Review of Black Lagoon

Major disappointment. This show was recommended to me by a friend under the promise it would be a gritty dark and dramatic, and while yes, the show tries its hardest to be these things, it felt hollow and inconsequential. Firstly, the writing is poor, there are too many corny and unnatural dialogue choices, making the characters feel more or less like a parody of the western action antiheroes. The profanity is gratuitous and really cringeworthy, reminiscent of a person trying way to hard to act tough. The shows basic setup is weak, however early on I felt like there was going to be some realcharacter development between the two leads Revy and Rock.

Now other than the Tokyo arc, the two characters do not evolve whatsoever. Revy starts out as an angry asshole, and by the very end of the show, is still exactly that, in fact growing even less likeable as during the OVA Rock and Revy become even more emotionally dissonant, barely interacting. Not to mention Revy is essentially a second rate Fay Valentine, what with the whole childhood sob story, but hard and inaccessible exterior.

The other surrounding characters have historically interesting backgrounds, however I noticed a lot of them fell into the same category, where we sort of sympathise with them, considering the exceptional circumstances surrounding their lives, but their personalities are too blank-faced or formulaic: "Roberta, the quiet but calculated killer" or "Benny, the computer guy", speaking of whitch: what happened to Benny, besides one attempt to establish his character early on, he fades away so hard after say the 7th episode.

However, I think the biggest problem with the show was the action: super excessive, to the point where there are no stakes. The episode where Revy and Dutch take out a boat of Nazis without batting an eye was especially boring. The main characters have such ridiculous plot armour, that throughout all of the show, there was not a single moment where the stakes felt high, and not a single major character death occurred throughout the entire show (unless one would the one in the Tokyo arc).

So yeah, boring, gratuitous repetitive action with no stakes, character arcs that seem to stop dead in their tracks after the Tokyo arc, and cheesy one liners. Would not recommend.