Comments on: Black Lagoon – Questions Best Left Unasked [Eps 1 - 24]

By: gaguri

gaguri — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 00:08:33 +0000

I enjoyed Black Lagooon, but I didn’t think it was good enough to stand out above other mindless action series. Like you’ve said, there are moments of true greatness (i.e. episode 7). In fact, episode 7 has to be one of the most intense and well directed scene I can think of in anime. There was a scene like that in my favourite Korean film titled ‘The Isle’, where a couple is painting their boat. While painting, their brushes meet each other, passionately, as if kissing. But anything other than those, including loli goths and invincible housemaid, they were difficult for me to be taken more seriously than just guns and boobs. I am thinking the presentation didn’t really click with me.

By: carbon

carbon — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 19:12:29 +0000

I hope that the Third Barrage deals with Revvy’s reaction to Rock’s irrevocable step towards the dark side and the fact that she herself is largely responsible for her saviors corruption into a “villain in training”.

I also think it’s telling that the coda of the Second Barrage is from Revvy’s point of view rather than Rock’s.

But mostly I hope that it continues to blow stuff up in thoroughly entertaining ways.

By: coburn

coburn — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 18:14:37 +0000

Hurrah! I just finished season 2 myself, and was looking for some writing on the show. Especially the Yukio conversation.

Much as I love the U-boat scene, I thought the opening episode of the show was fairly interesting already (I hadn’t been expecting that sort of imagery or introspection). Since the manga is ongoing I’d assume that the next season will play a similar game and keep its thematic content at arms length (without resolution) in order to extract the odd nugget of value from it as and when it suits the mood.

I half expected your penultimate paragraph to read “…have a complex depth, nothing compares to the intensity of an unstoppable housemaid of doom”.

By: Martin

Martin — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 16:49:25 +0000

I could just leave a one-word comment here: YES.

That is to say, you’ve pretty much summed up what I love about this series. The easiest route it could’ve taken would to be a straight-up action show with larger-than-life characters and well-choreographed action scenes: if it had stopped there I’d still consider it to be a satisfying experience. Indeed, some portions were of the ’sit down with a beer and enjoy’ variety but after the dust had settled and the credits rolled I was left *thinking* about what I’d seen, which was pretty unexpected.

There’s always an opportunity for character development in stories like this, but Black Lagoon is one of the few that actually exploits that aspect. Outside of the Bourne trilogy this is one of the only action-adventures that shows a bit of brains and stops to consider the consequences of the actions and the motives of those involved. I guess I ought to watch the last two discs of the Second Barrage now then…