal of Polygon Pictures animating the series. Given the notoriety of the Godzilla anime trilogy in the West, many expected the animated series to repeat similar plots from the trilogy, even though none of the production staff from said trilogy were involved.
  • Upon the trailer reveal, opinions amongst the fandom were heavily divided, with the main complaints being that the low framerate animation coming off as cheap and that it acknowledges the events of Pacific Rim: Uprising, a film heavily criticized and denounced by fans, some even wanting the film to be removed from canon. However, upon its premiere, many people have seemingly flipped their tune.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: A number of viewers didn't like how the series has a much darker and more cynical tone than the movies, showing humanity is clearly losing the war with the Precursors very badly, and their imminent extinction is all but certain. Unlike the movies showing how humans will come together to fight and prevail, The Black shows humans divided, killing each other, and fighting each other for scraps, with no hope of winning against the Kaiju. Humans are also the primary antagonists in the story, with the Kaiju reduced to a secondary threat.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: As mentioned above, one of the most criticized aspects of the series is that there's barely anything positive happening. With Taylor, Haley, and Mei being at each others' throats regularly, humanity losing against the Kaiju and Precursors with no hope of winning, and the main heroes losing so many allies. In other words, things get so hopeless that it gets hard to care about the story anymore.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: We're meant to empathize with Hayley and her dedication to saving Boy despite Taylor and Mei's reluctance, but all of her actions to help the Kaiju-Hybrid come at the expense of all of her companions and their goal of getting to Sydney. Keeping him around after he first transforms is an extreme risk that Taylor is right to be skeptical about, detouring to find someone to heal him after the Cult poisons him puts them in further danger and also gets Bunyip-Man killed as collateral, raging at Taylor when he trades Boy to try and protect her and Mei and calling the child "their family" despite knowing him for several days at best seems cruel and ungrateful in the wake of raging at Taylor for growing cynical and damaged as a result of the sacrifices her decisions and the consequences of her actions have forced him to make to protect her; even her pushing to rescue Boy from the Cult in the last chapters causes their newly rescued mother to die sooner than later. Instead of appearing as one third of the Freudian Trio, she often appears as the selfish child whose wishes they must indulge at their own expense.
• Win Back the Crowd: Following Uprising, many fans were left disappointed, angered, and unsatisfied. The Black manages to win back these fans, with much praise going to the characterization, world-building, and story, to the point its main criticism was not getting more of it.
• The Woobie: Basically, both Travis siblings qualify as this. They’re technically inexperienced kids struggling to survive a world where even the toughest adults die in. Their parents had to leave them behind to get help, only to never come back. So the two siblings have to endure trying to keep going in a world of killer Kaiju and the moment they finally find other humans like them, only two actually wanted to help them. But one of them died before he even got the chance. Even though they get at each others’ throats almost all the time, they’re still kids and it would be a miracle if they could ever find actual help from other humans again.