I never got to watch all of this, and that always bugged me. What sense does it make, letting Sam make our site’s statement on this manliest anime? We’re correcting that, now.
When I first checked out BLACK LAGOON, it struck me as what WANTED might’ve looked like if Joel Silver produced it. The parallels are hard to deny. You have a nebbish, dumped-on officer jockey getting whisked into a tough and mean high-octane world of gray morality - - steadily learning how to be an alpha male. No doubt, his character arc will include with some very cynical observations about who’s really on which end of the stick in the modern world. Revy fills the Angelina Jolie role rather easily, too.
== TEASER ==
That’s all consistent with my first viewing. What does stick out in this re-visit, however, is that pilot seems to kind of skip over a number of plot beats you’d expect (or need?) I actually had to check the streaming window to make sure I hadn’t accidentally loaded a later episode. Expediency is great and all, but it’s a little… odd to get to Rock and Revy chumming it up at the bar so quickly when we never actually saw that much of his humdrum office life before the kidnapping. Maybe there’s not much to get. He’s a salary man. You get his deal. But still, I figure the eventual transformation would be that much more striking with a lowly “larval state” to compare it to.
Maybe it comes down to dub vs. sub. There’s an added level of awkward, unintentional comedy here. Either tough characters using the well-chewed “You just don’t get it, do you?!” cliché no less than three times, or the F-bombs they get crowbarred into Revy’s dialog like this is a Manga Ent. release 15-ing its way to the adult section of the video store.
I’m going to watch more of this, but maybe the edge has dulled some over the years?
Watch "the Black Lagoon" and decide for yourself.
from Anime Vice Site Mashup http://ift.tt/1FpOvJg
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