Black Lagoon

For the 1954 monster film, see Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Black Lagoon
File:Black Lagoon logo.PNG
Genre	Action, Adventure, Crime fiction, Black Comedy
Manga
Written by	Rei Hiroe
Published by	Shogakukan
English publisher	Viz Media
Magazine	Sunday GX
Demographic	Seinen
Original run	19 April 2002 – ongoing
Volumes	8
Anime
Directed by	Sunao Katabuchi
Studio	Madhouse
Released	8 April 2006 – 24 June 2006
Anime
Black Lagoon: The Second Barrage
Directed by	Sunao Katabuchi
Studio	Madhouse
Released	2 October 2006 – 18 December 2006
Anime
Black Lagoon: "Untitled 3rd series"
Directed by	Sunao Katabuchi
Studio	Madhouse
Manga
Written by	Gen Urobuchi
Illustrated by	Rei Hiroe
Published by	Shogakukan
Demographic	Male
Original run	July 18 2008 – present
Volumes	1

Black Lagoon (ブラック・ラグーン, Burakku Ragūn) is manga series written and illustrated by Rei Hiroe, published in Shogakukan's Sunday GX since 2002. An animated television series based on the manga aired in Japan from April 8, 2006 to June 24, 2006, totaling twelve episodes. A second season, subtitled "The Second Barrage", ran for twelve weeks starting on October 2, 2006. A third season was announced on the cover of the first volume of the novel adaptation.

The English language version of the manga is distributed by Viz Media, and the first volume began airing on August 12, 2008 (ISBN 978-1-4215-1382-9). On July 3, 2008, Geneon Entertainment and Funimation Entertainment announced an agreement to distribute select titles in North America. While Geneon Entertainment will still retain the license, Funimation Entertainment will assume exclusive rights to the manufacturing, marketing, sales and distribution of select titles. Black Lagoon was one of several titles involved in the deal.

Plot

The story follows a team of pirates/mercenaries known as Lagoon Company, who smuggle goods in and around the seas of Southeast Asia in the 1990s. Their base of operations is located in the fictional city of Roanapur in Thailand, and they transport goods in the PT boat Black Lagoon. When on land, they move around and conduct business using Benny's 1969 Dodge Coronet R/T (with a '69 Plymouth Roadrunner side-scoop induction hood). Lagoon Company does business with various clients, but has a particularly friendly relationship with the Russian crime syndicate Hotel Moscow. The team takes on a variety of missions—which may involve violent firefights, hand-to-hand combat, and nautical battles—in various Southeast Asian locations and when not doing much, the members of the Lagoon Company spend much of their down time at The Yellow Flag, a bar in Roanapur.

Characters

Main article: List of Black Lagoon characters

Black Lagoon features a wide cast of characters, many of them involved in the criminal underworld and its dealings in and around Roanapur.

• Revy provides the muscle for the Lagoon Company. She is of Chinese descent and grew up in New York. Revy is exceptionally skilled with using firearms in battle, but is not much of a people person. She enjoys killing her enemies and seldom stops to negotiate. She usually remains calm and level headed, despite her rash language and love of violence. Her signature weapon is a brace of custom-made stainless steel 9mm Beretta M92FS "Sword Cutlass Special" pistols. Her nickname "Two-Hands" reflects her ability use both pistols simultaneously.

• Rock is a Japanese salaryman who joins the crew of the Black Lagoon after they kidnap him. Rock does not fight but is an excellent negotiator and translator. He is often scared by the methods Revy sometimes uses to achieve her goals.

• Dutch is the African-American leader of the Lagoon "trading company". He captains the PT boat Black Lagoon, and coordinates his crew. Although he seldom participates in battle, he is still a deadly adversary, stemming from his time as a soldier in the Vietnam War.

• Benny is a former post-graduate student at the University of Florida. He serves as the Lagoon's technical expert. Like Rock, he is not a gunfighter and does not have the capacity to kill in cold blood. However, he is hardened to the job and willing to overlook almost anything to get the job done.

Media

Main articles: List of Black Lagoon media and List of Black Lagoon episodes

The first season of Black Lagoon consists of episodes 1 to 12. The second season consists of episodes 13 to 24 and is labeled Black Lagoon: The Second Barrage. The second season focuses less on character development than the first season and more on the jobs they do. A third season has been announced on the cover of the Black Lagoon light novel.

