Black Lagoon

Black Lagoon
ブラックラグーン (Burakku Ragūn)
Demographic	Seinen
Genre	Action, Adventure, Gangster, Pirate, Heroic Bloodshed
Manga: Black Lagoon
Author	Rei Hiroe
Publisher	Shogakukan
Other publishers: Kabuto Carlsen Jade Dynasty Haksan Publishing Norma Editorial Panini Comics
Serialized in	Sunday GX
Original run	19 April 2002 – ongoing
Volumes	7[1]
TV anime: Black Lagoon
Director	Sunao Katabuchi
Studio	Madhouse
Licensor	Geneon MVM Films Tokyo Night Train, then Madman Entertainment
Network	Chiba TV, Gunma TV, KBS Kyoto, TV Nagoya, TV Saitama, Tokyo MX TV
Other networks: G4techTV Canada MTV Italy ZTV
Original run	8 April 2006 – 24 June 2006
Episodes	12[2]
TV anime: Black Lagoon: The Second Barrage
Director	Sunao Katabuchi
Studio	Madhouse
Licensor	Geneon MVM Films
Network	Chiba TV, Gunma TV, KBS Kyoto, Sun TV, Tochigi TV, Tokyo MX TV, TV Kanagawa, TV Nagoya, TV Saitama ZTV
Original run	2 October 2006 – 18 December 2006
Episodes	12[3]

Black Lagoon (ブラックラグーン, Burakku Ragūn^?) is the name of a Japanese manga and an anime TV series created by Rei Hiroe.^[1] The TV series premiered at the Tokyo International Anime Fair in March 2006 and began airing on 8 April 2006 in Japan; the final episode of the first season aired on June 24.^[2] The second season (called Black Lagoon: The Second Barrage), started airing in Japan on the 2 October 2006 and ended on December 18 2006.^[3] The first three volumes (episodes 1-12) are currently being distributed in North America by Geneon. The first volume of the Second Barrage episodes was to be released domestically in November of 2007; however, due to Geneon's recent ceasing of their anime production and distribution services in North America, the U.S. release of the Second Barrage episodes is in question. As of October 2007, the manga series has collectively sold over 3 million copies in Japan.^[4]

Plot

The story follows a team of mercenaries known as Lagoon Company, who smuggle goods in and around the seas of Southeast Asia. Their base of operations is located in the fictional city of Roanapur in Thailand, and they transport goods in the PT boat Black Lagoon. 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. While merciless in battle, she begins to develop feelings for Rock as the series progresses.
• Rock is a Japanese salaryman who joins the crew of the Black Lagoon after they kidnap him. Rock doesn't fight but is an excellent negotiator and translator. He is often scared by the methods Revy can use 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 an American 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 over look almost anything just to get the job done.

Media/Episode List

Main article: List of Black Lagoon media

Main article: 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 the character developments than the first season and more on the jobs they do. 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 as of now has been canceled.^[5][6][7] Black Lagoon began airing on G4TechTV Canada on Friday, October 26, and currently airs Fridays at 8:00p.m. and 11:00p.m. EST.

Anime

Style and themes

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. The anime is drawn in a relatively realistic style, featuring very few exaggerated facial expressions, but instead focusing on powerful depictions of the many gunfights and shootouts.

An example of the style used to depict the gunfights, here showing the character Roberta

An example of the lighting style.

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 Columbia, 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 good example of this is from episode 5 of the anime, where Revy tells Rock a story from her childhood, revealing how she regards the belief in God and love as "emotional bullshit." 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^[8]. 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 organisation - 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. 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 Revy 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.

Cultural References

• The beer shown in Black Lagoon is called Heireken. The logo and color of the beer can strongly resemble the Dutch beer Heineken. Also, there are spoofs of Budweiser beer cans drunk and floating around Benny at times. (actually, this happens only in the anime; in the manga all brands, like cigarettes and beer, are real)
• In episode 3, Revy listens to music using Minidisc player, which is only known in niche markets in the US, but is quite popular in Japan, even recently.
• The helicopter gunship piloted by the Extra Order mercenaries was a Mi-24A Hind B^[9]. "Extra Order" itself is a parody of the actual mercenary force Executive Outcomes.^[10]
• A poster released to promote the second season of the show parodied the "Come play with us" scene from The Shining.[1]
• There are many references to American pop culture in the series. Roberta's fighting skills, mainly her running and the stabbing of the Plymouth Road Runner's trunk with her combat knife in the last few episodes of Black Lagoon's first season are a homage to the Terminator 2 movie^[11]. Likewise, the name of the reporter Jake Chambers on Revy's TV screen in Episode 11 is a nod to Stephen King's Dark Tower novel series^[11]. He is a central character, having the reporter's same name, who happens to be a proficient gunfighter. Other Dark Tower references are in episodes such as "The Dark Tower" and "The Gunslingers" which are names of two books in the series.

Revy and Shenhua have a Janken match.

