Category: anime

Black Lagoon Motherf[sheep noises]r

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*gunshots*

This series needs no introduction. It’s famous in the animanga circle for its name, its reputation, its characters, its violence and most of all its f[Boost mobile chirp]ng swear count.

Channel: Edwin De Paz

It’s mostly famous by its anime, but it started off as a manga by Rei Hiroe in April 2002 and has run ever since in the Seinen manga magazine Gene-X, for far, far longer than the anime and its OVA ever did. The clip above (which is understandably though unfortunately age-restricted) is one I will see sometimes on YouTube or Reddit because of course. It’s badass, it’s f[monkey screeches]ng awesome, but around the gratuitous gory action is an appropriately mature story.

I don’t remember when or how I learned of Black Lagoon, but I think it was through some WatchMojo clips about anime gunslingers that introduced me to the series, and it wasn’t until I was in the middle of college that I got around to watching it properly. Before we begin describing the series, no matter your opinion on subs or dubs, I heavily implore you to watch it however you can in English. I mean zero disrespect or offense to the original Japanese VAs, but the writing of the dub makes all the swearing necessary. F[gun cocking]k hits far harder in this anime when accompanied by the sounds of a firing range in comparison.

The premise is this: in the mid-1990s, Tokyo-based salaryman 25-year-old Rokuro “Rock” Okajima and a department chief are hijacked in the South China Sea by a trio of pirates onboard the Black Lagoon PT boat and calling themselves Lagoon Company. The chief leaves Rock to his fate and he joins up with Lagoon Company’s members consisting of Vietnam vet Dutch, Chinese-American gunslinger Rebecca “Revy” Lee, and South Florida computer programmer, Benny.

As the fourth face of Lagoon Company, Rock is the glorified diplomat if Dutch is unavailable, especially since there’s an equal or greater amount of time on land than on sea, mostly in the fictional border city of Roanapur, Thailand. This base of theirs is also home to many more organized crime syndicates the world over including but not limited to Colombian cartels, Russian and Sicilian mobs, the Triads, and the Yakuza.

As for the cast of characters Lagoon Company faces, it’s quite a mixed bag. Just about everyone in the story is motivated by coin, though there’s a fair few who have their own ideals and tenets, not all of them savory or agreeable. Criminals, extremist organizations, drug lords, and general psychopaths are drawn like moths to flame.

Hiroe’s inspiration for Black Lagoon was inspired in triplicate: news reports about piracy in the South China Sea from the 1990s (hence the setting), the writing drew from a variety of influence like Stephen King and James Ellroy, filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino and John Woo, and overall crime noir and Hong Kong action cinema, and other mangaka like Kenichi Sonoda who created Gunsmith Cats (another series I wish to cover one day) and Akihiro Ito who created Geobreeders.

The characters and setting are all diverse in appearance and in skillset, especially protagonist Rock who skirts by on a lack of battle sense with the powers of negotiation and diplomacy. The setting of Roanapur among other places would make the guy an ill fit since he’s not really seen as bloodthirsty as the others, but then again, the wider cast of characters is exactly that unpredictable, or (spoiler incoming) you wouldn’t really expect a guy like this to be an arsonist, would you?

Speaking of which, this speaks to the creativity of Hiroe, understanding that there’s no bog-standard look for a criminal. Some dress in suits, others are tattered, and the rest are casually dressed. The same goes for some of the child characters in the show. Conceptually, almost everything is thrown into the kitchen sink when designing a character and putting them in the story.

As for the chapters themselves, Hiroe has stated in interviews that unlike mangaka who release weekly chapters, he employs a slower approach, often taking as long as a month to release a new chapter, and normally for two reasons: to avoid burnout experienced by mangaka of several popular series still running, and also for mental health reasons. For what its worth, if the research for the series has him glued to news screens and snippets combing over crime on international waters, then it can get daunting keeping it plausible yet exciting. Or if its a series of other things that see him taking multiple hiatuses from Black Lagoon, then whatever happens, the series already gets high praise online and in real life from Japanese and western audiences alike, and not to sign a Death Note of sorts, but even in the worst case scenario, his flagship series will progress toward an ending, even if it isn’t him specifically who will finish it.

Someone will be there to finish it, with him or for him. And no matter what, Black Lagoon started with a bang and I sure hope that when it eventually ends, it ends with a f[swords clanging]ng bang.

This week’s recommendation is the YouTube channel RunJDRun.

https://www.youtube.com/@runJDrun/about

RunJDRun is the gaming channel of John David “JD” Witherspoon, son of late comedian John Witherspoon. Beginning in June 2009, he hosts Let’s Plays primarily on this channel either by himself or with friends, but also has commentary videos on video games or just in general. JD also has a podcast that he co-hosts with his friend Paul. He normally uploads daily, and like his father, he also has TV appearances and performs stand-up from time to time in the Los Angeles area.

