Review of Black Lagoon

Every once in a while, two different teams, with different ideas and sometimes even at a different point in time, create two very similar pieces of media. Whenever that happens, most reviews start with a sentence acknowledging this fact and usually stating which work is superior. If you want to see an example of this happening, look up the user reviews for Deep Impact on IMDB and watch out for the word Armageddon. In a similar way, I have to start this off by saying that Black Lagoon is just Cyberpunk:Edgerunners only worse in every way imaginable. When I reviewed Edgerunners I gave it a10/10 so the fact that Black Lagoon is worse doesnt mean that its a bad show but it does put the show in a really awkward position. All the novelty Black Lagoon might have had in the past is simply gone, because I have already seen this story and whenever the show fucks up, I have to immediately think about Edgerunners and how that show did it better.

The first and most obvious difference between Edgerunners and Black Lagoon is the setting. Instead of the sci-fi distopia, we get the real life distopia of 1990s. This might not seem like a bad idea at first, yet after watching the show it becomes painfully obvious just how much damage this decision did. The show gains absolutely nothing from the setting, while it would be no exaggeration to say that every single aspect of this show has been hurt by the rotten foundation it is forced to stand on. This brings me to the massive plot contrivance that is the city of Roanapur. In the same way, I can accept the existence of Night City because of the world around it, I simply cannot accept the existence of Roanapur. Now, I am not saying that there aren't cities controlled by local crime lords in real life, but they sure as hell dont look like that. Roanapur is essentially a war zone with violence so excessive that buildings get blown up in broad daylight. Not only do people still live there, but it seems that nobody gives a shit about it. I get that there is no government to put an end to this, but what about the crime bosses? This brings me neatly to the factions and who controls what. Roanapur is a home to a plethora of different criminal organizations, many of which are antagonistic to one another. This might sound like a decent setup with the gangs deadlocked in constant conflict, but it all falls apart once you think about the massive power imbalance between the groups. This gets exponentially worse with the Russian mafia, who are time and time again shown to be the strongest organization by far. Whenever the plot demands it, the Russians turn into an omnipresent and omnipotent powerhouse able to curbstomp anyone they wish, yet at the same time, they let other groups gain massive spheres of influence in Roanapur for no real reason. Are they so fucking lazy that they can't be bothered to take care of their own turf or what? But wait, it gets worse. Not only do the Russians allow their allies to grow in power, they extend the same courtesy to their enemies as well. Fucking why? Who the fuck wrote this? How the hell are the Russians still alive is beyond me.

With the world out of the way, we can finally get to the main story. Black Lagoon decided to go with an episodic approach to its main plot line. After the introductory arc, each new story is a self-contained contract our heroes had to do. For a story like that to work, each contract needs to be an interesting new adventure. This is much easier to do in a fantasy or sci-fi setting. In those settings, you can have your characters wrestle a dragon on Monday, play chess with the devil on Wednesday and finish of the week by suplexing a Tarrasque into a volcano. Sadly, real life is much more boring and so the show has to essentially abandon its own premise to give us some entertaining jobs. Now I am not saying that our heroes should spend the entire season smuggling drugs from point A to point B like they would in real life, but you will have to ignore the fact that Black Lagoons business model is obviously unsustainable. I know that it's a very minor problem, but it didn't have to be there if the setting wasn't so bad. Other than that, the story is fine.

Now, you don't need me to tell you that the meat of shows like this is usually in the characters. Black Lagoon consists of four characters, each of them personifying a different problem I have with the show.

Rock - The problem with rock is obvious, he is a massive moralfag. It's honestly hard to describe just how annoying listening to this guy's constant moaning gets. A problem made much worse by the fact that he is the MC. Morally conflicted characters can work but they usually have to have no other choice but to do evil. Rock isn't a victim of circumstance or anything like that. He literally gets a golden opportunity to return to his former life, but he rejects it because he enjoys this shit. This wasn't a spur of the moment thing either. If he hates doing crime so much, he can just leave Black Lagoon at any point, without any consequences, and go home. Meaning that Rock is not only an unberable moralfag but also a massive hypocrite. Another problem with Rock is just how out of place he is. If you have a newbie join a gang, it's usually a good idea to give him some sort of special ability that makes him useful. David had a sandevistan, Leo had the all-seeing eyes and Rock has nothing. This problem once again stems from the real world setting. They try to address this by turning him into a sort of PR person of the group. Yeah, I dont think that there is a big demand for PR people in the world of organized crime and even if there was wouldn't you want someone who means business to do the job? They try to show how good he is at this by having him defuse some extremely contrived situations that clearly exist just so he has something to do.

Revy - If Rock was hard to watch because of his annoying morality, then Revy is hard to watch because of her complete and utter immorality. As the resident gunslinger, she is responsible for most of the killing Black Lagoon does. A job which she clearly enjoys a bit too much. Revy enjoys killing so much that she gets pissy when she doesn't get to kill anyone and once she gets started she just doesn't stop. She has no qualms about killing unarmed civilians and in her bloodlust she nearly turns on her own crew. And as if that wasn't bad enough, she is shown to be ill-tempered, cruel and sadistic. Its honestly hard to root for someone this laughably evil with no redeeming qualities to speak of.

Dutch - Finally, a character I actually liked. Dutch is the group's leader/tard wrangler. He is the glue that holds the group together, a job he is very good at. He is a guy who gets things done without any complaints even though he doesn't exactly enjoy what he does. But the work needs doing and he is there to do it. Outside of work, Dutch seems like a normal guy with his head firmly on his shoulders, but there is also a bit of mystery around him. Who is he talking to on the phone? Does he have a family somewhere that he wants to protect from this lifestyle or is there something more sinister going on? Its not a major plotpoint or anything like that, but a perceptive watcher will be able to spot him in the background of many scenes doing his own thing. One of my favourite scenes in the entire show was Rock going through the street bitching about some menial shit like he always does and in the background, just for a second or two, you can see that one of the people he was just passing by was Dutch talking to someone on that fucking payphone. What is he up to? Man, I really love what they did with Dutch. Sadly, even he is not without problems. Black Lagoon really likes to add real world references into the dialogue and it just doesn't work. Most of these references come out of nowhere, serve no purpose and feel completely out of place. That alone would be bad enough, but they also felt the need to reference real life mass murders and wartime atrocities. To say that most of these references were made in poor taste would be a massive understatement. This is a problem endemic to all the characters in Black Lagoon, but Dutch is by far the worst about it. You cant imagine just how glad I am that the show takes place in the 90s, because otherwise Dutch would be telling us what he thinks about 9/11 and Columbine.

Benny - who?

Now, after all of that, you might be a bit confused about why I gave this show a positive rating. It's simple. This show caters to people with a very specific taste. The best way to describe what I am talking about would be with a quote from the Cowboy Bebop movie.

"I love the kind of woman that will actually just kill me. You know, when I left the house today I was thinking "Damn, I really hope some hot chick will paint my brains all over the fucking hallway". And here we are. I mean really, just absolutely destroy me. I'm talkin' full on, watermelon-in-thighs level carnage."

Yep, every single major group in Black Lagoon has a character like that. We have the army girl, the pirate, the Chinese spy, the nun. Even this shows version of Adam Smasher is a girl in a maid outfit with jugs bigger than my fucking head. I am honestly a bit embarrassed to say this, but it is the truth. Without it, Black Lagoon would probably be unwatchable but thanks to it I enjoyed my time with the show.