Review for Black Lagoon: Complete Season 2

Introduction

I’ve already reviewed Black Lagoon, Season 1 on Blu-ray, and it was inevitable that Season 2 would make its way here as well. As a matter of fact, The Second Barrage is released in its HD glory on the same day as season 1. Unfortunately, the whole point of this high definition upgrade, the Roberta’s Blood Trail five episode OVA that it’s supposed to accompany, has been delayed because of a lack of an English dub. We’re going to have to wait on Funimation to deliver on that in the US before we can see it in Britain. Of course if you are fluent in a European language, you can import the OVA from Europe, where Kazé released it on the same day as the original episodes.

The life of a salaryman or white-collar worker isn’t an easy one. Years of hard competitive education just to get your foot on the first rung of the corporate ladder in a big firm. As the lowest of the low, you get the toughest work and all the abuse from the higher ups. You spend years of your life, make sacrifices of your family and free time, pledging eternal loyalty to the company, all in the hope that one day, you’ll be the one doing the abusing instead of being abused. Then, while acting as a courier, you’re kidnapped by mercenaries for the sensitive data disc that you’re carrying, disowned by your superiors as an unfortunate loss, get caught up in battles and gunfights with the mercs your company send to retrieve the disc, and start a new job as a pirate. Okay, so that doesn’t happen to your average Reginald Perrin, but it does happen to Rokuro Okajima, in the acclaimed anime Black Lagoon.

This Blu-ray collection collects the second season of Black Lagoon, all twelve episodes spread across two discs, chronicling the adventures of unlikely white-collar pirate Rock, borderline psychotic gunman “Two Hands” Revy, Vietnam vet Dutch, and tech specialist Benny. If the first season could be considered the introduction to the show, where we got to know the characters, and had some fun with the various life and death situations they found themselves in, season 2 is where it starts to get dark and personal for Rock and Revy.


Disc 1

13. The Vampire Twins Comen
14. Bloodsport Fairytale
15. Swan Song At Dawn
It’s a rainy day in Roanapur, and there are a couple of new serial killers in town, preying on the populace. Given the usual cutthroat nature of the residents, these killers are making quite an impression, especially as they are preying on the rival gangs in the city. It’s mostly Balalaika’s Hotel Moscow group that is being targeted, but it’s enough to get all four rival syndicate leaders into a meeting to discuss the problem. Someone is messing with the balance of power, and Balalaika, Chang, Verrocchio of the Italian mafia, and Abrego have more reason to suspect each other than anyone from outside. It’s the description of a bartender who barely survived the last attack, and Rock’s facility with European languages that narrows down the suspects. It’s depraved even for Roanapur’s denizens, Romanian twin children, victims of the fall of the communist state, that learnt their bloodthirsty trade being forced to perform in snuff videos, and who have both come to relish the slaughter. Regardless of the background of the brother and sister, Balalaika needs to avenge her fallen men, and she puts a hefty reward up. The dollar signs flash in Revy’s eyes, and when psycho nun Eda comes knocking, she doesn’t need to be asked twice.

16. Greenback Jane
17. The Roanapur Freakshow Circus
18. Mr Benny’s Good Fortune
It’s a hot sweaty day in Roanapur, made worse for Revy as she got drunk and shot the air conditioner. She tries looking for comfort at the church, and while their air conditioner is just as kaput, at least Eda has some booze to take the edge off. They’re not expecting anyone to use the church as, well as a church. But when a master counterfeiter bursts in looking for sanctuary, the bullets aren’t long in flying. She is an artist, who takes pride in her work, but her most recent contract has been with the new criminals in town, who have no patience, but itchy trigger fingers. When her partner is shot as an incentive to faster work, she looks for the exit and sanctuary. Elvis and his gang don’t know much about Roanapur or Revy, or they never would have pulled their guns at the church. Now they have to find some hired guns quick to get the counterfeiter back, while Eda and Revy see a chance to make some serious money from the action.

