Black Lagoon

**Black Lagoon** is an action, adventure, drama, suspense, thriller, comedy, dark comedy, Japanese anime series.  It was based on a manga

    which was written by Rei Hiroe and published by Shogakukan for the magazine Monthly Sunday Gene-X.  It originally ran from April 19, 2012 to Present, for a total of 10 volumes so far, and had a hiatus from March 14, to April, 2017.  After that came season 1 of the anime series.  It was written and directed by Sunao Katabuchi, musically composed by Edison, and produced by Jun Nishimura, Mitsutoshi Ogura, Junya Okamoto, and Studio Madhouse.  It originally aired from April 8, 2006 to June 24, 2006, and it lasted for 12 episodes in total.  After that came the second season.  It was written and directed by Sunao Katabuchi, musically composed by Edison, and produced by Jun Nishimura, Mitsutoshi Ogura, Junya Okamoto, and Studio Madhouse.  It originally aired from October 2, 2006 to December 18, 2006, and lasted for another 12 episodes in total.  After that came a light novel adaptation of the same name.  It was written by Gen Urobuchi, illustrated by Rei Hiroe, and published by Shogakukan.  It was originally published on July 18, 2008, and lasted for just 1 volume in total.  And finally after that came the OVA, titled Black Lagoon:  Roberta's Blood Trail, which was written and directed by Sunao Katabuchi, musically composed by Edison, and produced by Jun Nishimura, Mitsutoshi Ogura, Junya Okamoto, and Studio Madhouse.  It was originally released from July 17, 2010 to June 22, 2011, and it lasted for 5 35 minute episodes.

## Plot

The story follows a team of pirate mercenaries known as Lagoon Company, that smuggles goods in and around the seas of Southeast Asia in the early to mid 1990s.[2] Their base of operations is located in the fictional harbor city of Roanapur in southeast Thailand(somewhere in the Amphoe Mueang Trat district, likely on the mainland north/northeast of the Ko Chang island or on the island itself).[3] The island is home to the Yakuza, the Triad, the Russian mafia, the Colombian cartel, the Italian mafia, and a wide assortment of pickpockets, thugs, mercenaries, thieves, prostitutes, assassins, and gunmen of all sorts. They transport goods in the 80-foot (24 m) Elco-type 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, even going as far as Phu Quoc island of Vietnam. The members of the Lagoon Company spend much of their down time at The Yellow Flag, a bar in Roanapur which is often destroyed in firefights.

## Why It Rocks

1. Incredible animation.
2. Black Lagoon has an outstanding cast of female characers.  While not all the characters are female, and every character stands out and are great, the female ones are especially worth mentioning.  There's Revy, of course, the leader of the Lagoon company, but there's also Balalaika, the leader of Hotel Moscow, Eda, a badass nun, Shenhua, a Taiwaneese Assassin, Gretel, twin sister of Hansel, a psychotic orphan child.
3. Very appealing art style and character designs.
4. Revy's and Rock's relationship is very engaging.  The show does a great job of balancing the line between it being a standard friendship and a romantic relationship.  While they never have any explicitly romantic scenes in the series, and it seems to just be a friendship, if they did form a romantic relationship it still wouldn't seem out of place.
5. Amazing soundtrack.
6. Rock is a very interesting main character.  He starts out as a naive, annoying main character that's so common in anime, but he gets lots of character development and becomes just as badass as the characters that surrounds him constantly.
7. Great voice acting in both sub and dub.
8. All of the side characters are also interesting and entertaining, such as Dutch and Benny, also of the Lagoon Company.
9. Phenomenal action scenes.
10. The show has an eerily dark and disturbing atmosphere, while sitll managing to successfully balance it with some dark comedy.
11. Excellent pacing.

## Reception

The first 9 volumes of the manga have sold over 6 million copies in Japan.[18] About.com's Deb Aoki listed Viz Media's English release of *Black Lagoon* as the best new seinen manga of 2008, along with *Gantz*.[19] The anime series has received internationally positive reviews.[20][21][22] With Chris Beveridge of 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.”[21]
Escapist Magazine contributor Tom Tonthat reviewed both seasons of Black Lagoon separately. Both seasons received a positive review with the stylized action scenes and the strong female characters' being praised, while also criticizing the somewhat repetitive nature of the plot.[23]