Review of Black Lagoon

Shoot 'em up bang bang is best way for me to describe the theme of this series. I have a hard time digging around to find some gun-slinging anime that I can enjoy. My example of one would be Cowboy Bebop and the like. Now in terms of the story...the series is pretty episodic but it does seem to progress in the manner that they do recollect to previous events. It's not like they have one episode and everything resets in a different environment with no recollection of the past...and it does build on itself in a way but not in the manner that a seriousplot would. There ARE arcs here and there so that's about to closest thing to an actual plot/story that you get. Shows with solid plots would be like Elfen Lied or CGeass, etc. It may not share the same depth but BL is still incredibly enjoyable to watch.

In the crew we have Dutch, the head of the crew and he treats his 'employees' well. Very admirable character but when the shit hits the fan, he's just as capable of wreaking havoc as Revy. We've got Benny who is the techno-guru information's officer of the crew. We have Balalaika, soviet-russian ex-military who runs hotel-moscow, a russian mafia group that is one of the few, but also one of the most powerful, forces that calls the island of Roanapur home. She's quite the fearsome woman and comes into play quite frequently, even more-so in Season 2. An interesting little piece of information on her name is that it is also the name shared to a Russian guitar-like instrument. It was widely used and supported by the Soviet Union, replacing anything having to do with a Violin (Violas, Cellos, etc.) in their Red Army Choir. Her group, like the instrument, had its place in the soviet russia, but also like the period before where the instrument was banned due to its annoyance to church and state, they were outcast as well. We then have Rock and Revy who I will go into detail...I don't give as much to Dutch, Benny, and Balalaika simply because, even though they are incredibly unique, I didn't feel as impacted by them as I did with the Rock and Revy pair. All the characters are memorable in the end.

We start off with Rokuru, later dubbed Rock (Rok? Whatever..semantics), the man has it as dull as it can get. Cubicle bound, kissing the dirty underside of his superiors shoes, working in an excruciatingly BORING environment...probably got a nice little 9 to 5 going for him. In short, the man was a white coat, khakis, and tie boring office ant trying to tick his way up the corporate ladder. Great fun right? Whelp, that takes a complete 180 when he's out on an off-shore venture and the ship he's on gets confiscated by the lovable gang that works under the name of Black Lagoon. They're a courier service...your black market mail man, your dark delivery service. After some X, Y, and Z happens, avoiding spoilers, he hitches a ride with the rest of the crew and the story goes from there.

We've also got Revy, the lovable blood-thirsty, gun-slinging, sewer munchkin that'll chop your balls off and feed 'em to you, wait for them to digest and do it again. She's the muscle of BL, less so with her hands and more so with her supernatural abilities to handle weapons. She's very fun to watch in both the action and social environments and the interactions between her and Rock do affect each other quite seriously, causing changes in views and some personality adjustments. They teach and learn from one another on each extreme of the spectrum. Now, some people may get wrapped up in the fact that she slaughters everything while the ones she's fighting against collectively have the aim of a stormtrooper, but I love the action...don't care. There are very few that can stand up to her but it makes for some pretty nice action scenes when they appear. She and rock develop a pretty interesting relationship...not romantic but I won't say anything more than that. She's got a one of a kind voice....if you're going to watch it in dub, stick with the dub through both Season 1 and 2 simply because if you try to switch over to the subs, her character would feel incredibly different. Something as simple as a pitch change in her voice can give a drastic change in view of her character.

The animation style was excellent. It wasn't "oooh...shiny" but it seemed very fitting in a manner that I wish I could explain, can't particularly put it into words. The drawing, nonetheless, was very smooth, fluent, colorful, and in a few instances, beautiful. The sound was well placed, I enjoyed the intro music. The ending music was a little strange, at least in my eyes, but was very well placed when the episode was concluding...its presence gave good indicator that the show was over folks, come again!

If you like crazy girls with guns, pirates in suits, Hawaiian shirts, and daisy-dukes, all the blood, explosions and shoot-em-up you can handle, then this is definitely for you. Even if your not too sure about all those things, watch it anyway. Its episodic nature is more than made up for in the action scenes, memorable characters, and character development between Rock and Revy. I thoroughly enjoyed this series enough to keep it stored up and will more than likely re-watch both seasons in the near and dear future.