Boruto: TBV Chapter 3

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Trickle down exposition

I haven’t forgotten about this month’s release of the latest chapter. Just spent the last two days studying it and organizing my thoughts so far. Based on what I saw of this chapter, we have more exposition of what we saw in the first two chapters followed by a last-minute twist.

Of the things introduced and explained in the chapter, Boruto expands on what the Uzuhiko technique. The basics are that it’s tied to the planet’s rotation. If hit with the Jutsu, the afflicted will be hit with a semi-permanent sense of “the spins,” so to speak. It can run for as long as the Jutsu caster (read: Boruto) desires, or until the afflicted (read: Code) dies — and this new teenage Boruto seems to be happy with the latter.

A technique that causes whoever’s hit by it to nearly infinitely spin in some manner… that sounds familiar…

Honestly, not the first time the franchise made a JoJo reference.

So let’s backtrack a bit in regard to the Rasengan. So far we have the following users:

  • Jiraiya
  • Minato Namikaze
  • Konohamaru Sarutobi
  • Naruto Uzumaki
  • Boruto Uzumaki
  • Sasuke Uchiha*
  • Kakashi Hatake

For Sasuke, he used it as a demonstration before asking Boruto if he could develop it himself. After that, he went through an intense and heated training session from Konohamaru before revealing to Sasuke the results of admittedly three days of training. Before him, Naruto worked on the Jutsu with Jiraiya’s guidance for little over a week, and before him, Minato developed the Jutsu over the course of three years.

Furthermore, Minato’s direct legacy has accidentally or deliberately put their own spin on the Jutsu, no pun intended. Naruto developed the Rasenshuriken, a powerful Jutsu that was unfortunately shelved as a double-edged sword, at least until the Akatsuki brought Pain to the Leaf Village.

For Boruto, the first of several variants had come in the form of the Vanishing Rasengan, though he didn’t acknowledge it until he, Sasuke, and the Gokage fought Momoshiki in the other dimension.

So this Jutsu keeps Code immobile yet conscious to answer a question on Boruto’s mind: the location and status of the Ten Tails. Keep this nugget in mind, it’ll be important toward the end. Just as the interrogation gets moving, Leaf ninja respond to the rogue ninja in their village, among the responding party is the object of Boruto’s vengeance: Kawaki. Speaking of Kawaki, he was in contact with Shikamaru who gives him the go-ahead for a kill order, but the opportunity is missed when Code summons a claw grime to escape through.

Earlier I wrote that Boruto was asking about whether Code knew the location and status of the Ten Tails. Out of concern for the safety of the world? Well, let me clarify: the tone of voice suggested by the panel was less of a desperation and concern and more of a boast, as if to say that after 2.5 years of training and keeping an eye out for Code, Boruto is finally one step ahead. This is where that twist comes in: before Code could get away, Boruto planted a mechanical toad on Code’s person.

Credit: Shueisha, Mikio Ikemoto, Masashi Kishimoto

Kawaki lost his chance to deliver the final blow and will most likely blame Boruto for allowing him to run off, but the last panel reveals why he allowed him to get away. Observe:

Creator: Shueisha, Mikio Ikemoto, Masashi Kishimoto

So now we wait for the week of November 20 to learn how this happened to the Ten Tails. Was it Boruto’s doing? Borushiki? Did he learn it from Sasuke? However we get to that answer it will likely be over the course of the next few months. As far as this chapter goes, it steadily creeps back into the trickle down expositional method that seems to be more emblematic of Kishimoto than Kodachi who seemed to employ what I believe was a healthy zigzag pattern of storytelling.

Clearly, I’d like to see more of this from the succeeding chapters, but it’ll probably be until at least January or February when we get more of these types of answers, and while this is largely fantasy, some of the answers to be revealed may ironically be less fantastical than whatever theories are out there proposing. But we’ll get them soon enough.

Undead Unluck First Impressions

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This is a long-time coming.

If you’ve been following this blog since the beginning, you may recall months ago when I wrote about a manga where select people get random powers of negation, as in what would normally happen to someone else doesn’t happen to the negator themselves. Lots of luck? This person gets none. Mortal? Not gonna happen. Approachable? There’s a literal barrier that keeps you from getting close. This manga is known as Undead Unluck. Created by Yoshifumi Tozuka on January 20, 2020 (the events since, my god), it’s up to 18 volumes as of writing this with 11 currently translated for an international audience. It was recently picked up for an anime adaptation in August 2022, and it’s first episode debuted on October 7, 2023 on Hulu with weekly releases to follow.