So far, the first three DVDs containing episodes 1–12, have been released, completing the first season. The first DVD of The Second Barrage was scheduled for a November 20th, 2007 release, but was canceled. However, Amazon now has a listing of August 19th, 2008 for the first volume.

Black Lagoon began airing on G4techTV Canada on Friday, October 26, and currently airs Fridays at 8:00p.m. and 11:30p.m. EST.

Starz edge began airing Black Lagoon on Friday, February 29 2008 to American audiences.

Design

Black Lagoon includes a considerable amount of graphic violence, often involving violent gun fights and spectacular physical feats in battle. Many of the characters who are most skilled with weapons (mainly guns) are women, thereby bearing a similarity with "girls-with-guns" genre with the six strongest women in the series adhering to some type of stereotype (dragon lady, maids, nuns, etc.). Some of the scenes and dialog are within the realm of dark comedy, as humorous moments occur or are mentioned during and after many violent battles. Examples include Revy making fun of Garcia about Roberta, as she is a maid, until she finds out the hard way that Roberta is what Garcia claims. Also, Revy intentionally starting a gun battle between Fabiola and the Cartel, in addition, laughing at Bao and a Cartel member playing tug-o-war over a telephone while a violent gun battle is exploding just on the other side of the bar counter. Another moment is Shenhua and Revy playing a game of Rock, Paper, Scissor to see who will kill first, Revy then whines like a child when she loses.

Throughout the show, many existential themes are present. Early on, Revy makes a speech in which she asks Rock to explain what she is holding in her hands. When he attempts to point out that they are a medal and a skull, she attacks this notion, calling them "just objects," and goes on to say that people merely choose to give them value, and that they do not have any true innate meaning. This is very similar to many of Jean-Paul Sartre's views, and relates to the existential belief that there is no set meaning in life, and that people must choose to find, create, and assign their own meanings. Many of the characters also express atheist views, a common feature of modern existential thought, especially that of Sartre who said that God is just an attempt to put false meaning on things without the responsibility of choice.

As well, important minor characters throughout the show show character traits ideal to the ubermensch of Nietzsche or Knight of Faith of Kierkegaard, that being a person who acts not simply for logical reasons, but rather because it gives them meaning in life. A key example of this is Masahiro Takenaka, who though realizing the inevitable failures of any revolutions he participated in as part of the defunct Japanese Red Army failed, he continues to be a rebel as it gives him meaning in life. As well, this can be seen in Roberta, who like Takenaka has seen the betrayal of her own communist revolutions in Colombia, but instead chooses to find meaning in being a maid for an aristocratic family. Garcia Lovelace is a blatant example of a Knight of Faith (one that puts faith in that which he/she wants or believes, even if it is not logical), made so by Rock's comment on Garcia's belief that his maid will come and save him, "I don't know if it'll come true or not, but you must have a great home if you can have such strong faith."

A distinguishing motif of the series is that no distinction is made between the moral question of right and wrong, which ties into the existential belief that "values are subjective." Rather, it shows the events from the different perspectives of the characters and how they justify their beliefs in what is right and what is not, just as how existentialists believe that every person chooses their own values for their own subjective reasons.

A review of this moral conflict expressed the matter in this way: There is only a case of perspective, and how one justifies his or her actions to be the morally correct one. It's like trying to define which grey is blacker than the other.

While Revy is depicted as being the tough, uncaring gunfighter, Rock is almost the exact opposite, and a central theme in the series is Rock's struggle for deciding whether he should remain with Lagoon Company—a criminal organization—or return to his ordinary life of a law-abiding citizen. Especially in the first season, this conflict between Rock's and Revy's views on crime and moral is important. Many of the "villains" in the series look at Rock as "unique" and refer him as a "rare" individual as he is able to connect with others, even Revy. On many occasions, Rock's personality is demonstrated to be stronger than any weapon or organization imaginable as he is able to connect with not only with Revy, but someone as innocent as Garcia Lovelace, as ruthless as Balalaika, or as psychotic as Hansel/Gretel. Even Chang, leader of the Triad, is unsure where to classify Rock as a person.

