Black Lagoon

Posted by eksith on 3/27/09 • Categorized as Anime

Good guys, bad guys, what's the difference?

For a very short series, this title sure packs a lot in. In fact, so much so, that this would be one of the shortest reviews on the site in terms of substance because I can’t reveal much without spoiling the whole series.

Rokuro Okajima is sent on a mission by his company. For someone always being pushed around at work, it seemed like the break he had been working so hard for. But it turns out the routine is really a trap.

Rokuro is sent to deliver a disk off the coast of Eastern China, only the delivery is a farce and he’s just a mule. The boat he’s going in is hijacked by the Black Lagoon Company. Basically, mercenaries willing to hit anything for the right price. At first, Rokuro is devastated by being betrayed, but having so little to loose any more, and having no where to return to, he joins his very hijackers.

Rokuro, or “Rock” as he is known from then on starts rocky especially with Revy, who develops a crush on him (much to her chagrin). Revy is nothing like the more level headed Rock. She is borderline psychotic, and cares little for bystanders when she decides to unleash her arsenal. She is barely kept in check by Dutch, the leader of Black Lagoon Company.

The company has a close working relationship with Hotel Moscow, a Russian Mafia outfit run by Balalaika, a former Soviet veteran. Much of her men are also fellow soldiers in the Soviet war in Afgansitan. She pretty much seems to have maintained the same hierarchy post deployment.

Black Lagoon is really a fetish. If you enjoy lots of violence sprinkled with a bit of black comedy and existentialist themes, then this really isn’t a title you could afford to miss. There’s a lot of self-examination to be found in the characters; Revy in particular. Especially during a run-in with a bunch of Neo-Nazis.

It has a delicious variety of characters to fit almost any violent cliché, but well worth a watch to see how they all end up. A must see title in the “Girls with Guns” genre.

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