Black Lagoon doesn’t particularly start off anywhere coherent. A ship containing a informational disc relevant to a major Japanese company in the hands of a businessman named Rokuro is boarded by a band of pirate mercenaries who kidnap Rokuro and hold him as a hostage. The company Rokuro works for negotiates a deal to have the disc recollected but doesn’t do much by way of getting Rokuro home safely. Meanwhile as they pirates and Rokuro head towards the drop off Rokuro, nicknamed Rock by the crew, decides he’d rather stay with the crew and become a pirate himself. It’s there where the adventure begins. The rest of the back story gets filled in as we move along.

I couldn’t help but take notice of the similarities between Black Lagoon and Cowboy Bebop. Both are mercenaries/pirates (one in the ocean, the other in space), The character traits are similar, Lagoon dishing them out in various order to each crew member, and the series is uber violent, leaving the usual humor type anime that fans are used to, instead reminding me of the recent anime Requiem For The Phantom. It’s not for the faint of heart.

The show follows the crew as they accept jobs from various clients, usually ending in a blood bath, and incorporating witty dialogue and cool school battles (blind perfect shooting, massive hand to hand fights, and even a scene where a torpedo boat manages to take out a helicopter). I can’t say the first handful of episodes built up a real storyline other then introduction to the characters but it was never boring.

PICTURE QUALITY:
Black Lagoon looks decent on Blu-Ray. Color wanes here and there with a seemingly soft picture from time to time but it has its stand out moments as well. Line definition is amazingly sharp and HD quality is more often then not magnificent for an anime taken from the Universal Geneon catalogue. Audio is as usual solid.

BONUS FEATURES:
~Behind The Scenes of the English Version Production
~CD Commercial
~2 Promo Video’s
~Season 2 Promo
~Japanese Openings For Both Seasons
~Textless Closings
~Previews