Anime series makes most crime-adventure dramas look conservative
By Jack Huang
Rarely can I find an anime that balances original and relatable story while maintaining a sense of urgent realism that isn’t obsessed with impossible acrobatics and impossibly cute characters. Anime, to our average fellow American, usually stands for some sugarhigh, angry-talking, giant-eyed Japanese extravaganza, and sadly nothing more. Even my closest friends here at SCAD-Atlanta, who obsess over these forms of entertainment, admit they rarely find ones that combine visual style with quality content. Sure, Dragonball was the hallmark of action-anime, but it can’t even tell a single story without expanding it into another halfa-million-episodes saga, (as with other popular series like “Naruto,” “Inuyasha” and “Bleach”).
Luckily for us, there’s an original anime that challenges this filler-ridden market of protracted clones: the “Black Lagoon” series produced and animated by the upstart manga artist, Rei Hiroe.
It’s not hard to see why this series is a shining masterpiece that western audiences would appreciate. Picture a city noire composed of colorful and irredeemable villains that channels the personalities of Sopranos cast members, the character depth and delivery of Lost’s cast, and over the top storytelling method (and graphic violence) of Quentin Tarantino, and you’d get a pretty good concept of what this show is about.
The story follows a team of mercenaries known as Lagoon Company, who smuggle goods in and around the seas of Southeast Asia while dealing with the local multinational mafias. It’s told through the perspective of Rock, a Japanese “salaryman” who joins the Lagoon company after they kidnapped him for ransom.
Unlike the majority of anime and television series that utilizes lengthy expositions and explanations of the world’s complex logics that usually involves forgotten spirit substance A, oppressed group B and deadly alchemical component C, “Black Lagoon” leaps into the rising action within the first three minutes of the story. The show’s narrator, Rock, is immediately kidnapped and the audience is basically glued to his perspectives of his eccentric, yet strangely mesmerizing captors as he began to develop “Stockholm syndrome,” for this band of anti-villains amongst a hailstorm of bullets.
Overall, “Black Lagoon” is a delicate and unblemished blend of Eastern art with Western storytelling at their best. If you want something familiar yet strangely innovative, just dive into the rich story of “Black Lagoon.”
If “Black Lagoon” sounds like your thing, you can check out www.blacklagooncompany.com.
Photo by Playmagazine.com
