Spoilers ahead for all the best parts of Black Lagoon, mostly season 1.
Mods I know my last 20 or so reviews were trolls but don't delete this one
___
Someone told me a long time ago that the only reason anyone liked Black Lagoon was because there's lots of guns and cursing and it's overall just edgy as fuck.
Whoever said that forgot about my Soviet burn-victim waifu, Balalaika.
That's a joke but, this individual isn't entirely wrong. There's lots of times where characters act needlessly or uncharacteristicly rough with one another because "guns are frickin' A-awesome bro," and there's also times where a fuckin' curse word is used needlessly to negative effect, bitch, but the idea that those are the ONLY things to like about this show is silly.
I'm going to be covering Black Lagoon arc-by-arc, partly because there's massive jumps in quality between them, and also because one of my biggest criticisms is tied to the way the show works in this structure. As a refresher because reviews always have these for some reason, Black Lagoon is the story of Rock, a Japanese businessman who's decided that the only way to stop suffering under late-stage capitalism is to join a PMC, and Revy, hothead-bombastic-bodacious-murder-babe. There's two more but, they don't really matter. Don't make that face at me, you know it's true.
EXPOSITION ARC
The series' necessary evil. Exclusively there to show off the level of action we're dealing with and establish Rock as the capitalism-refugee, Revy as the tortured-badass-see-previous, Dutch as the suave captain, and Benny as the being there too. Call me lazy but I don't think there's much to say about this other than, if you can make it through the first 2 episodes, you're in for greener pastures. Or atleast, less boring pastures.
NAZI ARC
Bringing out the nazi's this early was not what I expected for an edgefest like this. Usually we save the nazis for later to be our big bad but, not only are they already here, they're all dead by the end and we never hear from them again. You heard it here first folks, by the end of this series, Revy solves racism, as long as you believe that the Taiwanese don't count.
This is where you'll decide if you should sit through this show. The action isn't as bombastic as the episode before, but it's the first time the show's occasionally excellent character writing comes into play with this scene in the submarine.
Describing this scene doesn't do it justice but, Rock is ranting to Revy about how it's wrong to be graverobbing men who died gruesome deaths at the bottom of the ocean in their country's service, leading Revy to sit his (metaphorical) white-ass down and let him know how his high-and-mighty moralizing throne was built upon a mound of the beaten and the broken. It's fantastic for like, 5 different reasons. It establishes the dynamic the rest of the show works on. It hints at but doesn't tell us about Revy's past life. It sets up how Revy uses her shitty upbringing to justify her often unjustifiable actions. It calls out the hypocrisy between Rock's judgement for others doing what they have to do to survive and his place in the lagoon company. It is an outstanding scene and an example that the show isn't all just guns and swearing, there is legitimate thought and philosophy on display here.
Despite how good this scene is, there's an part after the end of the nazi arc that I think takes the cake as the greatest scene of the entire series.
At first, episode 7 sort of feels like a Tales Of Bah Sing Se, which in by book is a massive plus, until we reach the scene of Rock and Revy in the market, where Rock hits a-
Spoiler, click to viewclick to hide
-and lays into Revy about how he's tired of being stepped on his whole life, that her shitty upbringing doesn't make her above him, and how she's becoming the bourgeois bosses whose hypocrisy she claims to despise. Even if he has to die for it, Rock is done being a chew toy for other people, it's the first time he finds common ground with Revy and it sets the backdrop for their entire relationship going forward, setting it at the center of the series, one of begrudging respect and a mutual objective to live for themselves.
It's fucking beautiful.
why is this header tag not working
#
MAID ARC
Ok done being nice now.
In this arc, the lagoon company takes on a job to sell a rival family's son to a Columbian cartel, and they're intercepted by Roberta, the boy's bodyguard whose dressed like a maid because.
It is probably the COOLEST arc of the show, with the car chase being one of the only times our main cast is threatened in any significant way, but falls on its ass in the storytelling for a lot of reasons.
The reason Roberta is after the lagoon company is 1) a family motto to crush injustice, which is brought up once and never touched on again so I don't even count it, and 2) the boy is horrified by the idea that Roberta is a secret killing machine, which also doesn't work.
It hinges on the idea that Roberta is a morally grey character, that she's arguably doing the wrong thing here but, she isn't. She's murdering gangsters to keep a boy from being sold off to a rival cartel, she's, in my opinion atleast, the most virtuous character in the entire story (not that there's much competition there). Not only does it put a damper on Rock who, for this arc at least, is fine with human trafficking as long as his buddies say it's ok, it also makes for a very weird ending where, only after shooting the shit out of the lagoon company, does Garcia (that's the boy's name by the way) decide that Roberta is forgiven actually. They also ham fist in a thing of "Roberta killed a lot of people in the past" to justify Garcia being unable to forgive her. I think the intention was to make it seem like an equivalency to Rock, but once again, Roberta did those terrible things under false pretenses and for a cause she believed in, making her, to me atleast, way more justified than anyone in the lagoon company who does it for thrills, petty vengeance, and money. This whole arc shines a light on the worst parts of the show, unless you're exclusively here for the action, and if that's the case-
Spoiler, click to viewclick to hide
▶ COMMIE ARC
The alternative name was "The mid-2000s arc" for reasons that will be disclosed later.
The Commie arc follows lagoon as they attempt to transport highly sensitive documents on a terrorist organization to the CIA. Rock and Revy are present, with the added bonus of white-lady doing a Chinese-accent being called, quote, "Chinglish," and an Irish stoner written by someone whose never seen weed before. To anyone who says "you couldn't make a show like this today," yes you could, you'd just have to take the slurs out, and it'd be slightly better for it. Let's just chalk it up to the mid 2000s so we can all move on with our lives.
I have mixed feelings on the Commie arc, and not just for, y'know. I like what it goes for, and I mostly like how it gets there, but it's the part where Rock's chronic lack of follow-through comes into play the hardest.
Every arc so far comes to a head with Rock finding some sort of moral or philosophical quandary in what lagoon is doing. In this arc, Rock suffers a major crisis of confidence at the hand of a friendly revolutionary, who convinces Rock of his selfishness and lack of conviction, the same as the rest of Lagoon, fighting for money but without even an excuse like the rest of them have. It's not a great line, it almost contradicts some of the stuff from the nazi arc, but the real kicker is that, this whole experience is basically forgotten by Rock once the season ends. And with the exception of the scene with Revy in the market after the nazi arc, every other moment like this, where Rock really gets questioned on his outlook as a good person while doing all these terrible things, just kind of don't matter. This gets addressed in season 2, but in a way that tries to justify their lack of follow-through in all the previous arcs, which is fine I guess but not really satisfying. Only Rock's actions are questioned because, for the most part, no one else really cares about whether they're doing the right thing, which is why Rock is the ideological cornerstone of the series. It sucks that he doesn't really change as the series goes on, other than being more open to doing violent shit. It could be the spot of brightness to tie the entire show into a noisy and slightly defective package but it doesn't feel like it goes far enough.
If you hopped to the end to justify either 1) your own opinion, or 2) the angry message you're itching to send me, a 70 is good in my book. Maybe that tells you a little too much about my grades growing up, but I'd recommend this show to anyone who can tolerate the often pointlessly edgy nature, alongside some arcs that very much fall flat, in order to make it to some great thematic moments and character writing.
Emphasis on some. 
