I have no idea what the story is here. A Japanese white color man gets kidnapped by goons, and the Japanese guy decides to just join the goons since it’s more freeing than continuing in his current role of boot-licking for his bosses.
Beyond that, I couldn’t figure out any clear story-line. In some episodes the main characters are fighting Neo-Nazis, in some there are pointless fist fights and gun duels, there is moderately emotional character development in some episodes. But on the whole, season 1 felt completely directionless.
The best part about watching this series was how not addicting it was, I could whenever I wanted, I could skip episodes and not have missed anything, I could even watch the series without audio and understand exactly what was happening. Nothing in this series really mattered.
The dubbing was really good though. Wouldn’t make it a worth-while watch however.
Interesting lines from Black Lagoon:
“The reason you submerged yourself in the southeast asian underworld was probably because you were looking for something different, from Japan and your daily life. But nothing’s really changed for you, because still haven’t decided. You dread returning to your daily life under the sun, but you’re afraid to go any further into the darkness. You’re undecided, hesitating between two lives.
You don’t actually want to save me, I merely remind you of the normal life you thought you’d thrown away, that’s all this is. If you sit back and watch me die, you’d be losing the very last recollections of this normal life in Japan. You don’t want to lose anything do you? Not even the live you’d throw away, you still yearn for it, but you don’t want it enough to keep it. If that’s the way you are, how could you ever choose to save someone. If you can’t even change your own life, how can ever change someone else’s, tell me!”
This anime was previously rated a 3 on story, because it had no real story carrying the anime forward, but the side-quest stories are so good, I still have to give it a decent score.
The mini-stories are so realistic and often quite intricately made that, it warrants a lot of merit. It also drew into question for me why the author of the manga knew so much about the mafia, organized crime, currency forgery and several other crime related topics. It was like the author had on the ground experience in these topics, or had read way too many Sherlock Holmes and crime novels.
Balalaika, otherwise called Capitan/Captain, seems to extensively plan out her criminal activities and even seen turning the police force against the mafia, in order to take down the mafia. She is also an extremely pragmatic leader, who kills of her enemies in a very pragmatic manner.
Outside of our set of main characters being invulnerable thanks to them being relevant to the story, the mini-stories are themselves very captivating.
I guess the character development in this series is pretty solid. In one scene, Rock wants to save the leader of a Yakuza organization, and argues with Balalaika, but then Balalaika questions him, asking him how he has to the audacity to tell her who she kills without ever getting his own hands dirty. Rock feels bad for the Yakuza boss since she is a teenager and lived a very normal violence free life until weeks ago. Balalaika suggests that in preferring one Yakuza organization over another he is telling her who to kill, without getting his own hands dirty, and that it is a despicable thing to say. There is a lot of pointing of guns in these scene, and it would have been very thrilling if you didn’t already know that nothing bad would ever happen to the main characters.
I love how the series explores concepts on self-identity and self-exploration. They add much needed depth to the series and really help flesh out the story. Rock joining the south asian underworld would simply be seen as a gimmick without this philosophical angle the story takes often.
There seems to be a potential for love between Revy and Rock, but the series never reached that arc. Would have been very interesting given how different they are.