This is MarXus with the first season finale review of Black Lagoon. Me and EagleLeaf decided to split up the series between us to give you two points of view. Let's just hop right in.
I don't like animes. There are a few exceptions, but Black Lagoon is not one of them unfortunately. The greatest strength of this genre is at the same time its greatest weakness: It's drawn. Animations can never get close to real human acting, I think that's pretty much out of the question. What every anime has to do then is to become "art", to mesmerize the viewer through stunning visuals, colourful, magical landscapes and highly stylized characters. It should use the full potential of the medium to deliver a n enjoyable experience. When I see an anime that could have easily been done with real people on real locations, I just can't immerse myself into it very well. If you have to make an anime, use the medium you are working with instead of trying to copy another one.
Alright, I don't usually mention title sequences as they are not part of the series in my opinion, but Black Lagoon delivers what might just be the most ridiculous one I have ever seen. I'm not talking about the visuals here though. No, it's the intro song that was probably sung by people that didn't even know the language they are torturing our ears with. I don't know if there is an original sequence which features Japanese lyrics, but I sure do hope so for poor Japan. I'm not going to nitpick about this any more, just prepare yourself for this, mentally.
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| This most definitely violated me. |
I am, by the way, watching the English dubbed version. Listening to a language you understand helps a lot when trying to immerse yourself into a story in my opinion, but I am aware of the masses of hardcore anime fans that swear on subtitles over voice dubs.
Back to the two-parter: I like to rate episodes based on how I feel right after watching them: Some leave me smiling, some leave me sad - Black Lagoon however leaves me just empty. There is a certain dullness to the show, the feeling that there is something missing, something essential. The episodes left me bored, wishing I would've spent my time doing something else. Now you might say that these claims are made up and simply a matter of opinion, but I'd like to disagree. Let me back it up with some facts.
1. The Graveyard feeling
It took me while to notice what exactly made me feel so unconnected while watching Black Lagoon. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but after a while it became more and more obvious: Black Lagoon doesn't ever show anything but the mere basics required to create a scene. Backgrounds often consist of nothing more than a few bright contours and shapes on an otherwise very dark background. Don't get me wrong, this could be considered an unique art style, but they don't use it as such. If you have nothing in the background, you need to fill the foreground to create a visually appealing composition. In Black Lagoon, a few people sit in front of a dark background, barely moving most of the time. After a while this feels pretty dull and boring, makes you tired and takes your attention away from what the characters say. The establishing shots are not much better: They are still frames with no movement whatsoever, even in the most crowded places:
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| I know it would be ridiculous to animate everything, but can't you at least make a few objects move? |
Now I'm not the only one to notice that, the animators did too. To tackle this issue they often stuffed scenes with as many fake camera pans as they could. This is a commonly technique used to fake motion and to distract the viewer from the dull backgrounds. I'm sure this works in some situations, but I definitely is not enough to create the feeling of a realistic environment that the viewers can immerse themselves in. To take it a step further, I'd say it gets pretty annoying after a while. Your eyes constantly have to follow some barely animated character, making you tired and irritated. Camera movement should only be used to compliment a sense of motion, to establish a shot or to express a certain dynamic. It should not replace those things.
I was also majorly disappointed by the poor sound design. While this is probably one of the most important steps to create a believable environment, it is for some reason also the most commonly ignored one. I am fully aware that only big Hollywood productions get an unique, diverse soundtrack, but even without those resources you should be able to use audio to your advantage. You may not notice it immediately, but the human mind is remarkable in noticing "fake-ness". If the audio doesn't fit the visuals, we feel more distant from the scene, more like an outsider watching some people through binoculars. When I hear the sound of waves, I want to see the waves moving correspondingly on my screen. Imagine you look at a black screen and hear the sound of rolling waves and maybe a light breeze of wind. You immediately know you are at a beach. Sounds can create scenes by themselves and are especially important in the anime genre, as they are only real thing in them. It's extremely important to match sounds to your visuals then - Black Lagoon doesn't bother. The same goes for actual music as well: It feels like they had a very limited selection of musical pieces at hand. Like the background noises the score is often disconnected from the visuals, sometimes starting randomly in the middle of a scene and not in any way reflecting the emotions portrayed. I just feels like the creators did not really care about their product.
As this is my first Black Lagoon review, I might as well talk about the English voice overs: They are absolutely dreadful. I haven't heard such lethargic, monotone voice acting in an anime ever before - Granted, I never watch anime, but this doesn't change the fact that a much better job could have been done here. The voices seem disconnected from the visuals: When there is a really intense situation, no one ever really shouts. Never. You are lucky if you hear them talking loudly from time to time. They also don't even bother to give their voices some emotional depth like anger, affection or surprise. It almost sounds as if they never watched the anime and just read their lines to a microphone, impatiently waiting for someone to pay them.
How are you supposed to feel immersed in an environment that not even the creators really cared about?
