YMMV / Black Lagoon

• Accidental Innuendo: When Balalaika rounds up her men when they find out Roberta is on the loose, she says “Cock your hammers!”, which to the average viewer could mean something else.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Just who is Eda, really? Is she a goofy so-called nun who only occasionally takes her job as a CIA agent seriously? Or is she really a cold, domineering mastermind whose appearance to others is merely a convincing deception? Whoever she is, she's definitely not who she appears to be.
  • Was Revy telling the truth about her prison experiences? Or was she just making them up to threaten Greenback Jane?
  • Why did Yukio kill herself? Was it to avert being at the mercy of rival clans and/or Hotel Moscow? Did she want to preserve her honor like an old-school Yamato Nadeshiko would? Did she just want to be with Ginji? Or was it some combination of the three?
  • When Rock tells Balalaika that helping Yukio is just his hobby, is it really a sign that he's going through a Start of Darkness, or is pure Refuge in Audacity in an attempt to get Balalaika to spare her and not get his own head blown off for his trouble?
  • Is Shenhua's "Chinglish" the result of genuine difficulties with the language? An affectation she puts on for whatever reason? Or is she actively refusing to improve out of Patriotic Fervor? Bennett the Sage seems to believe the latter, pointing to her justifying her poor English by saying she's "pure Taiwanese".
• Arc Fatigue: The El Baile de la Muerte (a.k.a. Roberta's Blood Trail) arc. It lasted three and a half years and was composed of so many plans that even fans were getting confused and frustrated at the end. Even the author admitted the arc was dragging. Made worse by the fact that the series went into massive Schedule Slip immediately after. There seems to be a consensus amongst fans that the anime adaptation of the arc overall handled it better by cutting and condensing it down quite a bit.
• Awesome Music:
  • The title song, "Red Fraction". Even when most of the lyrics is edgy rambling, it builds up to one hell of a payoff.
    Light up the fire. Right on the power. Weapon, I have it all.
  • The closing theme to Roberta's Blood Trail is an awesome rendition of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home", played over images of Rock, Balalaika, and Mr. Chang's early childhoods.
  • Revy seems to have good taste in pump-up music, putting "Peach Headz Addiction" into her Walkman before taking down Luac and his crew, and blasting "Guitar Wolf" on the radio while Rock is driving her and Ginji to the Bowling Alley where Chaka and his men have holed up.
• Base-Breaking Character: Yukio Washimine. While she's undeniably a Broken Bird for all the suffering she had to endure as the heiress to a yakuza clan, some consider her to be a Straw Nihilist who justified her unwilling (or possibly willing) ascension to the clan's leadership through a flawed interpretation of fatalism. She was in fact, given every opportunity to absolve herself of the responsibility, but couldn't see beyond her own choices because she kept putting Honor Before Reason first. Some people think that her outlook on life makes her character realistically flawed but interesting, while others see it as an irritating excuse to sympathize with a Wangsty teenage girl.
• Broken Base: The final episode of the Roberta's Blood Trail OVA. There was one significant detail about it that was different from the manga: In the anime, Roberta is nearly killed by the U.S. special forces who are all armed with automatic weapons while she has only a musket and returns to Venezuela as a wheelchair-bound cripple. In the manga, she was not injured at all. This, as well as showing Revy getting raped when she was still in New York and omitting two key scenes from this arc in the manga: Major Caxton realizing and sharing his suspicions that Dutch might be a Phony Veteran with Benny and the final chat between Rock & Chang on the dock after all was said and done, caused quite a bit of dissatisfaction. Other prefer the OVA for giving the Grey Fox unit a better showing against Roberta, and for its redemptive final scene where she meets the family of the Japanese man she killed, who forgive her for killing him.
• Catharsis Factor: After all of his monsterous actions detailed below, seeing Chaka get curb stomped by Revy and Ginji before then being brutally killed by the latter is immensely satisfying. This also applies to watching his men get massacared by the aforementioned duo, since they gleefully assissted him with his terrible plans for Yukio.
