Black Lagoon – Seasons 1 & 2
(24 episode series)
Put succinctly, this series is a valentine to action movies on both sides of the Pacific. Not a hold you down and have its way with you valentine like Star Trek: Enterprise's last episode, either, but something people who enjoy old action movies from the '80s and '90s would actually appreciate.
Now, just to be clear, this isn't exactly what I would normally consider "good" per say, but you might notice that it's still ranked fairly high on my favorites/recommendations list. Why? Because this series is fuckin' awesome, that's why. It's awesome the same way the movies RED and The Expendables are awesome. Shows like that don't try to sell themselves as anything other than mindless action, with plenty of explosions and fight scenes thrown in, but without being completely stupid. They wink and smile at what they are and have fun. That's what Black Lagoon does. It also references plenty of other cool action movies, which tells me that the people who made this movie are as big of film nerds as I am. Das Boot and Terminator 2 are probably the most obvious references, but there are a few others, along with some Japanese action schlock just to round everything out.
At the same time, this series is more than that. If I could directly compare this series to anything else, the closest I could come would be the short-lived series Firefly. It takes place on an old PT boat called the Black Lagoon, captained by an old war vet (or so we're led to believe), and crewed by misfits. However, this isn't the captain's story, it's Rock's. Once known as Rokuro Okajima, he was a typical business yuppie who took any amount of flack from anyone just so he could maybe someday move up that corporate ladder. One fateful day, he was asked to carry a disk with some of his company's dirty secrets on it, and as it just so happened the Russian mafia knew about this and decided to do a little blackmail, and so Rokuro met the crew of the Lagoon and became Rock.
There is no overall arcing story to the series, which instead is split up into a number of multi-episode story arcs. Well, I guess that's not entirely accurate – the overall story arc is how Rock changes from the business yuppie into someone harder, someone who can survive in the dark underbelly of Asia that is Roanapur. Not to mention someone who can survive having sexual tension with someone who's a breath away from blowing his brains out.
Kind of makes the typical "Pride and Prejudice" bullshit seem laughable in comparison, really.
But the main point is that Rock not only survives, but begins to thrive, becoming a full-fledged part of the Lagoon Company, and impressing all the very bad people who make crime their business in Roanapur – people like Balalaika, the boss of Hotel Moscow. Hotel Moscow, just so you know, is a part of the Russian mafia made up entirely of an elite military group that fought in the Soviet-Afghanistan conflict.
The stories that make up the series tend to be pretty interesting by themselves, too, in a usually messed up kind of way. At one point they even managed to kind of make me feel a little sorry for some psychopathic little murdering kids. Most of the time, though, it's mostly about awesome, over-the-top action, at least until it turns into the Rock and Revy Show in the last part of the second season.
Honestly, the characters are a big part of why this series was enjoyable. Rock makes a pretty decent protagonist, who actually manages to break away from the whiny Japanese male stereotype every once in a while and actually stands up for himself. Revy is very much the Ms. Fanservice of the series, on top of being the ultimate action girl. She's nicknamed "Two Hands" thanks to her ability to accurately fire both of her handguns at the same time. She also apparently has the ability to jump something like 20 feet or better. As I hinted above, there also seems to be a bit of a romance ... thing going on between Rock and Revy, though definitely not in the traditional sense. They each seem to be drawn to aspects of the other, and other characters even call them on it, but while part of me kind of would like to see that, I guess I'm not like the typical fanboy because I can't get past how certifiably evil Revy is. She is very much the Jayne of the show. I guess that's why I was kind of disappointed when the show kind of tended to push aside Dutch and Benny so much, because those two were fairly interesting, too.
Dutch is the captain of the Black Lagoon, and the owner of the Lagoon Company, which does odd jobs for whoever pays the most. Benny is a computer nerd and the information expert of the company. Both of them are pretty laid back characters who keep themselves calm and collected.
There are also a number of minor characters who have their own little quirks that manage to make them endure themselves to the audience, even if they're bad people. Actually that's part of how the show goes over-the-top, because I think Benny is the only character who isn't messed up in some way. You know, like Balalaika, who just happens to look on the outside like she is on the inside.
Go ahead, call her "Fry Face," I'm sure she won't mind.
The only characters I wasn't terribly impressed with were the yakuza types in the last part of the series. The show kept trying to impress me with how badass they were, and how noble some of them supposedly were, but, let's face it, they're yakuza.
Oh, and as an aside, swords could never cut through a gun. Sorry katana fanboys, but no matter how sharp they are, they aren't hard enough to cut through a gun barrel.
Anyway, as you might guess, I thoroughly enjoyed this series. It isn't remotely the kind of thing I would normally call "good," rather, it's carried by the sheer power of awesome. If you enjoy action movies, if you enjoyed Cowboy Bebop, Outlaw Star, or Firefly, you will definitely enjoy this series, too. 9/10.
