Cue rockin' Japanese guitar riffs.
Black Lagoon is based on an original manga by Rei
Hiroe, and follows the Lagoon Company, a mercenary smuggler group, on
their travels as they seek to eke out a living on the wrong side of the
law.
One of the mercenaries of Lagoon Company, a
particularly busty femme fatal by the name of Revy, decides to take
Rokuro (Rok) as a hostage for some extra cash on the side and he is
summarily taken on board the Black Lagoon - the mercenary's pirate ship -
and spirited away.
What ensues during the first episode is Rok's
kidnapping which he greets with plenty of moping and "why me" sort of
diatribes while his captors candidly broach the subject of his execution in
front of him.
At first Rok is shocked and outraged at
the violence and cavalier attitudes of the mercenaries, which include
Dutch the leader, Revy the gun-toting babe, and Benny the
token computer hacker/technical genius. But as time wears on,
Rok's outrage and shock evaporates and he develops an appetite for adventure...
While the story is often a bit thin and can be erratic with
some odd moments - Rok being punched in the pace by Dutch and then
realising that it helped to "clear his mind" - the setting in South
East Asia is kind of cool, and there's more action and violence in the
first two episodes of Black
Lagoon than you'll find in a Chuck Norris B-movie.
Granted, the sometimes obtuse storyline is pretty
typical for this sort of anime, and anyone who enjoyed Cowboy Bebop will
probably get a kick out of it, but sometimes I wished there could have
been more intelligence in the scripting, much like Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone
Complex.
Some of the dialogue is so incredibly shite that I
resorted to gouging my eyeballs out with a rusty melon baller, and
while there are some highlights in there, most of the evil nemeses are
just too predictable, churning out the same old garbage as every other
action anime we've seen been before: "They're gonna die slowly" etc.
The gun battles are very cool however, and there are ingenious - some may say ludicrous - action scenes as
well, one of which involves the Black Lagoon military boat
flying through the air in a Matrix-inspired
moment.
Though it's far less original than something like Death Note,
the appeal here is not the animation or the storyline, but the
mad capped action, the dark, wry humour and absurd setups.
While I wouldn't call the animation lacklustre,
there are some scenes that come off as low budget and not very
well thought out, but the over-the-top action scenes are
usually very well drawn and highly entertaining with bullets and bodies
flying everywhere.
Rok eventually ends up joining the Lagoon Company,
who take jobs from a variety of criminal groups including the
mysterious Hotel Moscow, a Russian crime cartel. The Lagoon Company's various
employers are also embroiled in further conspiracies and wars which help to add a touch
of intrigue to proceedings.
There are some philosophical musings here and
there, as Rok tries to reconcile his involvement with a group of
murderous criminals with the fact that his life has new meaning and
plenty of adventure, but the pseudo-babble never overshadows
the action or dark humour.
Despite many attempts at humour in the Black Lagoon series,
including some funny visual gags here and there, a lot of it is lame-core and not very
inventive, often involving Revy killing scores of militia men and then
making some wise crack and pulling a face. There's also Revy's
"amusing" lust for killing, her addiction to guns and so on and so forth.
While I may have mocked some aspects of Black Lagoon in
this review, it is some of the best escapist anime fun I've seen in a
while. The characters are grating to begin with and the dialogue is
best described as B-grade, but after a few episodes this anime does grow on you.
It's not the best Japanese action series ever commissioned,
but it's far from the worst and has an odd sort of charm. And it gets better the further you
delve into the series as more missions and targets are given
to the Lagoon Company and less time is spent on character development. If something as bonkers as 'absurdist overkill adventure' sounds good to you, then Black Lagoon deserves a close inspection. EXTRAS with Sean Lynch
Not
to bad here (especially considering it's only four episodes - generally
releases like this are fairly scarce in the Extras department) with a
pretty interesting making of feature on offer, as well as a downright
hilarious JapaneseMusic Video for the series.
For DVD Cover nerds - fear not, also included is a clean collectible reversible cover. Conclusion:
Movie 60% Extras: 50%
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