 | | ▪ | RELEASED BY: | | FUNIMATION ENTERTAINMENT | | | ▪ | ASPECT RATIO: | | 16:9 ANAMORPHIC WIDESCREEN | | | ▪ | AUDIO: | | ENGLISH DTS 5.1 / DD 2.0 AND
JAPANESE DD 2.0 | | | ▪ | RUNNING TIME: | | 660 MIN | | | ▪ | RATING: | | 16 UP | | | ▪ | RELEASE DATE: | | 09/20/2009 | | | ▪ | REVIEW DATE: | | 11/13/2009 | | | ▪ | REVIEWED BY: | | DAVEY C. JONES |
SYNOPSIS:
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, maniacal and mean. Together, they make up the crew of the Black Lagoon. Making a living in a city where the most villainous of villains make themselves at home isn’t without its risks, but they take on any job available to them. Smuggling guns, drugs, kidnapped children and stolen goods is all part of a hard days work. The complete series, season 1 and 2, in one thinpack box set on 8 discs! This includes the 2 bonus discs that came with the separate season releases!
REVIEW:
Eight discs, 1 to 6 are the anime and discs 7 and 8 are the bonus discs that came with season 1 and season 2 respectively. Too sweet! I’ve seen my good share of shoot ‘em up anime stories but Black Lagoon blows them all out of the water! Right out of the pages of Rei Hiroe’s kick ass manga series, the stories come roaring to life in the animation. It starts with Rock. He’s a nice guy, a simple Japanese businessman who’s low on the ladder and gets himself into deep kimchee when he gets kidnapped by Black Lagoon! Rock’s got the data disc they want and when he won’t give in to the mercenaries beating on him, he gets a rude awakening when he learns just how expendable he is to his company. Loyalty apparently doesn’t count for much with this lot. He made an impression on Dutch, Benny and Revy though, the mercenaries who took him. Call it Stockholm Syndrome or call it fate, but Rock’s destiny has changed to one violent roller coaster ride! He joins the group of Black Lagoon and he falls into the thick of it right off the bat! A neo Nazi group has stolen something right under Black Lagoon’s noses. Revy is fired up and that means people are gonna die! A battle at sea, grenades, bazookas, you name it, if it causes enough damage then Revy will use it! And it’s payback time for the lady with the guns. Rock’s got a soft heart, and compassion has no business in this business so Revy wants to dump him. But a road trip to a nut job of a town has the two seeing eye to eye, and could that be more than the cigarettes that have sparks flying? The show teases, but no romance happens yet between these two opposites. It’s a good thing they’ve patched things up because the high of the first season is when the son of a mafia boss has a job and in comes Roberta the psycho maid! She’s an assassin unparalleled and she’s got a doting streak a few tanks wide for her young charge. A big smash’em up fight between her and Revy happens and it is as funny as it is violent! The final arc of the first season sees a big Triad boss fuming after a hit gone wrong against him. He’s hired five different teams to retrieve what’s his. The job sends Revy and Rock into the jungle facing off against a guerilla group and a crazy knife wielding assassin called Shenhua. You wouldn’t think such an extremely violent show (Tarantino fans will love Black Lagoon!) could also be so funny but this show has both! Revy is crude, lewd and man, can she ever pile u the body count! There’s more serious stuff with the show touching on themes of good and evil, life and death, heavy existential even nihilistic questions all under a rain of gunfire. Awesome! The second season gets severe with the tragedy and the drama. It starts with two vampire assassins hitting town. Now Roanapur is a place where no one lives unless you’re a serious badass, but these two kids have everyone shaking in their boots. Balalaika, the chilly and frightening head of a Russian ex-military group of now mercenaries is out for blood against these two murdering children. She even hires Black Lagoon to help. Slaughters are happening everywhere and when Revy teams up with gun toting nun Eda, there are funny times before it gets deadly serious. Rock and the team have the girl, but the boy falls into Balalaika’s trap. Who will live, who will die? It’s a nail biting one and breaks the heart at the same time. That whole fiasco left its mark on everyone, but especially Rock. It left him not only with a bad taste in his mouth, but he’s not happy with Balalaika which makes it even more strange when he agrees to her hiring him for a trip as translator for her to Tokyo. It’s homecoming time for Rock but he’s about to learn the harsh way that you can’t go home again. Balalaika and her Hotel Moscow group have been hired to take out a Yakuza family. Now there’s only a teenage girl left and her loyal and katana carrying bodyguard. Rock takes pity on Yukio, but it pits him against Balalaika. She’s the picture of relentless and unforgiving. When Revy joins the bodyguard for a bloodbath to save Yukio, we’re talking serious carnage on an epic level. Even if they could save Yukio, what happens when Balalaika gets hold of Rock who has betrayed her? It is an opera of violence in the grand finale. The tension goes through the roof and hits the moon and keeps going. Rock has to face the ruthless truth about his life now and those around him and it is one agony of a lesson to learn. It hurts to watch what he goes through. You feel for the man. If he can survive past it is a whole other story. This uber freaking cool anime is produced by MADHOUSE that also worked on Ninja Scroll and Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust and ever more violent extravaganzas in anime like Texhnolyze, Batman: Gotham Knight, Animatrix, and Death Note. Black Lagoon is theatrical quality action sequences throughout all 24 episodes. The details of the weapons and mechanical designs will rock your world. Seeing them in action will give the audience rapture in vicarious violent viewing. The show also has a hard hitting groove with its opening theme song “Red Fraction”.
EXTRAS:
Bonus goodies are on discs 7 and 8. They include the kick ass music video by MELL for the song “Red Fraction”, original Japanese music ad, a behind the scenes of the English production that has interviews and behind the scenes with James Corrigall (ADR Director), Jiro Okada (Associate Producer), Stephen Hedley (English Adaptation Script Writer), Brad Swaile (Rock), Maryke Hendrykse (Revy) and Dean Redman (Dutch), an interview with Director Sunao Katabuchi, clean opening and closing credits, promo videos, and trailers.
IN SUMMARY:
Black Lagoon is the violent anime epic that fans of Tarantino, Cowboy Bebop, and Kite have go to see! |