Alienation is present as well, as the characters are alienated from regular society. As pirates, they spend most of their time at sea, or in a city very much alienated from "regular" civilization. As well, they often are alienated from one another, as can be seen in the conflicts between Rock and Revy.

Free will relates to all of this, especially seen in Rock, who actively chooses to leave his stable life in Japan because it has lost meaning to him. At the same time, he does not want to fully accept his circumstances, or make a true choice as regarding to his own meaning in life, causing him much conflict with Revy, and later another "existential hero" in Yukio Washimine (who chooses to continue fighting an inevitably lost battle with the Russian mafia, and is a reader of both Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre). Yukio confronts Rock with his lack of "choice," over what his own meaning is, trying to stay neutral and not choosing sides in conflicts throughout the series, which she views as laziness and an unwillingness to accept his own individuality and values, and thus a personal alienation. She argues that this is an attempt to just conform to his surroundings and give his meaning away to others, rather than realizing his own choice in the matter. This is the same critique as Sartre, who said that one who is a "being-in-the-midst-of-everything" (as he phrased it) is merely living a false consciousness, since they are pretending that their being has no effect on its surrounds and so it can be a partial observer, which is simply not the case.

Along with free will is the struggle between Giri and Ninjo. Giri is the uniquely Japanese form of social obligation. It makes many appearances in the series as internal strife within the characters. It forces them to act in manners they would normally find unacceptable. In episode 7, Rock and Revy are told to do errands for the company. When they arrive at the Church of Violence they have a confrontation with Sister Yolanda. During the confrontation Rock implies that they could turn the church in for trading drugs outside the normal routes. This implication brings about a sense of Giri, or social obligation, and she ends up giving him the firearms Black Lagoon needs. The important thing to understand is that the sense of Giri felt in Japan is unequivocal; Yolanda did not pay back the obligation by giving Rock anything physical, instead she paid it back by giving him the proper consideration he deserved and by following through with her original deal. Ninjo, on the other hand, is the idea of compassion and true feeling that springs up in contest with Giri. In episode 7 it makes its appearance during the confrontation between Rock and Revy. During this bout Rock states that he is done apologizing to Revy. She takes this as a challenge of sorts and tries to push it aside in order to avoid a confrontation. Rock continues to push and Revy reacts in a typical violent outburst. What follows is an argument, which expresses their attempt at understanding one another on the deepest level. Their feelings interfere with their sense of duty towards one another and the tension becomes immense. They have at it until the police interrupt them. The episode ends with the two of them in the back of a police cruiser making amends for their outburst, and they show a sign of true understanding and camaraderie.

The series also touches on other themes, like modern Nazism, the power struggle between various criminal syndicates, and outright sadistic killing. Communism plays a major role for almost all of the characters as well, with a connection to almost every protagonist and antagonist in the show, though in most cases due to some conflict or alienation from it (e.g. Dutch fighting in Vietnam, Mr. Chan and Levi originating from China, the Russian Mafia originally being a Soviet paratrooper brigade, Hansel and Gretel being orphans under an ex-Communist dictator, etc.) Black Lagoon also makes numerous cultural references (see below).

The "Fujiyama Gangsta Paradise" arc showed that most of the characters throughout the series actually speak English, with the Japanese simply being translations done for the audience. While the English voice acting in the anime is heavy in Japanese pronunciation, nearly all occurrences of English lines in the manga are accurate. However, the instances of Cyrillic script tend to be less so.

Reception

As of October 2007, the manga series has sold over 3 million copies in Japan.

The anime series has received postive reveiws at both "Anime News Network" and "Anime on DVD". With Chris Beveridge, the reviewer at Anime on DVD going so far as to say "To my surprise, knowing practically nothing about the show beyond a two minute clip at a convention, Black Lagoon manages to kick all kinds of ass. In English no less. The draw of a full bitrate 5.1 mix got me to watch it in English only to find that with most of the characters being western and in settings outside of Japan it works very well."

External links

• Official site Template:Ja icon
• Geneon's Official Black Lagoon Website
• Funimation's Black Lagoon website
• Black Lagoon (6158) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia