Black Lagoon 5
Posted: June 1, 2009 Filed under: Black Lagoon 7 Comments »I’ve been jumping into the middle of a lot of series lately, and normally it works out. It’s usually pretty easy to figure out the typical shoujo and shonen series without knowing the setup since those types of series generally share a lot of similarities. Black Lagoon wasn’t so easy, however, as the fifth volume dropped me in the middle of a mofia/yakuza fight that left me rather confused. I’m going to talk about it anyway, but keep in mind that this is definitely a series that you’ll want to start at volume 1.
Aside from my confusion over the story, I actually wasn’t that fond of the art in Black Lagoon. The action scenes don’t read very well. Part of this probably has to do with the SFX retouching, since large English titles are usually laid across the Japanese ones, and that obscures a lot of art and will break the composition of the page in a series like this. The other problem was that the action scenes were done with small panels and cramped art. The art wasn’t overly-detailed, but neither was it clean enough to easily read what was going on when people were jumping around and shooting at each other, and cramming it into small panels didn’t help much.
Now, the story. Thankfully, the intro and character profiles in the front of the book, along with the description on the back, meant I wasn’t completely in the dark about what was going on. The basics seem to be that the main character, Rock, was fond of the girl that wound up inheriting the head position in a major yakuza group. The book starts in the middle of a hostage situation where a tense truce is apparently worked out between the yakuza group and Rock’s Black Lagoon group (?), so the girl’s bodyguard and Rock’s bodyguard Revy go in and blow away a bunch of guys in a bowling alley while Rock and the yakuza girl get into a fight.
The bigger problem seems to be that a representative from the Russian underworld is trying to work out a deal/start trouble with the yakuza, and somehow the girl’s group is involved (though apparently the girl’s group is in extremely poor standing in the yakuza). Rock decides how the cards fall even though he’s only a salaryman interpreter, and he learns a little about himself along the way.
This type of series isn’t really my thing, and a lot of the detail that went into describing exactly how the yakuza system worked went over my head. I do like the fact that Rock seems to be a pretty average guy that lacks even fighting skills that was somehow drawn into this crime world. I also really like his insane bodyguard Revy. I’m curious to see how other stories in the series work before I dismiss it outright, so I’m probably going to read the next volume to see where else the story goes. Apparently this volume wasn’t the normal setting, and it didn’t seem to involve most of the members of Black Lagoon, so maybe the story is usually a bit easier to follow than this.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
[...] on vol. 1 of B.Ichi (Manga Jouhou) John Thomas on vol. 4 of Black Jack (Comics Village) Connie on vol. 5 of Black Lagoon (Slightly Biased Manga) Emily on Cherries Fight (Emily’s Random Shoujo Manga Page) Marc Mason [...]
starting at volume 1 really, really helps.
as an added bonus, volume 1 includes what seems to be a somewhat iconic incident for the series [at least, it gets mentioned a lot and stuck in My mind]: jumping a PT boat off a wreck/reef [i forget which] so as to torpedo an attack helicopter. not making it up, and it is awesome.
very much not a series to jump in to the middle of though. this is the second review I’ve seen that does just that [the first was with volume 4].
personally i find that most action manga struggles somewhat with big fight scenes [even when there's only two people involved]. tend to end up so cluttered you can’t make out what’s going on. i found that the ones in black lagoon only Really tended to do that when the situation really was chaotic though, so it kinda gave the right vibe, if nothing else. totally understand what you mean there though.
watch for evidence that Rock is the craziest of all the main characters as you read, too :D
yeah.. random ramblings of a random. make what you will of them.
I could believe the thing about ramping the boat off a reef to attack a helicopter after the fight scenes in volume six. The gunfight at the church at the beginning of that volume was really, really awesome. I do like the action a lot, and it does a good job of going far enough over the top that I overlook a lot of other things.
Strangely, standard shounen series are usually a lot better at keeping their art dynamic and uncluttered through action series, where as the seinen/shounen borderline series like this one seem to be where I have the most problem with action scenes in the art. Black Lagoon is actually not the worst offender I’ve seen for this type of series, but I also don’t read a lot of them, so I probably notice the flaws a lot more. It’s far from the worst offender in this category though. Trigun, one of my favorite series, has some of the absolute worst action scenes, but in that case it’s because the art is way too detailed to do what it’s doing.