• Complete Monster: In this Crapsack World, filled with terrible people, none manage to be quite as hateful—or fundamentally petty—as Chaka from the "Fujiyama Gangster Paradise" arc. A Yakuza lieutenant with a penchant for Domestic Abuse, Chaka makes his entrance beating up Rock in an effort to impress Revy. When the battle between the Yakuza and the Russian mob goes badly for the Yakuza, Chaka kidnaps and brutalizes Yukio, his boss's teenage daughter, beating her bloody, and plans to sell her to a sexual sadist as part of his plan to take control of the remnants of the Yakuza. When Revy and Ginji arrive to bail her out, Chaka shoots through his own men to try and get at them, kills another man for daring to try and run away, then runs away himself, leaving his men to be massacred. Childish, stupid, and completely out of his depth, Chaka manages to make an impression only through his complete lack of conscience, loyalty, or human decency.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Although the work clearly moralizes that they are bad and doomed people, Hansel and Gretel have become so loved among fans that they more perceive them as tragic heroes than the villains of the arc. Even the author gets in on it, bringing them Back from the Dead in omakes where they're portrayed as comedic sociopaths.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Roberta. It's not hard to see why, as the moment she shows up in Roanapur the body count skyrockets. This in a town where murder is only a crime if you haven't paid off the police chief or are interrupting his golf game.
  • Hansel and Gretel have a decent fanbase despite only appearing in three episodes. Gretel placed first in a popularity poll with 2433 votes (for comparaison the second Revy had 2411 and the third Balalaika "only" 1354 votes) and their arc placed second for best arc.
  • Ginji Matsuzaki. Oddly, the other characters introduced in the same arc as him are Scrappys or Base-Breaking Characters.
  • Sawyer The Cleaner is a goth body disposal expert with a nasty throat scar, voice synthesizer (needed due to said throat scar) and a huge freaking chainsaw. She only appears in one arc in the anime but it's pretty obvious why she became so popular with the fans.
  • Mr. Chang. It speaks volumes that Boisterous Bruiser Revy is willing to acknowledge him as more badass, admitting to "not being on his level yet." Fans also like him for being reasonable, uber-cool in the face of danger, and for being modeled after Chow Yun-Fat.
  • The nameless FARC commander from Roberta's Blood Trail. Sure, he died, but not before wrestling the near-superhuman Roberta into submission.
• Evil Is Cool: Chang, the local leader of the Triads who sports a pair of Cool Shades, is not a nice guy. Balalaika is just as cool and even less nice. Most of the random assassins who show up in the series are much more obviously evil but tend to have cool designs.
• Fanfic Fuel: Anything that can happen in Roanapur, given that it's an international city in Thailand.
• Fan Nickname:
  • For Roberta, we have "the Maidinator".
  • Claude “Torch” Weaver is frequently nicknamed Hank Hill for his heavy resemblance to Hank.
  • Leigharch is typically referred to “the Irish guy”.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Some fans consider the anime-exclusive flashback of Revy being raped by a corrupt cop during her childhood in New York City non-canon considering no such scene was in the manga. Time will tell whether this gets mentioned in the manga proper.
• Faux Symbolism: Roanapur has a giant erosion-defaced statue of Buddha at its entrance. The narration doesn't even try to be subtle.
• Genius Bonus:
  • Black Lagoon can be said to be made of these, containing varying references to languages, firearms, music (From Rob Zombie to Creedence Clearwater Revival) and quite a few about Westerns like The Wild Bunch (one of the characters in which was called "Dutch"...). It also contains a surprising amount of philosophy – themes such as Sartre's existentialism, consequence ethics, nihilism, phenomenalism, and Kierkegaard's "knight of faith" are openly discussed by characters (if not using those exact words).
  • As an example, take the firefight in the Yellow Flag which serves as Fabiola's introduction. Halfway through the fight, she throws away her right-hand handgun and breaks out a China Lake 40mm grenade launcher, an exotic weapon which even the denizens of Roanapur don't recognize (witness Revy's reaction). A little research shows that the China Lake holds a maximum of four grenades, and Fabiola doesn't seem to have any spare grenades at hand (or any time to load them, for that matter). Alert readers will notice that Fabiola launches all four grenades during the fight. When she cocks the launcher again to threaten Gustavo, she's bluffing – she's out of ammo. It partly explains why she needs a stiff drink, and why her knees give out a little later.