2. Exaggeration and Categorization
I guess you could say this issue is entirely based on personal opinion. Humor in anime is often expressed through exaggerated visuals that can't be considered part of the show's canon. A good example for this is one character punching another character right through a wall, all without any of them sustaining any injuries. To my delight Black Lagoon doesn't use this style of visual humor. They however try to get laughs by exaggerating something else: Character traits. Even the main characters sometimes seem more like caricatures of themselves, lacking any depth and existing solely to advance the plot for the next action sequence. Meanwhile secondary characters often exist for some cheap laughs, nothing more. I'm not saying that this is always bad, to the contrary, some of my favorite TV shows like Community do this regularly - The difference is that these shows use this kind of humor only occasionally, the main sources of jokes are the regular cast. It's the same with Chuck, which is pretty close to Black Lagoon if you think about it. They don't do this mainly because they don't want to be associated with cheap slapstick humor. Black Lagoon unfortunately takes that path.
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| I'm pretty sure there exists Hentai more subtle than this. |
We won't get around talking about Revy. While my colleague EagleLeaf has praised her character numerous times, I can barely see anything positive in her character. There are however a few scenes I actually liked her in: While not showing it on the outside most of the time, there are some indications of her affection for Rock. I like this "hard shell, soft core"-approach - But that's about it. I have never, and I'm not even exaggerating here, seen a more blatantly obvious attempt to get men to watch your series. She has body proportions no real human being could sustain without seriously damaging her back. The only way to could have made her more pornographic is by letting her run around naked all the time. If I think about it she actually is nearly naked most of the time. Last time I checked, a series should connect to the viewer through emotions - not his genitals. You can't have a character both deep and dramatic while making her run around in underwear all the time. Let me compare this to Chuck once again: They had the beautiful Yvonne Strahovski playing a secret agent - but they never used her sexuality as blatantly as Black Lagoon does with Revy. Some may say that her outfit fits her character and they do have a fair point, but that's still not enough reason to give her enormous breasts and zooming in on her ladyparts at least twice a minute.
3. Everything is Filler
This doesn't feel like a season finale. This doesn't feel like anything really. The plot is rather simple and actually makes sense, but the characters and interactions feel forced, stretched and unnecessary. They are trying to add a level of depth to the story that just doesn't work out. The main reason for that is probably the horrible dialogue, though I don't know to what degree the translation and the voice acting are responsible for that. People are constantly talking in these episodes though most of what they say is completely obsolete. It doesn't advance the plot at all and feels like they just put it in to fill twenty minutes some way or another. They also used a voice over for literally everything that isn't the main plot. I repeat it once more and I will probably repeat it until I die: There are almost no occasions you would need a voice over for something you can just show. Show, don't tell.
Then there is a side plot they didn't really care about: Takenaka, an experienced military commander of some sorts, interrogates Rock in a "good cop" fashion by asking him harmless and unrelated question. He is well aware of the risk they are taking by not immediately torturing him, but for some reason ignores it. This is actually not too much of a stretch, it makes sense that he would follow some kind of honor code as he seems to have been in business for quite a while. Revy then rescues Rock in a stupid action sequence and drives off with him and two weird slapstick characters. Now for some reason Rock was mentally scarred by the (once again: completely harmless) interrogation as he just has a strange kind of thousand-mile stare on his face for the whole ride. It's hilarious to watch if you ask me. Back to topic: It is well established that rock has doubts about the path his life has taken, even Revy notices that. Two minutes later however the episode is over and we never hear about this side-plot again. This could of course have the purpose to set the tone for season two, but it just seems forced and out of place.
Finally, let's get to what the series is all about: The action sequences. Guess what, they also disappointed me. The creators of Black Lagoon seem to forget what a good action scene is all about: It's the excitement and fear we feel when we see our heroes in a situation that could seriously harm or even kill them. It's not about explosions, shootings, car chases and all that. Star Trek managed to create amazing action sequences by just having people stand on the bridge and yell commands. There are a few things that kill suspense like nothing else. One of them is never actually creating a feeling of danger: If we know that the characters are going to be alright, we don't get excited. Every single action sequence in these two episodes is like that. Revy and Rock, basically everyone that is not one of the bad guys, seems to be bullet proof. Trained military personnel shoots at them from point-blank range but they just keep walking towards them as if that was some kind of Sunday stroll. They cut through enemies as if they were butter. Do they seriously expect the viewer to feel any suspense when all characters are nothing less than unstoppable killing machines?
At one point in the story Rock is captured by the enemy, but it doesn't make any difference whatsoever. It never feels like he would be in danger, because from the second they capture him it's obvious that Revy will just rambo her way into the military camp and kill everyone in her way. Everyone seems to be so lucky it's almost hilarious. They get through a military roadblock at one point, just because some guy feels that they should, despite of them hurling towards the soldiers in an army jeep, armed to the teeth with a man high on pot driving.
Conclusion
These episodes bored me, and that's about the worst insult there is for a TV series - It just didn't have any real content, the action was pointless, the dialogue and especially voice acting were cringe-inducing and through all that we get random ass-shots of a girl with oversized breasts. The environment feels lifeless and empty the characters are one-dimensional and the sound design makes you want to stab yourself in the eye. One star.
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