Review of Black Lagoon

Some things are best left alone. Czech Republic, nice place, Slovakia, also nice, but it would not be particularly controversial for me to say that things weren’t so pleasant in Czechoslovakia. And Black Lagoon suffers from the same problem, it tries to be multiple things at once, but fails to be a good example of either. The story takes place in the ancient era known as the mid 2000’s, back when pirates were an actual threat. Main character Rokuro gets taken hostage by The Lagoon Company, and after acting like a complete liability for a while, he strangely decides to quit his job and join them,and even more strangely they accept, and he changes his name to Rock as some baptism through fire, indicative of the fact he’s not the same person he was before, except not really.

Initially, Rock does seem to be a new person, he seems pretty content about his decision from going to an overly apologetic salaryman to a hard case pirate, but this is only temporary. Not long after, he is sent with another crewmate to do some gravedigging from an ex-Kriegsmarine submarine, and objects to it because stealing from him is wrong (don’t really see how it’s worse than stealing from the living, but that’s besides the point), and this is generally his role throughout the rest of the series, trying to divert a band of criminals onto the right moral path, which is a position I would think he’d give up pretty soon, given how it falls on deaf ears – if you can’t handle the heat, get out of the kitchen. Going from a normal person to a hard-ass who kills without second thought isn’t a particularly new narrative path, but it works, they seem to suggest that he’s going on it in the beginning, and then it’s instantly dropped, he never changes.
More generally, the dialogue and characters are quite awkward. There’s not really any character development to speak of, largely because of an inconsistent tone, more on that later. But the real problem with it is that, firstly, they seem to make these constant references to elements of Western popular culture, and it just sounds extremely out of place most of the time, saying such things doesn’t automatically raise an eyebrow, but most of the time it just doesn’t really make much sense, maybe if this was about the overactive imaginations of a high school film club, it’d be more plausible, but it feels rather strange seeing someone reveal they’re hiding something by saying “don’t worry about it, I’m Harry Houdini”, I’m not sure if people over there even know who he is, and the fact they’re clearly not very familiar with pronouncing English words doesn’t do them any favours.
Yet, despite this fact, the other main problem is how everyone is extremely Japanese. The main characters consist of Rock (Japanese), Revy (Chinese-American), Benny (Jew), and Dutch (black), making it probably the most racially diverse group of gangsters since Robocop (I’m allowed to say it since I’m actually from the Anglosphere.) And, their enemies are equally varied, Russian mafia, American police, a Venezuelan ex-revolutionary who’s now a maid because anime, and that’s just a few of them. But, despite this fact, it was quite clearly written by someone who doesn’t really have much of a frame of reference for behaviour for the rest of the world. Nazis do not bow their head in apology when they have failed, it’s just not something they do, and speaking of the Nazis when they’re compromised the Lagoon Company gives their leader a chance at honourable suicide, which he does genuinely consider for quite a while, doesn’t go through with it but the fact he chose not to surrender means he would have passed as a very believable IJA officer. For some backwards reason I think the Nazis act more Japanese than the one Japanese bloke.

The tone, as well, is quite inconsistent, in particular Revy’s conflict with Rock. Sometimes she seems greatly traumatised by her past and torn up about it, other times she seems like she’d shoot a baby just to prove a point about how little she cares about anything. Sometimes Revy tries to be a discount Groucho Marx, whereas other times the story’s meant to be incredibly dark, and I guess the fact there’s child trafficking and the church being used for arms dealing and shit like that is maybe meant to contribute to the dark tone that, for the most part, is there. But they don’t go anywhere with these things, it’s a bit strange really, in the episode where they’re in the submarine, it’s “let’s argue about the value of holding ethical sentiments.” Afterwards, they never even seem to acknowledge that social issues exist, they give an operatic argument about morals, and from that point onwards, they treat death with so little weight that I don’t even know why they bothered to at any point.

But, at its core, Black Lagoon is an action series, so more important than the characters is if the firefights are well orchestrated, but I wasn’t too impressed. They clearly take a lot from Hong Kong action cinema, and the fights are exaggerated, which isn’t itself a bad thing, but I think when it comes to how ridiculous you want your action scenes to be, everyone has a limit, and this is over mine. Revy, in particular, has a habit of just standing completely still, waiting for herself to get shot because she has to say a one liner (and in case you forgot, the dialogue’s not that good), and it’s very clear that plenty of people have a clear shot, but for some reason they all decide to just wait. In addition, if you’re a main character, then you can take confidence in the fact you will never miss a shot or ever run out of bullets. The action itself isn’t particularly bad, and it’s at its best when they’re fighting Roberta, who is an actual threat to the main characters, of course when it moves to a one-on-one between her and Revy fighting in a freight yard, a couple metres apart, with no cover or concealment or ascensions or depressions, in other words they’re basically fighting in an empty field, and they all suddenly become unable to hit a single shot. I wouldn’t go so far as to say the action is bad, but I’ve seen much, much better. Despite all the cocaine, Martin Scorsese seemed able to keep his action sequences much more controlled, and I found that in Black Lagoon, the longer a fight scene goes on, the worse it becomes.

All in all, Black Lagoon seems to take ideas from an array of sources, but it just kind of shoves them in a box and hopes that it’ll somehow work out. The end result is a disappointing amalgamation of ideas that don’t complement each other, uninteresting characters, generally weak action setpieces, and to top it all off, a story that means absolutely nothing, the arcs have no connection to do with each other in the slightest, which wouldn’t be much of a problem normally, but it feels a lot worse when the last one doesn’t even feel like it’s complete. If you’re going to make a story consisting of self-contained arcs, then they should at least be entirely conclusive and not leave any loose ends, but I’ve got nothing more to say so I’m going to abruptly finish here and prove that I’m just a hypocrite that can’t do any better.