Review for Black Lagoon: Roberta's Blood Trail OVA

Introduction

I’ve heard of delays but this is pushing things a little too far. We were meant to have Black Lagoon’s OVA series, Roberta’s Blood Trail over a year ago. Kazé Entertainment had given us quite the delightful summer, bringing out the original Black Lagoon series on DVD again and for the first time on Blu-ray, and high definition Revy goodness was not to be sniffed at. They promised to round off the summer of high octane anime action with the OVA series, and sure enough, European fans got Roberta’s Blood Trail at practically the same time as the series. Not in the UK though, as there was the small matter of the dub, which didn’t exist yet. Kazé had to wait on Funimation to get around to dubbing and releasing their version of Roberta’s Blood Trail, and while Kazé were ahead of the game when it came to the series, they had to patient and penitent when it came to the OVA. The OVA was finally released in its English dub form only this August, and Kazé set their release for not long after. Only it got pushed back, pushed back again, and yet again, until it’s only now that we’re on the verge of a whole new year, that we get Roberta’s Blood Trail in the UK. Still, all that waiting only makes the anticipation sweeter. It’s got to be worth the wait, right? I’m taking a look at the Blu-ray release of Roberta’s Blood Trail; the title will also be available in a 2-disc DVD collection as well.


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. The series chronicles the adventures of unlikely white-collar pirate Rock, borderline psychotic gunman "Two Hands" Revy, Vietnam vet Dutch, and tech specialist Benny.


Roberta’s Blood Trail brings back one of the more popular characters from the first season of Black Lagoon, the Terminator Maid Roberta, devoted servant of Garcia Lovelace, and former full-time assassin and revolutionary. The OVA series is set after the events of the second season of Black Lagoon, and tragedy strikes the Lovelace family when its head, Diego Lovelace is assassinated during a political rally in Venezuela. It turns out that the US Government in the form of the NSA is behind it, destabilising a government here, rubbing out a drug lord there. After the Venezuela mission, this particular death squad’s attention turns to Roanapur and the Hong Kong Triads. But Roberta has learned who was behind the murder of her benefactor, and has come to Roanapur looking for blood. She’s declared war on the United States, and given her abilities, it’s an even match. But an all out war between Roberta and the NSA in Roanapur is bad for business. And when Garcia Lovelace arrives in Roanapur, looking to hire Rock to help him get his maid back, Rock has to think twice, especially as Revy has no intention of facing that maid again! All five episodes of Roberta’s Blood Trail are presented on this Blu-ray disc from Kazé Entertainment, distributed in the UK by Manga Entertainment.

25. Collateral Massacre
26. An Office Man’s Tactics
27. Angels in the Crosshairs
28. Oversaturation Kill Box
29. Codename Paradise, Status MIA

Picture

Roberta’s Blood Trail gets a 1.78:1 widescreen transfer at 1080p resolution. Would you believe that this is a more disappointing transfer than the Black Lagoon series? The series was animated for an SD market and its HD transfer was created from the original animation by the Japanese studios, and it came out very well, with only a little digital banding and the briefest moment of aliasing to complain about. Given Kazé’s penchant for economy, the fact that they released the series on 4 single layer Blu-rays did it no harm at all, aside from the fact that we got no extras and no English surround audio. It got these things in the US and was released on 3 Region A dual layer Blu-rays.

Roberta’s Blood Trail was made a few years after the series, and animated in native HD. It was released on a Region A dual layer Blu-ray in the US, but only gets a single layer release here, and were it not for some of the poor reviews I’ve read of the US disc, I’d have said that the added compression would have hurt the transfer in Europe. For the image is actually softer than that of the SD up-scaled series, there’s less in the way of detail and digital banding is even more prevalent here. Also, there is a fair bit in the way of macroblocking, an issue I thought was left behind in the DVD age. Blocky patches of colour tend to delineate any large shaded area on screen, and the overall effect is disappointing. However, the characters are consistent, the action comes across well, and obviously there’s no problem with ghosting or interlacing. Roberta’s Blood Trail is watchable, but it really should look better in high definition. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that this was the up-scale, and the original series was animated in native HD.

The images used in this review are sourced from the PR and aren’t necessarily representative of the final retail disc.

