Review of Black Lagoon

NOT IMPRESSED AT ALL !!!! I'm starting with the verdict and then following up with some of my thoughts on the show. I didn't particularly like Black Lagoon. I'd rate it lower than 6 but the line art was pleasing to look at and I'm a sucker for good line art. Especially the character designs. Rebecca is so fucking hot and I could watch her shoot people up and cause explosions and stare at her ass and thick thighs all day. Her character design is great and she's awesome. Dutch and Benny seem like likable dudes and I wish hey had more screen time andmore to do in the show.

Black Lagoon is the kinda show where we have a few main characters and their day to day life has enough shit going on to be made a show out of. Much like Cowboy Bebop or Stand alone complex. Meaning that the show will be, to some extend, episodic. There is no overarching narrative in this show and that didn't really become a hindrance to my enjoyment. But what did become a hindrance was a lot of other things.

You see, when you don't have a story to tell with your piece of visual entertainment, you better compensate with something else. For a show like Black Lagoon where the main characters are criminals that undertake illegal and dangerous jobs to put food on their table on a regular basis, the compensation I expected was some adrenaline pumping action and badass characters. And Black Lagoon has these things. However, in order for such a compensation to work, the show needs to focus on it and give it more screen time. And Black Lagoon focused too much on the background details of each of their jobs and some Japanese guy who's tired of his job and some other characters that I don't give a shit about.

I mean, don't fuck around Black Lagoon. Just get to the fucking point instead of trying to give me all the irrelevant background details through boring exposition scenes. The worst part is that, I didn't even get what all those boring expository dialogues were trying to convey. The exposition is there enough to be boring yet not enough to clarify what's going on. Keep it simple for fuck's sake ! Omit the unnecessary crap !

And the Japanese guy who hates his job. Rock ! What a wimp and waste of screen time. He's just plain boring. He gets all serious and philosophical at times and it's supposed to be deep or some shit. Bleh ! The scenes where he talks to Revy in the submarine and at the restaurant were just cringe worthy and pathetic.

Heart and cheese has no place in a show with a premise like that of Black Lagoon. So characters like the kid who got kidnapped and his lovey dovy maid and rock have no place in it.

And, the heck was with their last job ? What even was the job ? I don't know. Because fuck me for expecting some clarity in the narrative.

A lot of the dialogues and the personality of these characters work better in an English dub. But the Eng-dub for Black Lagoon is terrible like almost every other Eng-dub. None of them sound natural or cool. And the Japanese voice acting just ain't got the punch it takes to make these characters click.

I hate bad anime. But I especially hate anime that has all the good pieces there, only to then screw up miraculously in ways I would never imagine. Black Lagoon is almost such a show.