Anime Review :: Black Lagoon: The Second Barrage

Director - Sunao Katabuchi
Language – English Dub
Run – 12 Episodes [2006]
Genre – Action. Modern Pirates. Boobs & Guns

The second installment of the Rei Hiroe-penned and Sunao Katabuchi-directed Black Lagoon series manages to pack equal parts Ranma 1/2-style goof-assery as well as a surprising amount of depth and thrills. This time around utilizing an ensemble cast of characters (most of whom only made brief appearances in season one) to even out the stories with a far greater focus on the lore and landscape of Roanapur Island.

The Second Barrage is broken down into three story arcs. Which, for the sake of naming, we’ll call "The Vampire Twins," "The Roanapur Counterfeiting Clusterfuck," and "Hotel Moscow Vs. Japan," each of which come with their own distinctive style and flow, with progressively more enjoyable results.

"The Vampire Twins" arc does little but builds the clout of Hotel Moscow, Roanapur’s resident Russian cartel, and in the process grabs two new tiny killing-machines straight out of the anime-invent-an-archetype hat. While the story itself packs a couple of decent Revy’d-up action sequences, it mostly seems tacked on to make better use of Balalaika (the boss of Hotel Moscow) and company who were underutilized in season one. It’s a slightly disorienting move to start a season with little focus on the main cast, but it’s one that pays off by the seasons conclusion.

"The Roanapur Counterfeiting Clusterfuck" is where the unbridled silliness comes in, bringing back most every head-hunter, C-character, and general bad-dude from season one, and throwing in a couple of even more ridiculous editions to boot. Think the parade-chase scene from Ranma ½: The Movie, only with more bullets and swearing. Every notable gangster (and a handful of faceless bullet catchers), as well as our old pal Shenhua ("Chinglish") winds up on the hunt for The Lagoon Company’s newest client. Wackiness ensues.

And, finally, we have "Hotel Moscow Vs. Japan," a massive (by Lagoon standards) six-episode arc that takes Revy, Rock (who’s gone almost unnoticed in the season by that point), and Balalaika to the land of the rising sun. Rock, who is there under Hotel Moscow’s employ as a Japanese translator, confronts his past and the life he found himself running from a year ago when he joined up with the Lagoon crew. Revy is there to protect Rock (who by this point she’s warmed to significantly), who has a nasty habit of almost always getting kidnapped, and is granted plenty of opportunities for fast-paced mayhem against floods of Yakuza and thugs. The story also lends wonderful insight into the relationship between Revy and Rock as well as a look into the human-esque side of Revy (without the obligatory “oh I’m sad. Here’s my entire backstory” give-away.) Plenty of tense build-up and pace yet to be seen from the series.

With the characters beginning to flourish, and Lagoon setting up more roots for the long haul (Season 3 is on the way,) Second Barrage is a clear departure from the "kill 'em all and let god sort 'em out" feel of season one, which plays slightly against it’s strengths, but does make some positive strides to lay the groundwork for more adventures to come.

For all the surprises that season two brings with it, the biggest is how comfortable it’s able to make itself as a semi-serious drama, giving Revy a chance to care for other people without falling into the clichéd world of "killers with a heart of gold" and Balalaika to prove herself quite the frightening motherfucker.


The gore is dialed up slightly and the dialogue isn't quite as slick, and while you won’t find nearly the amount of explosion-based payoffs, the story is far more focused and delivered with a much steadier hand.

While I started iffy on the series and wrote it off as a trite (but very enjoyable) action mess, over 24 episodes and whatever number of misadventures that amounts to, I'm now anxiously looking forward to meeting back up with Revy, Rock, and the crew in the next installment.

Anime Review :: Black Lagoon: The First Barrage

Director - Sunao Katabuchi
Language – English Dub
Run – 12 Episodes [2006]
Genre – Action. Modern Pirates. Boobs & Guns

I am hopelessly devoted to explosions and swearing. Sure, at the end of the day my true loves in life may be slow-burning, thought-provoking travels into the soul, but, it’s hard to deny the sheer joy of a good pistol-whipping at the hands of a foul-mouthed, scantily-clad anime gal with an unreasonably mysterious past.

Substance isn’t exactly a strong-suit of Rei Hiroe’s Black Lagoon. But, honestly who needs substance when things explode.