This definitely wasn’t the best volume to jump in on, but I was still confused in volume six when things were being explained, and in those cases, the details seemed like they wouldn’t have tied into past volumes, so I may just have a problem with the storytelling in general for this series. It may just require a closer read than I’m giving it too, which is sorta my fault as well.
But you saying that Rock is the craziest character kinda makes me want to keep reading. There are a lot of insane people in this series.
-I’ve been jumping into the middle of a lot of series lately, and normally it works out. -
From this end, there’s been a couple cases where it doesn’t look that way so much, there’s been a few reviews where it sounds like you’re missing out on some of the fun of a volume trying to get your bearings or just end up starting at an odd place.
Black Lagoon’s early volumes are a great opener. Rock’s character development is one of the draws, and the early short missions are nice introductions. Some of the latter ones do work better if you know the characters.
The other draw is the fighting, which doesn’t change as much, so your opinion of the series might not change.
well, i think the record for ‘craziest’ has got to go to the twins in volumes 2 and 3, though…
evidence of Rock’s crazyness: the PT boat jump? totally his idea.
but it’s a more understated kinda crazy. the sorta crazy one can pull while still Appearing perfectly sane except for what one is actually suggesting be done. heh.
now, if i remember which chapters are in volume 6 [which I've only read the scanlated version of so far. it's on my 'to buy' list in my next order of such things :)] the story telling there IS somewhat confusing. partially because it’s all mixed in with the [already] confusing action scenes. partially because it ties into events in volumes 1 and 2 [which is where you meet the crazy maid, among other things]. also, i believe a fair bit of it is told in flashbacks. i Think I’m thinking of volume six. might be volume 7. there abouts, anyway. it’s a bit easier to keep track of if you know who the major players are, and most of them are introduced, or at least mentioned in passing, in volumes 1-3.
actually, Black Lagoon is somewhat outside of my normal reading area too. [it's currently sharing a shelf/cubby/thing with Yotsuba&!, as evidence of that.] the older the age group the thing is aimed at, the more i Usually slide from the sorta action/adventure stuff into romance/slice of life stuff. none the less, i also enjoy it greatly, in no small part due to the excessively over the top action :D
aaaaand, I’m sliding off topic quite a bit, so I’ll leave it there. fear my lack of ending :D
Ah, it does make sense that the maid was introduced earlier. Somehow, just having her out of context made a lot of sense too, I probably would have accepted her random appearance readily since she made just as much sense as those nuns. But yeah, that was probably most of my problem with the storytelling in that counterfeit story, just that a lot of the story telling came during or immediately after the action scenes, so it was hard to follow what everyone was saying to who. I didn’t have too much of a problem telling the major players by the time the maid story came around, though, unless there’s an overarching evil organization that I’m missing out on… which is entirely possible.
I’m with you on the romance/slice of life stuff for the older audiences, too. There are very few action-y series for the older crowd that appeal to me, but usually they qualify as “extreme.” Tenjho Tenge is one of my favorites for that, as is the rather fascinating/repulsive gore in Apocalypse Zero. Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure too, which is way more violent and over-the-top than you’d expect for something that ran in Shounen Jump. I just read a scene where a seemingly healthy carriage horse blew apart and someone climbed out from inside it. :p
Sorry about that. I get sent a lot of books to review, and at first I was going back for the early volumes, but it’s just too hard to do that, and the review volumes pile up really fast unless I’m not picky (I have 40+ volumes pending right now because I opted not to review such books at first). I try to save up a few volumes of series I haven’t tried before so that I can review things in a block and give the later volumes more of a chance. I think Black Lagoon and Record of a Fallen Vampire were the worst of the confusing stuff (I still haven’t read the rest of my RoaFV volumes because I liked that one well enough to start from the beginning), but the shounen stuff is pretty hit-and-miss depending on the volume. Shoujo is a little easier to jump into. I do realize when I’m not going to be able to review something very well… you can tell when the next Viz shipment is due when I pull out something I have no business talking about.
I also feel like there is some value to a mid-series review. If the early volumes of a series I want to try are out of stock someplace, a review like that would help me to gauge whether or not to buy what’s available or wait for the rest of it.
Volume 5 was definitely a bad place to start here, and I mentioned that 6 left a much better impression. I was intrigued by Rock, and even the brief glimpse of the conflicts he had with what he was doing here let me know what might have been in the earlier stories. This wasn’t even actually a good volume for fighting, if volume 6 was any indication of how things usually go. But yeah, the fight scenes are sort of a deal-breaker for me here since I kind of hate the art. I do like how over-the-top they are, though.