Sound

You have the choice between DTS-HD MA 5.1 English, PCM 2.0 English, and PCM 2.0 Japanese, with translated subtitles for the Japanese audio, and a signs only track (not that the show needs it) for the English audio. I went with the Japanese audio, and was happy enough with the familiar character voices, except for Rock’s (story reasons). The action comes across well given a little stereo space, and Mell’s opening theme, Red Faction gets a nice remix. The dialogue is clear throughout, and everything is enjoyable enough. I gave the 5.1 English dub a try, and certainly the surround is much appreciated for the action sequences. Also, Funimation have pulled off something of a coup, retaining the original dub cast from the series as was released by Geneon. This being a Kazé disc, the subtitles and audio are locked together, although you can change languages on the fly with the pop-up menu.

The subtitles are accurately timed and free of typos, although on occasion the phrasing can appear a little suspect. One obvious error in the subs happens 1:52 into episode 3, with the Japanese military building bunkers on the island in 1994. The English dub supplies the correct year of 1940.

Extras

The Funimation disc is locked as well, so Kazé’s usual insistence on locking the audio and subtitles is less worthy of complaint here. The disc autoplays a trailer for Black Lagoon on insertion, and presents its content with an animated menu screen, and that is all there is. All that we miss out on though are the textless credit sequences from the US disc. Funimation usually reversions its credit sequences, but the ones we get here are the original Japanese ones.

Conclusion

What did you do with my Black Lagoon? The series was fun! It was an eighties action flick in anime form, made all the richer with great characters and a smidge of character development too. The show managed to take a look under the covers of these psychopaths and bloodthirsty lunatics, delve into their psyches, try and explain what made them tick, but never let that get in the way of the balls to the wall action, the scenery masticating dialogue, and the s***-eating grins that were invariably plastered on the viewers’ faces while partaking of its more radical excesses. Black Lagoon the series was a nutty show, and it revelled in it.

The thing is that the end of Black Lagoon took a more introspective and contemplative look at the characters. It was a dark, and emotionally weighted ending, but one that worked really well as a coda to the series, one that took the extreme comic book violence of the show and put in a ‘real world’ context. It showed that decisions and actions had consequences, and best intentions and happy thoughts didn’t guarantee a fairy tale ending. It worked as an ending to the show, but I wouldn’t have wanted the whole series to be like that. Roberta’s Blood Trail takes that character development, and expands on it, makes it even darker, grittier, and more contemplative. This isn’t the tongue in cheek uber-violence of season 1, these aren’t the winks to the camera of episodes like Greenback Jane, or the Nazi storyline, this is more real, it has consequences, and when the uber-violence erupts, s***-eating grins are nowhere to be found, instead replaced by sympathetic winces and recoils of disgust.


We also have character development, or depending on your point of view, character assassination. Revy’s hardly in the show, she’s more of a gun toting, bullet spraying maniac observer and commentator of events. It’s as the title suggests, Roberta’s story, only this isn’t the indestructible Terminator of season one, the maid whose relentless reaping of the Roanapur nightlife in her mission to retrieve her young master left an incredulous look on viewers’ faces as not even rockets or torpedoes could stop her. The Roberta who returns to Roanapur, looking to avenge her fallen master on the NSA kill team that assassinated him is vulnerable, and human. She bleeds, and as another Dutch once said, “If it bleeds, we can kill it”. She’s emotionally damaged, increasingly unhinged, and not caring of what happens to her, which is so far from the Roberta that we first met that it may as well be another character altogether. You can see this Roberta’s corpse in an elevator, with Frank Nitti having written ‘Touchable’ in her blood on the walls by the end of this story.

And a narrative sniper’s bullet heads for Rock as well, no longer the out of his depth businessman, white collar mercenary, he spends most of this story getting all Machiavellian, machinating his way through the Roanapur underworld, pitting all sides against each other, on his mission to save Roberta for Garcia. Only he has some funny ideas about what being a saviour actually means. This is a snide, dark-hearted, and vindictive Rock, and about the best thing that happens to him in this story is when he’s kicked in the nuts.


Reality hits the world of Black Lagoon, except that bit where the NSA all fire machine guns at Roberta, and all miss (What are they, the A-Team?), and other than a few sparky moments that call back to the series, a couple of entertaining character cameos, Roberta’s Blood Trail is a fun free zone. Yes, the story is well written, yes, the over the top violence is still there, and yes, if you take it all at face value, watch the story without keeping the original characterisations in mind, it is an engrossing watch. The politicking, the strategising, the tactics, the character interactions and gamesmanship hold the attention. But it’s not the Black Lagoon I fell in love with. It’s just not fun!