Review of Black Lagoon

Black Lagoon is an action packed show that puts morality front and center every episode. The show is centered on a guy named, “Rock” who was captured by pirates and then chose to become one. During the show (Season one and two) Rock struggles with morality. He used to be a white-collar business man from Tokyo who had to suck up to his boss all the time, but now he is a low-life who sees people die nearly every day. Art 9/10 The shows artwork is very consistent throughout. It has a very serious tone to it. The directors did very well by putting certain episodes in darksettings to show how immoral certain things are, but the director also shows how immoral things can also be done in shiny and beautiful places too.

The character art is pretty diverse when it comes down to the main characters. It shows a part of the personality you can’t easily find out. To keep things less realistic, Revy, who is always wearing redneck shorts, always seems to have extra ammo somewhere. She doesn’t wear a backpack or an ammo belt.

Character 9/10
Character development was near constant, although certain characters still ended up just being a shell that could’ve gotten deeper. Rock and Revy get some decent character development while Benny and Dutch hardly get any.

Revy aka Two-Hands, is a woman who has been killing since she was a little kid and she, as you may find out, is an amoral person. Rock, as stated before, is a trained business man who chose to become a pirate, but as you’ll see, he never shoots a gun. Benny is the go-to guy when it comes down to technology and Dutch is the captain of the Black Lagoon boat and he seems like a very likable person.

Even though the characters are unique and show very unstable personalities, the show doesn’t give a full sense of development on their personalities. Some characters are very dangerous almost Robot-from-the-future-like, while others are wimpy yet need a million bullets in order to actually hit anything they shoot at.

The characters are probably the most important part of the series. Their personalities dive deep into philosophical and psychological concepts. It is interesting to see that the characters were over-whelmingly well thought out. If you want to see character development at its core, I suggest watching this.

Sound 9/10
I watched the English Dub and I really liked it. One of the voice actresses in the English dub is also in Tenchi Muyo and that brought familiarity to me and helped me get more interested in the show.

Overall, the sound is great; there isn’t much music to speak of other than the ending theme. The dialogue can get frustrating at times because they can be very lengthy, especially towards the end of season two. And the different sounds you’ll hear from different types of deaths (both bodily and vocal) are unique and I never got the sense of voice actors being reused for other character parts.

Story 9/10
It’s the first time I heard of a story concept featuring pirates and romanticizing them, but the story wasn’t bad at all. It starts off with Rock being punched in the face and being asked if the thing he was carrying is what the pirates were looking for. And eventually his boss says he should die in the sea and even got paramilitary groups to kill him and the pirates. Long story short, Rock chooses to become a pirate and the adventures start there. The ending is pretty sad, and it kind of felt that I got robbed of a better ending.

The story concepts are to use several different events placed throughout one year and show how they happened. Some sub-stories will last a couple episodes, and some even reached more than 5, so expect story changes throughout, but the overall/underlying story will always remain.

Enjoyment 7/10
Although, the gun fights were interesting, I tended to get bored because it was usually the same thing over and over. I don’t typically like seeing such a sad ending to such an action-packed show and I think that kind of robbed some of my enjoyment.

Since the story was centered around Rock and Revy, I expected some romance, or at least a little bit and no; there was no romance. There was only an extremely occasional ecchi moment.

But overall I liked the show and it stayed very consistent throughout. With such a sad ending, it felt that Rock’s story truly ended when it was actually only beginning. Great directing, great stories and wonderful sound and art, but the ending should’ve been different (in my opinion) and I think others who love gun-fighting action will love this show. I hope you all enjoy the show too.

Sub Group used: [Exiled Destiny]