(24 episode series)
Put succinctly, this series is a valentine to action movies on both sides of the Pacific. Not a hold you down and have its way with you valentine like Star Trek: Enterprise's last episode, either, but something people who enjoy old action movies from the '80s and '90s would actually appreciate.
Now, just to be clear, this isn't exactly what I would normally consider "good" per say, but you might notice that it's still ranked fairly high on my favorites/recommendations list. Why? Because this series is fuckin' awesome, that's why. It's awesome the same way the movies RED and The Expendables are awesome. Shows like that don't try to sell themselves as anything other than mindless action, with plenty of explosions and fight scenes thrown in, but without being completely stupid. They wink and smile at what they are and have fun. That's what Black Lagoon does. It also references plenty of other cool action movies, which tells me that the people who made this movie are as big of film nerds as I am. Das Boot and Terminator 2 are probably the most obvious references, but there are a few others, along with some Japanese action schlock just to round everything out.
At the same time, this series is more than that. If I could directly compare this series to anything else, the closest I could come would be the short-lived series Firefly. It takes place on an old PT boat called the Black Lagoon, captained by an old war vet (or so we're led to believe), and crewed by misfits. However, this isn't the captain's story, it's Rock's. Once known as Rokuro Okajima, he was a typical business yuppie who took any amount of flack from anyone just so he could maybe someday move up that corporate ladder. One fateful day, he was asked to carry a disk with some of his company's dirty secrets on it, and as it just so happened the Russian mafia knew about this and decided to do a little blackmail, and so Rokuro met the crew of the Lagoon and became Rock.
There is no overall arcing story to the series, which instead is split up into a number of multi-episode story arcs. Well, I guess that's not entirely accurate – the overall story arc is how Rock changes from the business yuppie into someone harder, someone who can survive in the dark underbelly of Asia that is Roanapur. Not to mention someone who can survive having sexual tension with someone who's a breath away from blowing his brains out.
Kind of makes the typical "Pride and Prejudice" bullshit seem laughable in comparison, really.
But the main point is that Rock not only survives, but begins to thrive, becoming a full-fledged part of the Lagoon Company, and impressing all the very bad people who make crime their business in Roanapur – people like Balalaika, the boss of Hotel Moscow. Hotel Moscow, just so you know, is a part of the Russian mafia made up entirely of an elite military group that fought in the Soviet-Afghanistan conflict.
The stories that make up the series tend to be pretty interesting by themselves, too, in a usually messed up kind of way. At one point they even managed to kind of make me feel a little sorry for some psychopathic little murdering kids. Most of the time, though, it's mostly about awesome, over-the-top action, at least until it turns into the Rock and Revy Show in the last part of the second season.
Honestly, the characters are a big part of why this series was enjoyable. Rock makes a pretty decent protagonist, who actually manages to break away from the whiny Japanese male stereotype every once in a while and actually stands up for himself. Revy is very much the Ms. Fanservice of the series, on top of being the ultimate action girl. She's nicknamed "Two Hands" thanks to her ability to accurately fire both of her handguns at the same time. She also apparently has the ability to jump something like 20 feet or better. As I hinted above, there also seems to be a bit of a romance ... thing going on between Rock and Revy, though definitely not in the traditional sense. They each seem to be drawn to aspects of the other, and other characters even call them on it, but while part of me kind of would like to see that, I guess I'm not like the typical fanboy because I can't get past how certifiably evil Revy is. She is very much the Jayne of the show. I guess that's why I was kind of disappointed when the show kind of tended to push aside Dutch and Benny so much, because those two were fairly interesting, too.
Dutch is the captain of the Black Lagoon, and the owner of the Lagoon Company, which does odd jobs for whoever pays the most. Benny is a computer nerd and the information expert of the company. Both of them are pretty laid back characters who keep themselves calm and collected.
There are also a number of minor characters who have their own little quirks that manage to make them endure themselves to the audience, even if they're bad people. Actually that's part of how the show goes over-the-top, because I think Benny is the only character who isn't messed up in some way. You know, like Balalaika, who just happens to look on the outside like she is on the inside.
Go ahead, call her "Fry Face," I'm sure she won't mind.
The only characters I wasn't terribly impressed with were the yakuza types in the last part of the series. The show kept trying to impress me with how badass they were, and how noble some of them supposedly were, but, let's face it, they're yakuza.
Oh, and as an aside, swords could never cut through a gun. Sorry katana fanboys, but no matter how sharp they are, they aren't hard enough to cut through a gun barrel.
Anyway, as you might guess, I thoroughly enjoyed this series. It isn't remotely the kind of thing I would normally call "good," rather, it's carried by the sheer power of awesome. If you enjoy action movies, if you enjoyed Cowboy Bebop, Outlaw Star, or Firefly, you will definitely enjoy this series, too. 9/10.