Review of Black Lagoon

Black Lagoon is an action fan's dream come true, but those looking for characters and plot might be a bit turned off. As always, my reviews are spoiler free. I avoided this anime for the longest time, since I am generally not a fan of this kind of action series. After a year or so of procrastination, I finally got around to watching it. Here are my thoughts on the series as a whole (including Second Barrage and Roberta's Blood Trail OVAs, but not the odd Omake Spin off). Story - 5/10 Make no mistake about it: Black Lagoon is an action series through and through. It's gunfights galore,with some explosions and hand-to-hand combat thrown in to spice things up. All this action comes at the expense of an intricate and well thought out plot. I can forgive the show for this, however, since story telling is not its goal. The story of Black Lagoon (and sequel/OVAs) has two good things going for it, though.

1. The story may be simple, but it is still coherent. There are no huge gaps that you are expected to just accept.
2. The story keeps you on the edge of your seat the whole time, despite having no intellectual value whatsoever.

With this in mind, come for the action, not the plot.

Animation - 6/10

Black Lagoon does not have particularly great animation, but it doesn't really detract from the show. Colors are bland, character models are a bit simple while managing to be inconsistently drawn at points, and the gun models were often cringe-worthy. With that said, character movements are fluid throughout the action scenes (so most of the show), so I will give it a little extra credit there. Roberta's Blood Trail is slightly better done, in my opinion.

Sound - 7/10

I loved the opening, Engrish and all. The gunfire was good as well, and the backing soundtrack matched it well.

Characters - 5/10

This is another area that had to be sacrificed to make room for action. Few characters other than Rock, Revy, and Balalaika get more than a minute or two of development. Another contributing factor may be the large cast of characters that make up the show, not allowing any particular one to get much time on screen. This results in characters being pretty one dimensional, with the exception of the three mentioned above. Rock's character develops a bit over the series, but it is nothing to write home about. Revy and Balalaika have their pasts explained, which helps the viewer to better understand their actions, but neither develop at all over the course of the series.

The only other notable characters are the Vampire Twins of Second Barrage. While I won't go into spoilers, they were some of the most interesting and tragic villains I've seen in a series of this nature.

Enjoyment - 7/10

While I don't normally enjoy plotless action series, Black Lagoon was an exception. I was kept on the edge of my seat the whole time, and watched episode after episode soaking up the shear fun and absurdity of it all. If I enjoyed it, it would be any true action fan's dream come true. If someone did not care as much for plot and characters as I do, this show could be much higher ranked for them.

Any fan of action series should not hesitate to watch this series.

Other Thoughts

While I nearly always prefer watching a show raw or subbed, I can assure you that the dub for this series is superb (after the first few episodes, while the characters get into their roles).
While the show has a lot of violence, it is seldom very graphic (there are a few exceptions). However, the profanity in the English dub is harsh and frequent.

Omake has absolutely nothing to do with the series, and you can skip it without missing anything.