• In episode #14 and #15, the names of the Hotel Moscow Visotoniki squads "Jodorowsky" and "Polanski" are references to movie directors Alejandro Jodorowsky and Roman Polanski.
• In episode #11, there is a poster in Revy's room which reads "The Wild Punch". The name and art on the poster are a reference to the film The Wild Bunch, which Rock also refers to in Episode 2.
• In episode #23, the "UGC" cafe is similar to the logo of "UFC," a franchise cafe and popular name brand of canned coffee in Japan.
• In episode #24, the Coca-Cola vending machine says "Coca Cow."
• To determine who gets to kill pursuing guerrillas in episode 12, Revy and Shenhua have an informal Janken match to decide.
• In the opening sequence, Revy's Beretta has the writing "9mm SWORD CUTLASS". In Romeo + Juliet the guns had names such as "Sword 9mm".
• Many characters in Black Lagoon are prone to use more or less obscure comparisons:
  • Dutch compares Garcia Lovelace to a Claymore mine.
  • Rock thinks of Roberta as the Terminator.
  • Dutch, in episode 18, talks about giving the bounty hunters a ride of their lives that Tuff Hedeman won't be able to ride the bull (referring to their PT boat).
  • In episodes 17, the part where Greenback Jane tries to get away from the bounty hunters while Eda makes a deal with her is similar to the part on A Low Down Dirty Shame were Luis, a mexican thug tries to get away from a KKK and Nazi mob while Shane makes him tell where his boss is.
  • Benny thinks his hacking skills are comparable to Kevin Mitnick.
  • Eda mentioned to Revy that Greenback Jane could be able to outrun the bounty hunters and do a touchdown (implying her escape) like Brett Favre.
  • The Yellowflag Bar is often compared to a Wild West Saloon in various western movies.
  • Dutch compares the shootout with Roberta in the Yellowflag bar with the Battle of Khe Sanh.
  • Yukio refer to Ginji and herself as Bonnie and Clyde.
• When Ginji and Revy approach the bowling alley, a sign above the door reads "Hirano Bowl." This is a reference to the mangaka Kouta Hirano, whose works feature many motifs shared in Black Lagoon.
• The English dub of Episode 11 makes a reference to the Star Wars movies when Takenaka was able to obtain Mr. Chang's supposed password when he said "May the Force be with You." In episode 12 of the same dub, Leigarch makes a reference to the Black Panther Party group.
• After Rock introduces himself, Takenaka began to make references during his self-introduction, including the 1965 movie Abashiri Bangaishi, which was among the many hints given to viewers that he was a dedicated Japanese Red Army member before hiding in the Philippines after escaping from Lebanon.^[11]
• When Ginji mentions the words Sukeroku and Ikyu, he is referring to the kabuki play Sukeroku Kuruwa no Hatsuzakura. Sukeroku, the protagonist, arrived in the teahouse to face Ikyu, which was similar to Ginji and Yukio's attempts to face Hotel Moscow and Balalaika, which they failed to do.
• In one of the episodes, they smoke what appear to be American Spirits cigarettes.
• In episode 23 Balalaika is seen to be smoking Parliament brand cigarettes.
• The "Boss Chang" character is an homage to Chow Yun-Fat and his 1980s Triad films, where he played a character with the same outfit, hairstyle, weaponry, and fighting style as Boss Chang.
• In episode #14, when referring to the origins of the "Twin Children Killers" and Nicolae Ceausescu, a building appears that strongly resembles the Casa Poporului, which is in the middle of Bucharest.
• The ambiguous nature of right and wrong (in which even the series' protagonists are as often as not portrayed in a morally questionable, if not outright negative light), frequent cultural references, harsh language and stylized, often over-the-top or even comic book-style violence which are all key elements of the series bear a close similarity to the films of Quentin Tarantino.
• The butterfly shown in the garden of the Lovelace Mansion is a homage to the logo of Edison, the band who performed songs on the Black Lagoon soundtrack.
• In one episode, Eda quotes Robert Browning's "Pippa Passes" with the quote "God's in his Heaven, All's right with the world". This quote was similarly used as the slogan for the shadowy government organization NERV from the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion.
• In Episode 5, the German U-boat, bears the logo of U-96, Unterseeboot 96 was the subject of the film 'Das boot'.
• In issue #50 of Anime Insider magazine, director Sunao Katabuchi comments that the animation staff referred Roberta as an "Evil Mary Poppins". He goes on to add that creator Rei Hiroe long thought of Roberta as a kind of "Death Poppins".

References

External links

• (Japanese) Official site
• (Japanese) Unofficial Fan Page
• (Japanese) Dictionary of BLACK LAGOON
• Black Lagoon Manga Profile
• Black Lagoon Anime Profile
• Geneon's Official Black Lagoon Website
• Geneon's Official Revy MySpace Page
• Geneon's Official Rock MySpace Page
• Geneon's Official Dutch MySpace Page
• Geneon's Official Benny MySpace Page