Disc 2

19. Fujiyama Gangsta Paradise
20. The Succession
21. Two Father’s Little Girls
22. The Dark Tower
23. Snow White’s Payback
24. The Gunslingers
It’s been a year already, but Rock finally heads back to Japan. It’s business of course, as Balalaika’s Hotel Moscow outfit has an opportunity to get a foot in the door of the Japanese underworld, when Mr Banda of the Washimine group needs a little firepower in dealing with his rivals the Kousa group. Rock’s accompanying them as an interpreter, and Revy is tagging along as his bodyguard. It looks to Revy that Rock is back where he belongs, as he slots back into Japanese society flawlessly, while she’s a square peg in a round hole, rubbing everyone the wrong way. When Rock takes her to a New Year’s festival, she’s about to skin the guy who runs the rifle derby for ‘cheating’, when a big guy called Ginji who’s the unofficial fair security steps in. She was just about to have some fun, when Ginji’s charge Yukio arrives and defuses the situation. When Yukio and Rock hit it off, it seems even more obvious that Rock belongs back in Japan, while she has more in common with the disreputable Ginji. Meanwhile Balalaika has declared war on the Yakuza.

Picture

As I mentioned in the review for the previous season, I feel that Black Lagoon is an SD show presented on an HD medium, but the way that it has been re-mastered for Blu-ray is exceptional. On the Blu-ray, detail levels are fantastic and the only signs of compression are a rare moment of aliasing on slanted edges (far less apparent than in the Season 1 Blu-rays), and some colour banding. The old MVM DVDs have an NTSC-PAL standards conversion, and the new Kazé DVDs may be the same, or they may be 25fps PAL discs, with 4% speed up. Both will have compression, and both have the comparatively limited colour palette of DVD. The Blu-ray’s colour saturation is such that it brings this anime to life. The contrast is amazing, and I was spotting detail, appreciating imagery that had never even registered on the DVD, and because compression is minimised, the finer details of the show, especially in the backgrounds all really pops out. Darker scenes in particular have so much detail in that it’s like watching a different show. This Blu-ray also presents the animation progressively at 24 frames per second. There’s no interlacing, no flicker, just smooth animation. You can pause the anime at any point, and you’ll have a perfect image to look at, unblemished by blended frames, combing artefacts, or compression.

Black Lagoon had some of the best animation I had seen in a television anime back in 2008, and it still holds up well today. It’s fluidly and dynamically animated, the attention to detail is astounding, especially with the military equipment. This may be the anime of choice when it comes to gun porn, with Revy’s Cutlasses getting special attention. It’s an action packed show, with plenty of gunfights, explosions and chases to be getting on with. The character designs have had a lot of thought put into them, and are particularly effective with a cast of grizzled and battle worn mercenaries. CGI texture mapping comes into its own here, as I doubt the plethora of scars and tattoos adorning some skins could have been possible were they animated traditionally. It may be an SD anime, or close enough, but it looks astounding in HD.

The images in this review are sourced from the PR and aren't necessarily representative of the final retail release.

Sound

These are Kazé discs, meant for release across Europe, which means if you should explore, you’ll find language options of English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and the original Japanese, along with subtitles and signs only tracks in all the European languages. It all locks up as well, so you can’t chop and change subtitles or audio on the fly. No English subtitles for the hard of hearing English dub fans I’m afraid. The English subtitle track is the same subtitle track that is present on the MVM discs, this time presented in a discreet white font. There is the odd format error that occasionally introduces unexpected spaces in words, but otherwise it’s perfectly legible.