  • In Chapter 80^note  (chapter 77 in the Viz edition, since it for some reason treats all of Volume 10 as a single gigantic chapter), Major General Liu tells Colonel Ma that he had gotten an official inquiry from "14th Chang'An Avenue". This street is where many major Chinese government offices are located, and is right next to Tian'anmen Square. It would be the equivalent of saying "I just got a call from 10 Downing Street" in the U.K. or "the White House" in the U.S.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In the "Das Wieder Erstehen Des Adlers" arc, the Lagoon crew are told the story of a sunken U-Boat near the territorial waters of Indonesia. In 2013, researchers from the Indonesian National Archaeology Center found a sunken U-Boat.
• He Really Can Act: When Rock is acting as a Translator Buddy, Brad Swaille is speaking some very accurately-pronounced Japanese.
• Iron Woobie: Rock. He has been taken hostage, abandoned by his company, captured, shot at by friend and foe alike, berated, beaten, punched and just generally abused. Despite all this, he's managed to destroy a chopper by ramming it in midair with a torpedo, call out Revy when he gets tired of her abuse, and earn the respect of Balalaika. And that's just the first couple of episodes/chapters.
• Jerkass Woobie: Hansel & Gretel, Revy, Balalaika, Ibraha from the "Lock and Load Revolution" arc, and Roberta especially during the "El Baile De La Muerte" arc.
• Magnificent Bastard: In this dark criminal underworld, a few manage to thrive and even direct the chaos:
  • Rokuro "Rock" Okajima himself has grown steadily darker as the series goes on. Proving his tactical acumen in the first few episodes by coming up with a genius plan to wipe out a pursuing anti-tank aircraft, Rock later shows his skilled manipulative side by becoming a flawless negotiator to the point that all the most powerful players in Roanpur genuinely like and respect him. During Roberta's rampage, it is Rock who manipulates Roberta and her master Garcia into a deadly confrontation to end the bloodshed, nearly getting both killed, but ending in Roberta recovering her sanity and leaving in peace. Rock continues to demonstrate his ability to use and manipulate others, even if for ostensibly desirable ends, as possibly the single most dangerous and skilled player of the criminal game in the darkness that is Roanapur.
  • Balalaika, born Sofiya Pavlovna, was cast out of military service to the Soviets for saving a child in a refugee camp. Now the head of Hotel Moscow in Roanpur with her old unit, Balalaika loves war above all else and maintains control of her section of the city with an iron fist. When she heads to Japan on business, Balalaika casually manipulates a gang war simply to enjoy the excitement with no side ever coming close to even touching her. Earlier, when two of her beloved soldiers are killed by the assassin twins, Hansel and Gretel, Balalaika lures Hansel out to his death and delivers an utterly chilling breaking speech as Hansel bleeds to death. Frequently displaying a tactical brilliance, Balalaika shows again and again why she is one of the single most powerful and dangerous people in the world.
  • Eda, supposedly a flirty criminal nun from the so-called Church of Violence smuggling operation, is actually a skilled major player in her own right. A CIA agent who also completely dominates the Triad boss Mr. Chang, Eda is in effect the true secret ruler of Roanapur. On the field, Eda also freely manipulates the hapless Janet Bhai into a safehouse that will be invaded, with enough instructions to escape so Eda can extort her for protection, and later shows that she casually plays all sides in Roanapur while setting up an end to the insane battle maid Roberta's rampage.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Amen, hallelujah, and peanut butter.
  • "You got FUCKED!"
  • Pretty much any of Leigharch's high-induced Non Sequiturs:
    • "Oh yeah! I almost forgot! I'VE GOTTA GET TO LIVERPOOL!!"
    • "Jimi Hendrix is calling me back! He got my message! He wants me to defeat the Klingons, ASAP! C-C-CAPTAIN PICAAAARD!!"
    • "I DON'T UNDERSTAND!! Where're you ladies takin' me?! Could it be? Could it? The legendary NUDE BEACH?!"
    • "AHHH! Barbarella is holding an anti-war sign in the nude!"
    • "WHAT?! My application for the Black Panthers was denied again?!?!"
• Moe: Frederica "The Cleaner" Sawyer may be a psychotic and dissonantly serene chainsaw-happy freak but the moment she loses her ultravoice, she loses all cool and is reduced into an insecure broken wreck within a minute. Seeing her in this miserable state just makes you want to hug and comfort her.
• Moral Event Horizon: Anything Chaka does to Yukio Washimine would make him a grade-A asshole, but put it all together and you get this trope: kidnapping, beating, stripping, plans to sell her into sex slavery and bragging about doing so to a "real sicko".
