Review of Black Lagoon
Black Lagoon is a fairly big boy in the anime world and tackling it will be fairly entertaining, let's go. Black Lagoon is the story of Rock (full name forgotten for the sake of convenience), an average salaryman who, because of things that are simply too big for him is pretty much forced into the island of Roanapur in Thailand, a lawless ground where the big heads of crime gather to prosper in shady buisness. Throughout the story, Rock will be forced into a world he never thought would be real, and he'll have to grow in a place ready to chew him out if needed.In the anime, he will have to adapt to the influence of this world while also influencing it in part. And this makes every time he stands for himself, no matter how few of them there are, the whole purpose of this anime, his growth is, while on the slower end, satisfying and by the end of the anime, he'll have a reputation within the Lagoon, and Roanapur as a whole.
Animation wise, Black Lagoon is almost 15 years old as of today, so of course it is a bit old, but people like me will like to call it retro, back at the time where the anime opening looks fancy and the subs were written in a police you'd consider acid to your eyes today. And I am a massive fan of this, I discovered a brand new passion for old-ish animes and maybe I'll watch more of them at a later date.
The characters are all fairly different from your average anime, especially if you're into slice of life and romcom like me. They are a bunch that willingly came to Roanapur, so tragic backstories will go wild and mildly psychotic to full blown insane characters will be legion, which is also fairly refreshing compared to happy go lucky/edgy for the sake of edge characters.
A teeny tiny problem I had was into the main cast. While they're all lovable by their own right, the show focused the spotlight more particularly on Rock and Revy. Yes, it is understandable that the main character and the main waifu are the center of attention, but it would have been really interesting to see what drives Dutch to choose the path of money over morality, and simply what is Benny doing here other than being a convenient tech guy when the plot needs it. We're going to the point where secondary characters like Chang and Balalaïka are more fleshed out than them, which, to me, goes to show where the show's priorities go.
All in all, it has been years since I looked for an anime like Black Lagoon, a real dark anime, not unnecessary violent or a goody two shoes kind of good like shonens go. Come to this anime if you don't mind seeing madness being the norm and the norm being madness, if you do, there's no way to not enjoy it.