Black Lagoon

Very violent, but a wonderful series! Worth every episode and then some. The animation was really well done and the episodes in themselves were involving and kept you coming back for more.

The only complaint I have with this series is the lack of development. None of the characters really develop, besides "Rock"... and even then, hardly enough. Overall, awesome series!

I'm going to do just one review of Black Lagoon and Black Lagoon: The Second Barrage, since the second season is just a continuation of the first, only more intense. In fact, I didn't even realize there were two seasons until I finished 24 episodes and went looking for more.

The protagonist, Rokuro Okajima, a.k.a. "Rock", is an everyday salary man loyally working for what he thought was an honest Japanese corporation. When he finds out the hard way that his corporation isn't so honest and considers him an expendable asset, he goes native and joins up with the gang of pirates who kidnapped him. (Stockholm syndrome?) Rock plays the "fish out of water" character in the city of Roanapur, home of international criminal gangs engaging in smuggling, kidnapping, gun-running, etc. And that's on their good days.

Rock finds a place among them as a skillful negotiator, putting his intelligence to good use, despite his lack of ruthlessness. He tries to maintain his distance from the violence, even trying to save some souls along the way, but finds it increasingly difficult as it dawns on him that innocence is often largely a self-delusion, and a lot of those souls don't want to be saved.

Black Lagoon is definitely not for children. It's violent and vulgar -- so much so that even some of the Japanese dialog was muted out. It's a wild ride through the underground world of organized crime and the people who live in it. The dialog and action are, of course, stylized and over-the-top, comparable to a Tarantino movie like Pulp Fiction. The artwork and animation are both excellent, and the characters (and there are a lot of them) are some of the most interesting I've encountered, all strongly differentiated individuals with satisfying depth to their personality.

If I had a complaint about Black Lagoon, it's that the characters basically don't develop very much. Rock goes through some changes in outlook, but they don't fundamentally alter his nature or how he reacts. And while we meet a lot of interesting characters along the way, none of them change from when we first meet them. But if you enjoy shows with lots of clever macho dialog, lots of interesting characters, and lots of bang-bang violence, this is one of the best.

Hey .. this is a very fun and violent series… The 2nd episode is out as a fan-sub and I looking forward to the next one.

I happen to be a WW2-buff, so seeing an old PT (patrol-torpedo) boat used as a pirate boat is fun. The story takes place in the Indonesia-Cambodia-T­hailand corner of the world were things are bit lawless and disorderly. And the way that Okajima Rokuro gets dropped by his company is probably enough to make anyone pissed off.

And the three pirates that he gets captured by are - a seasoned-black ex-marine type, a brainy engineer/communicati­ons tech and a violently-crazed freaky weapons-girl (lets just call her a modern kendo-gyrl). They all seem to be 'nice' people, if a bit violent and disfunctional. (And lets not talk about any Stockholm-Syndrome..­.)

I posted some pics of the first episode.