Black Lagoon: The First Barrage, set in the 1990’s, focuses on the story of The Lagoon Company, a group of loveable smugglers working the high seas of Southeast Asia, and their adventures involving newest kidnapee-turned-recruit Rokuro Okajima. After a classic wrong-place-wrong-time for Rokuro, who’s taken along with a set of classified documents that you wouldn’t expect to be left with a low-level, unarmed company guy, he’s taken onboard by Lagoon after proving himself as a strategic thinker, business asset, and all-around swell fella.

The cast is rounded out by Dutch, the cool-headed gigantic black ex-marine leader of the team, token computer nerd Benny, and Revy, the resident murderous bipolor lunatic who graces most of the series promotional artwork and eats up most of the screen time.

(Benny, Benny's Orange Shirt, Rock, Revy, Dutch)

From there begins the fast-paces, high-energy, often scattershot tales of Rock (Rokuro) and friends on the high seas.

For a series well known for its violence and adult content, it’s actually quite tame outside of the fierce language. With only one notable appearance of boobins and most of Revy’s samurai-like entire-army-killing sprees obscured by smoke, shadows, or camera pans, it’s the sort of violence that’s easy to take if you’re the sort of person who doesn’t stomach it easily. Something that was a wise choice in maintaining the action sequences “oh shit” factors while never becoming a big bloody distraction.

The English dialogue flows remarkably considering its lack of content, mostly filled with quick insults, yelling, and obtuse observations to pull the story along behind the trail of gunsmoke, cigarette butts, and cold bodies. The bad guys always explain their motives at length and the good guys normally wrap everything up in a tight package before the one-to-two-episode arcs finish up. The small plot pay-offs come in the interaction with Revy and Rock who jump from deploring eachother to being bros on an almost daily basis while Dutch shows up for hacky-cool one-liners and Benny stands in the background entirely forgotten were it not for his tacky orange shirt.

Still, there’s enough chair-jump moments and fist-pumps to keep you wanting a little more with each installment and the 12 episodes fly by in no time at all.

Clichéd low-brow action fodder at its absolute best.

Anime Review :: Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex

Director - Kenji Kamiyama
Language – English Dub
Run – 26 Episodes [2002-2003]
Genre – Cyberpunk. Boobs & Guns. WHOA-BOTS!

Being a huge fan of the original film from my day's as a young lad, I was reluctant to dive into what initially stuck me Ghost In The Shell: The Animated Series. I'd caught a handful of episodes on Adult Swim in random spurts and, without giving it a fair shake, came to the conclusion that I was about ankle deep into "blah blah spandex, blah blah techno, blah blah shooting shit" waters.

Years of really well produced family-oriented anime films trumping most anything action-based mixed with a really horrendous Armitage III sequel had hardened my heart to the "bullets and bitches" genre, but after the drudgery of sitting through the uncut versions of both Kite and Mezzo Forte, I figured if anyone was going to be able to single-handedly redeem how I feel about skin-tight body suits and gunfire, it was going to be Major Motoko Kusanagi.

Now for those familiar with the 1995 classic, but relatively unaware of (or disinterested in) the series, the stories take place around the same characters but in alternate continuities, and the story is a little more slick and ready-to-digest for public consumption. It is, for all intents, a pretty straight-forward crime-drama set in the same future as the original film. So, the setting itself gives Stand Alone Complex a bit of a leg up on it's often banal competition.

To clue you in on it's particularly grim (and pretty awesome) vision of the future would really require more space than is befitting a review so I'll link some supplementary information at the bottom on the philosophy of Ghost, but the gist is basically that your soul connects directly to the internet.

Stand Alone Complex (season 1, commonly referred to as "First Gig") follows the exploits of Public Security Section 9, an intelligence agency headed up by Daisuke Aramaki, a delightful and sly old man with a ridiculous haircut. It's key members: "The Major" Motoko Kusanagi, our building-jumping, fully-prosthetic lead lady; Batou, Section 9's meat-faced lead investigator; and Togusa, an all natural ex-police detective. Section 9 also involves a handful of others who get less than ten-or-so lines the entire first season, sooo we'll skip them for now.

The story-arc of the season follows the squad's investigation into a case from six years prior known as "The Laughing Man Incident" after a strange sequence of events and new information.

Despite some unpleasantness along the way (The Major's absolutely fucking ludicrous thong-unitard/leather jacket combo and the awful closing theme song immediately jump to mind) Stand Alone Complex makes for a fun and occasionally gripping ride. There's a bundle of story twists, wonderfully choreographed action, and some much needed comic relief provided by some delightful little blue robots called Tachikoma.

