This review originally appeared in ICv2 Guide to Anime/Manga #42, published in March 2007.

Black Lagoon Vol. 1

(Geneon) $29.98/$39.98 100 minutes

Creators: Rei Hiroe (manga), Sunao Katabuchi (director), Madhouse (studio)

Released: April 2007 (Japan, 2006)

Format: Anamorphic widescreen

Age Rating: 16+

ICv2 Stars: 4 out of 5 stars

Japanese salaryman Rokuro Okajima is kidnapped by pirates while delivering a computer disc in waters off of Thailand.  When he discovers that his company has been helping an unstable third world country develop an A-bomb, and that his company wants to kill him to hush up the affair, he joins up with the three pirates who captured him and becomes part of the crew of the pirate PT boat, Black Lagoon.  The leader of the crew is Dutch, a tough as nails Vietnam vet, who calls the shots and pilots the ship.  Revy, the only female crew member, is as deadly with her twin pearl-handled 9 mm as she is curvaceous, while Benny, the communications expert and hacker extraordinaire, is as kind and welcoming as Revy is curt and dangerous. Rokuro, who quickly earns the nickname “Rock,” is often whiny and always button-downed, but he does come up with some interesting battle tactics and proves to be a skillful negotiator and valuable member of the crew.

Black Lagoon is basically an earthbound Cowboy Bebop, pitting a crew of roguish adventurers against the corrupt powers that be in a non-stop series of episodic adventures—and even more than in Cowboy Bebop the action never flags in Black Lagoon.  Director Sunao Katabuchi keeps the narrative moving at a breakneck pace, and even a generation used to lightning fast video games won’t be bored.

The stories in the first four episodes of Black Lagoon are carefully constructed and contain clever references to pertinent concepts such as the “Stockholm Syndrome.”  Not much time is wasted providing the historical and sociological backgrounds of the various crew members, but clever elliptical hints are dropped indicating that we will find out more about what makes these characters tick in subsequent episodes.  The first two episodes, which deal with Rock’s abduction and his company’s attempt to wipe out the crew by sending a team of mercenaries to hunt them down, are skillfully presented and well integrated.

The Black Lagoon anime is based on Rei Hiroe’s seinen  (older male teens) manga and it earns its 16+ rating with a body count rivaling Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch.  In addition to the non-stop violence there is equally non-stop cigarette smoking and lots of drinking (chugging hard liquor is where Rock’s salaryman training actually comes in handy).  The language is also quite rough with lots of F-bombs and plenty of other expletives--it’s not The Departed, but the dialogue is plenty salty.  Fan service in the first Black Lagoon disc consists of close-ups of Revy’s Daisy Duke cutoffs-covered posterior and some pin-ups that Duke has pasted to the cabin wall.

The first four episodes of Black Lagoon deliver the “action picture” goods, and while it’s not for every one, this anime rocks hard and should find considerable success here in North America, if the subsequent episodes maintain the high standards of animation and narration demonstrated by the first four. 

–Tom Flinn, ICv2