All of the audio tracks are LPCM 2.0 Stereo, encoded at 1.5 Mbps. The audio has the edge on the DVD experience in terms of clarity and fidelity, and the stereo separation is on a par with those discs. English dub fans may be disappointed at the lack of the 5.1 audio track that came with the US DVDs, as while the quality of the English stereo track is better, you will miss those bullets flying around the soundstage and the explosions in that surround mix. I’ll never be a fan of English dubs, but Black Lagoon’s is near passable, with some impressive performances. I think the English language actor chosen for Dutch is perfectly cast, and if some other performances are a little too typical of dubs, they don’t detract from the show.

I did come across one problem with the European dubs. If I selected them and started an episode, or pressed play all, the first couple of seconds of audio would drop out each time. Skipping back would play the audio completely, so I guess this is a problem with how my player reads the discs, not an audio drop physically on the disc. I had no such problem with the Japanese audio.

Extras

As I said, this is a Kazé release, so the discs are locked up tighter than the Bank of England. If you happen to stop the disc, it won’t resume on play, but will restart from the beginning. As for extras, you get absolutely nothing with these discs, although choose the French or German menu options when you insert the disc, and you will get them auto-playing some trailers.

Once again, you miss out on the extras that were with the Japanese Blu-rays, the newly animated omake shorts.

The MVM release of Black Lagoon Second Barrage was cut down in comparison to the US Geneon DVD release. In the UK, both soundtracks were stereo, and the only extras were the textless closing and a series trailer. If you had bought the US release you would have got 5.1 English audio and an interview with the series director as well. Also, the credit sequences were translated into English on those discs. You have none of that on this Blu-ray release. It’s completely free of extras, and the credit sequences are in the original Japanese.

Funimation have the rights to Black Lagoon in the US, and have promised a Blu-ray release of their own. It will be interesting to see what their discs turn out like. A lossless English surround track for instance would trump this release.

Incidentally, it’s just a personal opinion, but I really dislike the cover art for this and the 1st Season Blu-ray releases. Overly-cartoonish imagery and screen-captures on the front of the case fall flat in comparison to the original moody and atmospheric MVM covers. The Complete Barrage DVD release from Kazé out the same month looks a whole lot better too.

Conclusion

I’ll make it simple for you. Buy this show!

Black Lagoon stood peerless when I first watched it a few years ago, and watching it again on Blu-ray simply reinforces that opinion in 1080p HD. There really is no other anime out there like it. It’s like the nuttiest eighties action movies in content, but with some serious character development into the bargain. The larger than life characters and the edge of the seat action sequences will keep a grin on your face for the duration, while the underlying depth to the stories, the richness of this world, and the way that the characters are explored, makes it stand head and shoulders above anything like it from the eighties action milieu. You’d watch an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie for the action and the one-liners, but you’d never worry about how old Arnie felt about all the death and destruction he was dealing out. You wouldn’t feel emotional and sympathetic about all the random extras that he’d just mown down with a chaingun. Black Lagoon thrills you with its action, and then makes you feel sorry for the protagonists and the villains. It’s a post-modern action movie in the way that most post-modern action movies only dream they could be... but it’s an animated television series.

The Second Barrage is where it all goes dark, moody, and stomach churning. The second half of the series gets an 18 rating, and it is fully deserved, although surprisingly, it’s not the part that you would expect to get the 18 rating. This time around Kazé had the episodes rated separately, and you can see that it’s the final story arc that gets the higher rating, not the first. If the first series laid it on thick with the fun action, and offered a soupcon of character depth, this is where the tables are turned and we really get to see inside the characters, especially Rock and Revy, and see what effect this world of mercenaries and piracy in the South China Seas has on them.

