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| From http://www.behindthevoiceactors.com/_img/shows/banner_362.jpg |
Dir. Sunao Katabuchi
Screenplay:
Sunao Katabuchi
Based
on the manga by Rei Hiroe
Voice
Cast: Daisuke Namikawa (as Rock); Megumi
Toyoguchi (as Revy); Hiroaki Hirata (as Benny); Mami Koyama (as Balalaika); Tsutomu
Isobe (as Dutch); Jun Karasawa (as Sister Eda)
Viewed
in Japanese with English Subtitles
Synopsis: When his
company's boat is hijacked by a mercenary group named the Black Lagoon Company,
salary man Rokuro Okajima becomes "Rock" when, after being kidnapped
by them and having his ties to the company severed by upper management, he
decides to join the Black Lagoon in a form of forced upon Stockholm Syndrome,
joining leader Dutch, computer expert Benny, and gunwoman/living weapon Revy
with nowhere else to go. Living on an island known as Roanapur, where all
manner of mercenaries and criminals house themselves, they interact between the
Russian mafia outfit Hotel Moscow, psychopaths, triad and yakuza, neo Nazis,
and a maid with the combat ability of a Terminator in their various paid jobs.
For the first twelve episodes, what is
technically called season one, Black
Lagoon takes a successful stab at the American action genre in animated
form, reinterpreting its tropes in a way that someone who isn't a fan of the
genre like myself can still appreciate. Animation naturally has an advantage in
terms of unlimited possibilities in terms of the stories and depending on the
budget, their kineticism, alongside this TV series having the time to stretch out
characterisation, one of the biggest disadvantages action cinema have. In terms
of style, it attempts to have a more grounded realism next to the action
fantasies of other anime, absurd to consider when one of the first major action
scenes of the entire series is a boat being driven up a sea wreck as a ramp to
fire a torpedo at a helicopter, but more prevalent in everything else. There's
still the exaggerated characters in design and manner - stoned out getaway
drivers, Gothic Lolita female Leatherface - and the visible John Woo influence so blatant there's a Chow Yun-fat figure amongst the cast, but there's more moral
greyness and real world politics on display that stands out greatly.
In terms of plot, the first twelve
episodes, episodic narratives stretched over two to three actual episodes each,
do much to establish the series both as a pulp action show but also in
establishing a world full of anti-heroes, Roanapur a place entirely morally
grey and off-radar whilst Black Lagoon themselves are willing cooperate with
murderers, mafia and corrupt officials on either side of a conflict just for
pay. Rock plays the stereotypical innocent outsider whose moral high ground
clashes with Revy, the completely opposite whose give-less-of-a-fuck attitude
clashes against his immediately, eventually becoming the trope of anime of the
more brazen female character jarring against the more quiet or cautious male
and building up a relationship as a result. The show manages to go further than
even so American action films in touching on grim subject matter (Nazism, child
slavery) which allows these moral conflicts to be brought out even while its
enjoying its explosions related carnage.
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It's for Black Lagoon one of its saving graces in the first half that it openly has a large cast of memorable characters who are outright villains but can be heroes compared to other worse figures than them. The few glimpse of Roanapur as a city let alone an island in the first season particularly gives the show a distinct character, a world with its own rules and various factors at play, from Hotel Moscow to the Triads led by the Chow Yun-fat stand-in, who are on friendly terms with each other, to places like the bar that gets constantly blown up by various events throughout both seasons. It's a rundown hellhole, where Heineken is the beer of choice (though with the letters in the name switched around for copyright reasons) and one has to rely of cars ready for the scrapheap to travel around in. It's an inherently fascinating location for this world to be mostly set, even allowing quiet moments of humour and introspection as a tropical environment before you get to the figures within it who'll change allegiances depending on the money involved.
One of the biggest virtues of the show
is that a lot of these figures, and the strongest in most cases, are female.
