Lawless in South Asia: 'Black Lagoon' Anime on Blu-ray

Roanapur is a peculiar, half-glitzy, and crooked little hell on Earth. It's a musty village, quilted between a bundle of forgotten islands in southern Asia; a place where criminals nest when they're bored, where outlaws flee to when the heat gets too hot, and where work-for-hire pirates, among other lowlifes, try to earn a decent living. Dutch, one such hired hand and resident "entrepreneur" of the Lagoon Company, estimates quite succinctly: "I'll be damned if you can ever find a city as rotten to the core as this."

Black Lagoon is an anime series, though produced a half-dozen years ago, is a title that still feels fresh. But whatever the reason, Roanapur's firefights among speeding torpedo boats, hellish run-ins among mafia bosses, and various disputes over the local heroin routes, are all likely to blame on some level. The action cartoon has earned a handful of domestic releases stateside (if currently out of print), but enters the UK anime market this month with a bang.

Distributed by Manga Entertainment UK, Black Lagoon hit home video with a six-disc DVD set, collecting both seasons, earlier this month. This week, the dominant force in anime licensing for the UK plans to release the title onto Blu-ray Disc.

Black Lagoon season's one and two each retail July 30, 2012 (GBP 39.99 ea.), two discs each.

For anime fans familiar with the lore surrounding the Lagoon Company, it's intense crew, and the city in which it operates, the story of Black Lagoon is simple to recall: When a stately Japanese paper pusher, Rokuro Okajima, is caught on the butt-end of a documents transfer that went south, the man decides that he's finally had enough. Now, "Rock," instead of bowing his head and returning to Japan to do the dance all over again, gives everyone a big middle finger and claims Roanapur is his new home. Black Lagoon, at its core, is the miseducation of Rock: the man is intelligent and educated, but this is more than just a fish-out-of-water scenario. Rock finds a new life with the Lagoon Company, whose despotic three-man team embodies every skill, enigma, and evil of the seedy town he now calls home.

Revy, a petulant twenty-something with an axe to grind with just about everyone, is the most recognizable crewmember of Rock's new team. Her roguish short shorts, twin Cutlasses, ratty red-brown hair, and the wiry tattoo snaking its way up her right shoulder all spell trouble.

Revy wields a pistol with more than just a mischievous glint in her eye; for her, it's absolute pleasure. The woman is sexy and dangerous, though hardly ever at the same time; her mental state is often in flux. To some, Revy is little more than a pitiable merchant of death. "There are no heroes in this life," she tells Rock.

Benny and Dutch round out the rest of the team. Benny is a tech whiz, accustomed to laying low after some clashes with the higher powers of the western intelligence community. Dutch, brawny, bold, and always up front about client background checks, doesn't mind splitting a few skulls as well.

In Black Lagoon, every character has a past with muddy footprints all over it. Whether or not these characters will bother to clean up the messes they leave is how the anime derives much of its intrigue. Everyone suffers, but it's never a matter of how or why, only a matter of when, or how long.

The nuns of the local Catholic church regularly smuggle drugs and weapons; the city's supply of prostitutes seem to cycle in and out like clockwork; and every once in a while, some idiot draws their gun at the marketplace. Rock, Revy, and the rest of the Lagoon Company are familiar with each of these scenarios. Whether tasked with recovering cash, weapons, or lost relics, or simply running errands to ensure some clients, like the indubitably scary femme fatale at the head of mafia hub Hotel Moscow, stay on top of this cruddy city -- regardless of the task, Lagoon Company will probably take the job as long as there's money involved.

In the end, Roanapur, even with Rokuro's penitent observations as a used-to-be-outsider, is still a den of monsters. In the daytime, driving past lot after lot of rice fields feels rustic. In the nighttime, some parts of the city, like a bar called Yellow Flag, is lit up more with liquor and cheeky smiles than guns and bullets. But it's all an illusion: on the bridge entering town, several nooses hang, some of them used; from the sea, a defaced Buddha statue stands guard; and from the mind's eye, it doesn't matter who you are or where you're from, Roanapur is still hell.