Among the many film forms of Asia Japanese animation puzzles me more than just about any other. I enjoy a couple of shows but on a whole the form leaves me empty. I enjoy anime for the visual aspects but I can't stand to writing on hardly any of the shows.
Black Lagoon is a pretty perfect example of this. On one hand the series has some excellent action beats and well designed characters on the other hand the writing of this series teeters on the incompetent. Black Lagoon's characters spout out I nigh constant amount of cliches and bong hit philosophy which makes the entire series feel like it's being written by Kevin Kline's Otto West. It's annoying and it takes me out of almost any anime I'm watching. It's odd that the films of Kurosawa, Kobayashi, and Ozu can feel completely organic in their writing and performances yet anime still can't. It's all surface glare and nothing else.
A perfect example of this is the character Revy the little minx who's picture hangs above this post. Revy starts out as an interesting character an ultra-tough gun nut who will seemingly kill anybody who gets in her way. Yet by the fifth episode becomes a gibbering lunatic who goes all Starkweather onboard an enemy ship. The reason for this temporary insanity is that she told Rock some things she'd like to keep hidden while the two where stuck on a sub. There's no logic or true flow to whatever the character is doing rather a series of vague philosophical reasons. And this happens with every single character on the show and there's no real depth to it.
On the other hand the artwork is amazing with well designed characters(love the triad boss who looks like Chow Yun-Fat) some really well drawn ladies(The chinese hitwoman Shenhua is really hot) and extremely well done action scenes. So in the end I still enjoy the show for pure escapism yet I'm still annoyed with all the cliches that are brought in front.
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