Colourful and exaggerated figures, but many women who are more dangerous and
memorable than the male characters. Revy is obvious the poster woman of the
series, but there's also Balalaika, leader of Hotel Moscow whose burnt face and
body are matched by a back-story of fighting for the ex-Soviet Union in
Afghanistan and becoming a ruthless, powerful figure in command of ex-soldiers
who follow her devotedly. Other such memorable female characters include Sister
Eda the nun, a member of a church on the island who are more for gun smuggling
than religion, the aforementioned Roberta, the aforementioned maid with the
tenacity of a T-800 who got a narrative for herself in a 2011 spin-off story,
and various other distinct female characters who stand out even more than many
male characters in the narratives.
Amazingly as well for a show about
exhilarating action, it's actually subtle at points just in terms of the
dialogue. Whether it's the translation of dialogue to English subtitles or Sunao Katabuchi's screenwriting work on
display, for a period until by the end there's a considerable stab at giving
characters not only their own idiosyncrasies but also distinctions between
different characters they talk to. (I.e. Revy and a minor female character Shenhua,
a Taiwanese knife user whose love-hate relationship, trading insults and Revy
mocking her ability to speak English, becomes entirely different from how they
speak to anyone else). That the series, even if voiced entirely in Japanese for
its original language track, makes it clear the characters speak in different
languages, and actresses like Megumi
Toyoguchi as Revy and Mami Koyama
as Balalaika have to speak in English many times in the show, gives Black Lagoon personality in tying these
characters to distinct traits. Even the most sadistic figures feature usually
have tragic back stories or even real life historical details woven into their
origins - the most overtly, stereotypical anime characters, two Romanian twins
who dress in period Victorian dress and are bloodthirsty monsters in spite of
being children, are for example given origin in the real life anti-abortion
policies of ex-Romanian dictator Nicolae
Ceaușescu and the effect of the resulting growth of the birth rate after
his overthrow. The dialogue occasionally tries with difficulty to be even
philosophical, but the attempts are all admirable.
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| From http://senpai-knows.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/06.jpg |
The series for me however does falter within what was originally Season 2, The Second Barrage. The Second Barrage is only three actual narratives strung over twelve episodes. One involving the Romanian twins, which is good by itself, the second about a female counter fitter whose bounty, due to an ill advised decision by Sister Eda to milk the reward of protecting her, leads to the misfits and lunatics of Roanapur to hunt her down on mass. The problem really comes to head, sabotaging the two seasons, with the final six episodes, an entire narrative set in Japan with Hotel Moscow trying to take over the criminal underground against a yakuza clan. On one hand it's the perfect conclusion as Balalaika is shown to almost be entirely evil with Rock forced into a moral issue, challenged in his complacency, where a young girl Yukio Washimine has to take over her yakuza family's heritage against the military strategy and greater numbers of Hotel Moscow. However, it also means Dutch and Benny are merely cameos, squandering Black Lagoon as a team when the final narrative could've had them all stuck in a dangerous situation, and the character of Yukio and her loyal bodyguard are not interesting figures. The later is worse as the series falls victim of an issue with pulp storytelling where, in narratives where normalcy for main characters always returns by each chapter, the story specific characters who can be effected permanently however need to be as interesting as possible or the entire narrative's worthless.
As a result of the failure of these final
episodes, half an entire season, it started to stain and reveal flaws in the
previous episodes. For all the virtues, the strong female characters and fun
dialogue, there was also repetition and less than inspired moments which are
forced into the open due to how much the finale fails, marring the two series. This
was especially when I compared it to another series from the same era, Baccano! (2007), another action series
influenced by American pop culture that was a period fantasy-action story primarily
set in early 1930s America, with strong female and male characters, memorable
dialogue, and even more ridiculous action and gore, but also an imaginative
puzzle box of a plot structure which jumps back and forth in time, and more
lavish style in look and music. Against something like it, what started off
perfectly in Black Lagoon didn't
succeed further with its original virtues and came a disappointment.
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