The first story arc in this collection is the one most liable to give you pause for thought, the one that cuts closest to the edge, and the one that will make you very uncomfortable about enjoying this show. The Vampire Twins are a couple of Romanian assassins that get hired to wreak havoc in Roanapur by a certain faction. The thing is that Hansel and Gretel are children that revel in blood and mayhem and get off on slaughter and violence. That’s already enough to get out the Daily Mail brigade, but Black Lagoon gives them context by relating their back-story, and by doing so removes any hint of exploitative writing, but also makes their story almost sickening. Black Lagoon is set in the 90s, and Hansel and Gretel are survivors of the Romanian orphanages, which fell apart after the downfall of communism. Sold to the mafia, they were brought up in an atmosphere of kiddie porn and snuff movies, where they survived by resorting to their animal instincts. Having escaped that, they applied their new talents to the job of assassination, using it to feed their bloodlust, and they remain devoted to each other to the point of incest. This is as dark as Black Lagoon gets, as even the most hard-bitten villain in the series is taken aback by their arrival in Roanapur. Rock still straddles the border of the two worlds, and his reaction to seeing children in such a situation is to try and save them, to protect them, but there comes a point where the victims can’t be saved any more.

Then there is a three episode story that calls back to the best of Season 1’s nuttiness, with a counterfeiter getting into trouble with her employers, and looking for help in the local church. Of course these nuns are just as mercenary as anyone else in Roanapur, and the prospect of getting their hands on some high quality funny money has Sister Eda teaming up with Rock and Revy to extort a little contribution from the out-of-her-depth would-be criminal. But her employers want her services back at any cost, and wind up hiring every lowlife in the city to do so. The battle that ensues threatens to tear the city apart.


The final six episode arc is where we get to reflect on the series, and take stock of how the past year has affected Rock and Revy. They’ve been hired by Balalaika of Hotel Moscow, Rock as a translator and Revy as his bodyguard, as Hotel Moscow heads to Japan to make a few deals with the local Yakuza and gain a foothold on Japanese territory. While it is definitely deep in the underworld, it’s still a homecoming for Rock, who returns from the bullet ridden streets of Roanapur to the civilisation of Tokyo. It’s also a chance for Revy to see the world that Rock came from, and both start to have second thoughts about the lives that they now lead, even more so when Rock meets a nice, meek, young Japanese girl named Yukio who reminds him strongly of all that he has given up.

Reality comes crashing in when Hotel Moscow bring a taste of Roanapur to the streets of Tokyo in their dealings with the Yakuza. The initial deal was with the Washimine group to eliminate their rivals the Kousa, but when Balalaika’s tactics go beyond what the Washimine were expecting, they go back on the deal. Of course that was what Balalaika wanted. She doesn’t care about Yakuza rivalries, she just wants a piece of the underworld pie, and that means getting rid of the local competition, no matter who they are. It’s just the excuse she needs to turn on the Washimine group as well. It turns out that Yukio is the heir to the Washimine group, a young girl that was trying to lead a normal life, but gets sucked into her family’s concern when the deal with Balalaika goes south. And now Rock has another lost soul that he wants to save, but he still has to learn that some people just don’t want to be saved, and that his year in Roanapur has so tainted his own soul that he may not be capable of saving anyone.

Just as this realisation dawns on him, you’d think that Revy, who for the past year has been educating him on the harsh realities of life would be delighted, but here we learn that she has come to rely on Rock’s purity, his innocence, and in the final reckoning when it comes down to Rock finally choosing to step over the line into Roanapur’s darkness, she doesn’t actually want him to make that choice. It’s downright brilliant storytelling that makes Black Lagoon, even after all this time, one of the best television shows around.

In terms of visual quality, these Blu-rays from Kazé will be pretty hard to beat, and if you are a fan of Black Lagoon, you really shouldn’t hesitate. It’s just that Kazé aren’t all that forthcoming with extra features, the audio spec, especially for the English dub audio could be better, and the price for two very barebones discs is on the steep side. If this was all that there was in terms of HD Black Lagoon, I’d urge you to pounce. But there is a part of me that really wants to see how Funimation in the US will handle their release. If they can get the English dub in 5.1 lossless, if they can source the Japanese omake extras, and if they can also source the original, admittedly sparse extras from the DVDs, then that would be the preferable purchase. It’s a case of a bird in the hand...