Black Lagoon vol. 1

From the second I hit play, I knew Black Lagoon was two-hands of awesome. I love the opening of the show. It’s got guitar on shredd, pounding drums, and some rock diva screaming into the microphone. Lately, openings have been very pop driven, glossy, and polite. An opening with shredded guitars like in Black Lagoon feels so old-school. It’s like the nineties again and a TNS girl like Priss is what’s hot for an anime babe. That feeling of old-school extends beyond the opening of Black Lagoon, which makes all the difference.

Black Lagoon follows the Lagoon Company, a mercenary band of pirates on the seas off South East Asia. These are adult characters who live in a rough world, cutting deals and risking their lives to put food on the table…and to buy more guns. The non-school-age of the characters is one of the things that appeals to me about Black Lagoon, which in this era of anime seems to be exceedingly uncommon for the main cast to be. Every now and again it just feels good to see anime characters on the screen that won’t be late for school.

DVD Text:
“Rokuro Okajima is meek, mundane and metropolitan. His business trip to South East Asia turns from pleasure cruise to festival of pain when modern day pirates board the ship and take him hostage. Revy, Dutch, and Benny are merciless, maniacle and mean. Together they make up the crew of the Black Lagoon. They are the exact opposite of Rokuro in every way but one. A mercenary group has targeted them to steal the data disc that Rokuro had, and with it, classified information that threatens the peace and security of the entire world! Amen, Hallelujah, Peanut Butter!”

The male lead is “Rock,” our eyes and ears discovering the treacherous mercenary world of Black Lagoon. He’s the guy who leaves his unsatisfying desk job behind in Tokyo after a series of bizarre events put him in a position to be able to actually leave it, which is something many dream of doing some day. For an office worker like me, Rock’s story is definitely escapism I can relate to. While Rock is the vantage point of the story, the main attraction of Black Lagoon; however, is Revy.

Revy is called two-hands. She delivers the holy crap violence. With a cannon in each hand she pounces into the fray with her frantic almost hand-to-hand gunfu laying waste to anyone silly enough to point a gun in her direction. Her mega jump and dual pistol style kind of reminds me of Lara Croft, except far less civilized and with Red Bull concentrate for blood buzzing through her veins.

Black Lagoon vol 1, Special Edition

I got the special edition packaging for Black Lagoon. In addition to a metal keepcase, it features a disc of extras, which is okay and helps absorb the sting of the extra expense. To be fair, I haven’t viewed the content yet, so it might actually be worthwhile as I generally do enjoy these types of extras discs. The main feature for me is the metal case which will hold all of the DVDs in the series. This is a great bonus, since I’m running out of places to put DVD racks in my apartment. Attractive space saving storage needs to happen more often with anime releases. I just wish Geneon’s case vendor used different hubs, since the ones used here are of the death grip variety.

English Dub

The Ocean Group of Canada is producing the English dub for Black Lagoon. As with many Ocean dubs, I feel that the actors in Black Lagoon are let down by the recording quality and the direction. I find many of the regular Ocean actors to be entertaining when the direction and engineering is on target. Ocean can produce a good dub (see Popotan), I just wish they’d get all the pieces together more often.

The quality of the vocal recording on Black Lagoon is stifling. There’s no ambience to the audio, even on the DTS enhanced audio track. It sounds tight (in a bad way) and unnatural. This is a shame because Brad Swaile as Rock and Maryke Hendrikse as Revy sound like their performances would really stand out if the recording allowed life.

On the positive side, each of the characters has their own voice and way of speaking. The dialogue also has an edge I expect from a bunch of pirates. In the end, it’s a dub that manages to be there and hamstrung by audio quality, with an almost pointless enhanced audio track given the output.

Overall

The episodes in this volume set the stage and hint at a larger plot taking place — that’s expected for a first disc. All of this doesn’t feel drawn out at all. I really dig it so far mainly due to the gunplay, the cynical atmosphere, and how it feels like a throwback in some ways with the music, character choices, and blatant disregard of idealism. I don’t foresee this show inspiring deep intellectual debate, but seeing Revy go airborne in one scene when the Black Lagoon was surrounded by six other boats put a smile on me face.