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[CyBeR]

Based on the manga by Hiroe Rei.

When Okajima Rokuro visits Southeast Asia carrying a top secret disk, he is kidnapped by pirates riding in the torpedo boat, [it]Black Lagoon[/i]. Although he thought he would be rescued soon, the company actually abandons him, and sends mercenaries to retrieve the secret disk. He narrowly escapes with his life, but has nowhere to go. He gives up his name and past, and resolves to live as a member of the Black Lagoon.

Average 9.33
Animation 10
Sound 8
Story 9
Character 10
Value 9
Enjoyment 10

Welcome to Roanapur, the most lawless and dark city on Earth, where a bag of cocaine or a box of bullets would buy your place in the world safe and easy… well mostly easy. There’s no such thing as safety in the den of the blackest wolves. There’s no way but to sell your soul to the devil and live the life of the city, of the outlaws, of the ones addicted on something darker and so much more powerful than any drug: money, adrenaline, living on the razor’s edge.
Welcome… to the den of wolves, to the Black Lagoon Company… to the world of villains.

Black Lagoon shines out on the action scene through so many reasons that I believe it would be quite difficult for me to list them all in a single review. Keep in mind please that I will not be reviewing Black Lagoon as two separate seasons, but as a whole, the series displaying more unity and quality than many other shows that would attempt something a lot more story driven (a.n: if I were to exemplify, I’d have to say about the more recent show, Claymore…but different story for a very different time).

To sum up everything you will be reading in this review (that is if you require a lot more than the guarantee of some stranger writing reviews on this site) I have to say that Black Lagoon is a perfect balance between a visual masterpiece, an insane slice of life and a character driven show, all brewed together to offer one of the very few outstanding action titles in the anime industry.

Ok, has all my credibility vanished yet after that so very typical fanboy commentary?
Yes? Good…

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Black Lagoon is a visual masterpiece. And that’s coming from a guy that had no reasons to say that since the launch of Advent Children. Everything in this anime is full of class, style and a dark mood to it all that’s simply outstanding.

The action is mostly set in a tropical setting, surrounded by the vast, azure horizon that seems to stretch as paradise would around the nest of corruption that Roanapur represents. The transition from that vast and warm landscape to the hellhole that the city represents is almost brutal, of great effect. The backgrounds and landscapes represent all too well what either the lush vegetation of a tropical island or the innermost darkness of a sunken submarine or even the ocean itself, vast and blue. Pardon the poetry, but it’s an art style that seems built on contrast, outlining all too well the complex nature of this seemingly quite simple action anime.

Embedded in these landscapes are unique characters, rendered on screen as beautifully as the backgrounds themselves. We are still talking about a 2006 anime so I won’t lie…the stylization of the characters is still there, the models being simple as far as their details and shading goes…but not always. There are some scenes where the characters look absolutely stunning, especially when you take into account the fact that this is one of the very few anime that does well in portraying emotions through just the art style (a.n: an angered Levy is something that’s truly terrible on screen, as she’s supposed to be).

All in all, I cannot and will not say a single bad thing about the animation or the graphic style, or anything. It’s a varied show as far as locations go a fluent one as far as movement goes…detail, stylish, effective and so on. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder so there’s bound to be something for just about everyone’s taste here.

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The show sounds just as good as it looks. From the get go we get a strong opening theme, Red Fraction by Mell, that’s just perfect for what anime aims to be. The upbeat music plays on and on throughout the show, outlining the scenes very well.
What’s a chase without the music to back it up?
Or what would the death of a character mean to you without the subtle ruse that the music can offer?
One of the anime that has understood that all too well and offered some of the most breathtaking moments I have ever seen in this kind of shows.

Ok, the fanboy ramblings aside, the bottom line is this show sounds good. More than good, it sounds great. Voices that match the characters and complete the image about them that they produce (a.n: once, I had watched a making of, of the old Batman cartoon series… the producers said that they did not search for people whom matched the characters but people who matched the voice of the characters, the very idea behind those homo fictus... I have to say that I consider that to be the case as well here).

And last but not least, the sound effects have proved a treat for me. Guns, engines, explosions, everything was made to sound real, not funny, not excessively impressive… simply real.

Alas, there is one thing that has scrapped at my ear drums: the English. The characters, in the anime’s vision, are said to speak English… but the moments when they do speak that language to show that the characters speak different languages in different parts of the world, well, it’s a painful. The pronunciation is mostly bad and the “badass” accents can tick off even the calmest person. Plus, it’s very very hard to even understand what they’re trying to say (a.n: I swear, they managed to pronounce better the Romanian words from one episode than they managed to implement English where there was need of it).

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Black Lagoon is not a story driven series. Thus the two seasons I’d say. It’s not episodic either, simply slashed into story arcs that seem mostly to empathize the characters rather than the situations on screen. Each story arc acts as a beacon to draw out the characters rather nicely, to evolve them past the gun-totting, trigger happy maniacs we encounter on the first episode.

The Black Lagoon company is, in essence, a distribution company. It exists for the sole purpose of making money and that’s accomplished through almost mercenary jobs. So you can’t really expect something really tight on the story’s part, you can’t expect things to evolve to something greater than the characters. And rather than a comic book approach with each mission being supervised by greater forces or stuff like that, the independent story arcs are a much better choice. The anime is left open to so many more seasons, so much more to be done before truly throwing in the towel.

So, there’s not much for me to rant on as far as the story goes, right? What more to say than the fact that the story arcs have back stories strong enough to carry the current events and the characters are a tad more than cannon fodder? That’s the beauty of Black Lagoon… beauty in simplicity.

Allow me, however, to say a few words about the action, since I’ve been neglecting that very important aspect (a.n: it is however an action anime for pity’s sake). And for good reason, that’s truly the heart of the series… or its second heart as you’ll read on further.
BL’s action is over-the-top, always over-the-top. And God forbid, I don’t mean that in the “jumping over building” or “jumping 12 meters in the air” kind of way… the action is fluent, visceral and, well, violent. Deliciously violent I may add since the series tries as much as it can to keep on the more realistic side rather than going sci-fi all the way. It has its moments when you will go “Ok, that is not possible…” but despite that, the action never feels quite out of place. Whatever happens, it goes on with the flow of the anime…

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And finally, the most important piece to this puzzle: the characters.
As said, repeated and probably bored you by now: it is a character driven show. Thus, the chemistry between the main characters plays a most important role in deciding if this series sinks of swims.

What we have here is a team of villains. Even if you come to understand their reasoning and their motifs, their past or their present, everything that’s lead them into a corner and forced them to fight back… they are still villains and the show does not let you forget this. It does not turn sinners into heroes, that’s for certain and that’s one of the main reasons why the characters work together.

It’s a diverse cast, with a couple outstanding guys (Rock and Levy, Balalaika and Dutch, the sisters at the Church of Violence). Unlike many, and I do mean MANY shows with wide casts (a.n: the two Mai series for just one example) this time there are hints or blatant parts that develop these characters, that draw you into understanding them, considering them human above being action pawns. This is why the series is just one piece to me, not two individual seasons: the consistency of the characters and their stories.

What I truly appreciated, and I do believe it’s something a tad bigger than my preference, the fact that we these are intelligent characters, not simple clichés that walk and talk on our screen, not just simple beings broken by their past. No, Levy and Rock, Dutch and Benny, Balalaika and every villain of this series is shown not just as they are but as they were, developed into multi layered characters that surprise and intrigue you, the viewer.

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I did not mind that the series did not accomplish a full grown story… I appreciated what the series did accomplish. It was a very enjoyable action anime, more so than many others I have watched in my time.