• Narm:
  • One of the episodes is titled "Rasta Blasta". It's way too ridiculous-sounding to take seriously.
  • While the Spanish dub of the anime has a great cast and many terrifying performances, the script itself is wildly inconsistent, going from smart and well-translated to corny and unnatural-sounding (among other things, for mixing Cluster F-Bomb with Gosh Dang It to Heck! in an awkward way). That the original dialogue is often a heavy-handed exposition of knowledge about weapons and action film lore doesn't help.
  • Invoked whenever Revy decides to go on one of her philosophical rants. This is really just meant to show how pathetic and broken she's become as a result of a very rotten life. Her words ring hollow to the viewers because she's become hollow and is simply justifying her own way of doing things. Rock, naturally, tries to set her straight. Seems to work as she eventually stops ranting so much.
• Narm Charm: Most scenes involving Shenhua. Her broken English, thick accent and potty mouth are hysterically awful, but she, like so many other women in Roanapur, is so badass that it's hard to care. You'll be laughing one moment and watching her tear mooks apart the next.
  Shenhua: Oh, you like for me to split your ass in four? It is not nice to make fun! You one rotten bitch!
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Leigharch only appears briefly, but every minute he's onscreen is absolutely hilarious and quotable. Fans were heartbroken when it was revealed that he had to be institutionalized and clearly wanted to see more of him.
  • The unnamed FARC commander in Roberta's Blood Trail, who's only in it for something like 10 minutes but briefly manages to get the drop on Roberta, aka the woman who a car crash couldn't scratch.
• Signature Scene: Rock obliterating the enemy helicopter while flipping the bird and screaming "YOU GOT FUCKED!" proved that this meek Salaryman could keep up with the worst criminals of Roanapur.
• Spiritual Adaptation: Before Baccano!, this has been considered the best manga and anime "made by" Quentin Tarantino.
• Superlative Dubbing:
  • The English Dub is one of the best dubs out there, and one of the very best to come from The Ocean Group. It's telling that in direct contrast to most other anime, the vast majority of clips from this show found on the internet are from the English Dub as opposed to the original Japanese. Brad Swaile and Marÿke Hendrikse are perfect in their roles as Rock and Revy, and Tabitha St. Germain is pants-shittingly terrifying as Roberta, especially in Roberta's Blood Trail.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Roberta's VA in the Spanish dub of Roberta's Blood Trail. The decision by distributor Selecta Visión to replace the fan favorite Marta Estrada from the anime series with the universally disliked Eva Bau (while keeping the rest of the original cast) was as badly received as it sounds.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Most of the characters are sociopathic killers and criminals at worst or selfish jerkasses as best, making it very difficult to root for anyone.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Shane Caxton refuses to give his men order to shoot Roberta when she attacks them. This is supposed to be a magnanimous gesture on his part: Feeling responsible for the death of Garcia's father, he intends to protect the life of another person Garcia cares about. Except this is also profoundly, terribly stupid. As a military commander, he is responsible for the lives of his men; neglectfully throwing away their lives like that is a legitimate cause for disobedience, if not outright mutiny. Furthermore, if all he wants to do is redeem himself in Garcia's eyes, then he could and should have just give up only himself. There is no need to involve his men. The OVA adaptation fixes this as Caxton doesn't do this and permits Grey Fox to defend itself reducing their casualties.
• Wangst: Revy often makes nihilistic rants about why everyone lives in a horrible, vicious world. Rock calls her out on it.
• The Woobie:
  • Garcia's kidnapping, death in his family, the trauma that happens when Roberta goes on the warpath, etc.
  • Yukio's family issues, her other family issues, all the shit Chaka does to her, etc.
  • Sawyer, with scars around her neck and on her wrists, and who goes completely catatonic when she loses her audiovox. In the manga at least, she's able to handle that last one better in a subsequent appearance.
  • Hansel and Gretel. You might hate them for their sadism at first, but your view changes drastically with each bit of their backstory that is told. And the end of their arc just seals it.
• Woolseyism: In the Yakuza arc, as opposed to the rest of the anime dubbed in English, Rock still speaks Japanese. This works for the dub's favor, since it's meant to be Rock acting as a Translator Buddy for Balalaika, since they're working with Japanese criminals, and Japanese is Rock's native tongue.

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