While The Laughing Man story arc gets a little too convoluted at times, and the season spends a little too much time trying to establish the boundaries of it's universe rather than just existing in it and forcing the audience to keep up the pace, Stand Alone Complex still not only puts most other "boobs and guns" anime series to shame (not a hard task,) it manages to keep it's pace over a full-length season and captures the imagination like you'd never expect.

Foibles aplenty, what makes Stand Alone Complex recommended reading though is where it goes next

Ah yes. ...a cliffhanger review.




Extra Reading:
Wiki: The Philosophy of Ghost in the Shell

Anime Review :: Kite (Uncut) [1998]

Director - Yasuomi Umetsu
Language – Japanese (English Subs)
Genre – Action / Horror. Blood & Guts. Broads & Guns.

The Internet hype and cult status of Yasuomi Umetsu's Kite (1998) is somewhat baffling. Sure, the eerie sex and super-violence rank among the fairly memorable in the anime history books, and if you can score points for all the ways to kill people with exploding bullets, I suppose it's a classic in that regard, but the problem with this sort of material is that it's best presented with a more gentle touch. Instead, Kite comes swinging a sledgehammer of provocative sensory overload that ultimately falls short do to one simple rule of film:

Somewhere in your bloodbath, you have to craft a reasons anyone might care about the outcome.

[Now, my exposure to the film is based on the Uncut version and if you're unfamiliar with the story of how Kite went through phases of being gradually less censored, wiki can do the 'splaining here. The toned down version is still available for those of you who still like exploding heads but don't care much for sex.]

The story follows a "college" student [for legal reasons] named Sawa, who was orphaned and subsequently adopted [yeah, you do the math there] by a murderous police detective with a sinister mustache and affinity for watching people die. The blank-stared Sawa, through some series of events no one bothered to let us in on, has become somewhat of a super-assassin who gets sent out by her boss / adopted dad / bang-buddy to clean up the streets, passing righteous exploding judgment on murderers and child molesters.

Now, before I plunge into all the things about Kite that made it a bad film, let me quickly touch on the thing that don't bother me...

The explicit sex has many viewers hot under the collar, with many clamoring that Kite isn't anything but glorified hardcore pornography. Which, is a bit of an over the top criticism in my estimation. The sex scenes themselves are far beyond what would be acceptable in an R rated movie that you might let your 16+ kids see, some involving visible penetration, however, we're not talking about Swank Magazine material or anything. And while the scenes are brief, they're numerous and their tone is intended to make the audience cringe as it's fully implied that while there's no struggle, these aren't the most willing encounters in the world. So, certainly keep your teenagers away, but as an adult who's not at all shy about the subject, their presence didn't hurt the film for me.

Or at least they wouldn't have if Kite had been better.

Maybe it's that I'm 25, or maybe I've spent too much time on the internet in the past 12 years, but this brand of blood, guts, and creepy sex just doesn't effect me when I have no emotional investment one way or the other about the characters. So while I still can't watch Akira without cringing when Tetsuo's would-be girlfriend is crushed (a much tamer scene, by comparison) I didn't find myself tensing up once during Kite. Instead the movie relies on it's blood-gushes and banging to cover for the fact that there's very little effort put into any other department.

To call the story is haphazardly assembled is probably an understatement. The crux of the entire plot is based on two encounters by Sawa and a young male assassin named Oburi who after, without reason or explanation, are suddenly in love, seemingly for no other reason than to keep things moving forward. It's as though the bulk of the action and sex were completely written and animated when the production staff said “well, we've got 15 minutes left. Why did all this shit just happen?”

The action sequences aren't particularly well choreographed and managed to use the same three tricks more than you'd ever think possible in a 50 minute film. Stylistically there's nothing that really pops or even makes you jump a little for the sheer cool-factor of it all. Something that even the most unapologetically “girls with big guns” anime has to some degree.

The payoff for all this lackluster development comes in what I assume is intended to be the film's most gritty scene wherein Oburi has to watch Sawa have sex as he lays beaten and blood on the floor, held down at gunpoint. A scene that in a better film would have been tough to stomach, but I couldn't help be completely overwhelmed by my indifference to what was going on.

Which leads me back to what I said about a gentle touch. Kite, at all points, seems out of the control of it's makers. There's no craft. There's no real reason for being other than to shock people who're easily shocked or pander to people who like limbs being blown off. Instead it's a particularly sigh-worthy mess that's not really constructed enough to be edgy or ridiculous enough to be laughably bad.