Black Lagoon

Black Lagoon.
Plot Synopsis
Businessman Rokuro Okajima is kidnapped by a group of bounty hunters, and reluctantly joins their group when his boss tells him his life is meaningless. Rokuro abandons his old name and adopts the nickname "Rock." The rest of the group consists of the boss-man, Dutch, Benny the mechanic, and the trigger-happy Revy, a.k.a. Two Hands. Rock makes himself useful by serving as the group's negotiator and translator. The crew of the torpedo boat, The Black Lagoon, do various jobs for many mafias around the port of Roanapo in Thailand. By: xdiamondxdecayx



Story & Characters
Storywise, Black Lagoon is far from being the best out there. It's not that it has a bad storyline, just that it's nothing special. For me, it was the characters that really made this anime worth watching. Basically, 'Black Lagoon' is the name of a delivery crew. A group of pirates/mercenaries that will deliver anything for the right price. Their business is based in a town full of crime and corruption, quite perfect for their line of work really. Since most of their jobs come from the major criminal organisations in the area. The leader of the Black Lagoon crew is Dutch, he's pretty much always calm and cool headed even when he's in a dangerous situation. He's also not a guy you'd want to mess with if you want to keep on living.



The next member of Black Lagoon is Revy, she's foul mouthed, extremely dangerous and probably psychotic. She has a dark past, which you don't get much insight into but you do get to understand that she's been through hell and back. Dutch is pretty much the only person she seems to listen to but even he has a tough time trying to calm her down when something ticks her off.Benny is the third crew member and isn't really much like the other two at all. He isn't exactly a wimp, but next to his dangerous crew mates that's how he appears. His job is basically to look after the equipment on board the crews boat and he's quite the computer whizz.The fourth (and my favourite) member is Rock. Originally a hostage taken by Revy, Rock was just a japanese businessman on an errand for his boss. However, once he finds that his boss considers him disposable, he ends up staying with the Black Lagoon crew. He is the exact opposite of Revy, he's calm and kind and would rather not resort to violence. Unlike Revy, who has more of a 'Shoot first, ask questions later' approach to things.



Art
The art in Black Lagoon is well done. The characters look great and the animation flows well, especially in the many action scenes. There's car chases, gunfights, explosions and even some good old fashioned fist fighting, and it's all nicely animated. After an explosion you can see the smoke and dust still around, when somebody is shot or hit you can see the blood fly and there doesn't seem to be any detail missed throughout the whole anime.

Sound
The sound effects in this anime are pretty much perfect in my opinion, you can even hear the sound of the shell casings falling on the floor after the bullets have been fired.I thought that pretty much ever character's voice suited them well, and were of course well done, even the minor characters with hardly any spoken lines sounded just as well.The opening song seemed to fit well, but I'm not too sure about the ending


- tune.The music that was used throughout the anime always fitted well and helped to set the atmosphere for it's particular scene/s.


Presentation
Although this is primarily an action anime, there were a lot of parts which made me laugh. However, I've heard one or two people say they didn't find any of it funny. So the humour in this series may not be for everyone. It's also definitely not a series for younger people since there is much violence and various other mature content to be found.As I mentioned earlier in the review, whilst the story isn't spectacular the relationships between each character is. Rock and Revy are probably the most entertaining to watch but pretty much all the relationships between every character is interesting in some way or another.The series threw quite a lot of action into it's short 12 episodes, but that's not the end of it. Another 12 episode series, entitled 'The Second Barrage' has been announced for release towards the end of this year. So I'm sure there will be just as much, if not more, action in the upcoming series. I for one, am definitely looking forward to it.


Courtesy of: minitokyo


Link: http://reviews.minitokyo.net/1158/black-lagoon/