It’s too early to tell whether it’ll run for 12-13 episodes or 24-26 episodes, so this post will be a first impression of the first episode and whenever the first season ends, I’ll review it in bulk with comparisons to the manga. If the title, didn’t give it away, I’m gonna spoil episode 1. So go watch the first episode if you haven’t already, then come back when you’re all caught up.

Speaking of which, the first episode is already markedly different from the first chapter. Being early 2020, no one could predict the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic then. On a side note: I first read about it in December 2019 and said to myself, “That’s unfortunate, but as long as it stays there [in Wuhan], we have nothing to worry about.” My words were delicious, thanks for asking.

Anyway, no one knew about the pandemic’s global impact in January, news was still getting out back then, and I bring this up because the manga starts in August 2020, deep into the pandemic with lockdown and travel restrictions in place across the world. This is reflected in the anime as the first scene shows the protagonist Fuuko Izumo set to self-delete from atop a trainline with only Andy, a.k.a. Undead watching from the other side. In the manga, she was surrounded by bystanders who were attempting to bring her back to safety but were stopped when she produced a knife.

Andy still walks into the blade and touches Fuuko’s face hoping to catch some of her Unluck ability, and like clockwork, the platform collapses beneath him, causing him to fall onto an incoming train. In the manga, they show the disruption of service due to the fall, but the anime skips past that and immediately shows Undead sprouting a new body from his head.

In the anime, members of an antagonistic agency (revealed later in the manga, I won’t spoil too much) show up to apprehend Undead, but he takes Fuuko with him and flees. In the manga, with the world still being populated, a civilian witness attempts to alert the cops on an out-of-context scenario involving a naked man and a young woman in public (honestly, much of the manga is just “Out of Context” the series; it’s unbelievable).

In both the manga and the anime, Undead and Fuuko stop at a building rooftop with Undead dangling Fuuko over the edge until she explains her Unluck ability. She explains it and although it was given a single page in the manga, the anime elaborated further on this. It starts with scenes alternating between Fuuko’s last connection with her parents before the accident, and scenes from the romance manga she was reading.

The anime had introduced them early, but by this point in the manga, after being saved from an accidental slip and fall from the rooftop, the antagonistic agency, represented by men in black suits observes their target making a run for it to an abandoned site. At the site, Fuuko’s jacket snags and she loses her beanie which kept her hair under wraps for years since no hairdresser or stylist could cut it without dropping dead. At the same time, Undead is maintaining as much skin contact with Fuuko while he cuts her hair so that he can test a few hypotheses, mainly is the impact influenced by duration or surface area?

Well, he doesn’t really get that answer since this agency of black suits tracks him down to his hideout and lops off his head. They put the head in a container and handcuff Fuuko, but the Unluck comes in clutch to save the two as one of the black suits gets zapped. Undead regenerates everything below the neck and removes the card he keeps in his head as a restrictor of sorts to cut them all down to size. Between the manga and the anime, this scene is a mix of gore and action.

The main guy in a black suit holds Fuuko at sword-point and threatens to behead her too if Undead doesn’t surrender his own head. Neither of them agree to that and when Fuuko breaks free and kisses Undead on the cheek, a meteorite decimates the abandoned hospital. With just a single cell of him left, Undead regenerates full and takes the black suit’s sword as a keepsake. Putting two and two together, he realizes that neither duration nor surface area have anything to do with the Unluck reciprocated and that it may be more connected to feelings of affection. Working with that as the going hypothesis, Undead, now christened “Andy” as a play on words (works better in Japanese) by Fuuko, half-jokingly proposes that they’ll both get their desired death if they have sex… which Fuuko is clearly not keen on as they both just met. And that’s where chapter 1/episode 1 leaves off.

For my impression, I say that if follows the manga as best as it can with a few nods to real life changes. Then again, for obvious reasons, the COVID pandemic and probably by extension the year 2020 aren’t going to be referenced very heavily in media unless it’ll be for alternate changes to reflect real life or for an alternate timeline of sorts. I liked what they did in just the first episode. This being, David Production, the people who brought us JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, I didn’t worry all that much about how it would look or turn out.

This studio tends to live up to their reputation and they made Undead Unluck look pretty good for the beginning. I didn’t think they’d expand further on the origin of Fuuko’s Unluck ability with the plane explosion, but from a narrative standpoint, it’s cool to see what we’re expecting going forward. The same goes for the scenes of Fuuko’s romance manga. This is connected to the plot many chapters into the manga, but without spoiling this again, DP seems to be playing the long game of adaptation with the foreshadowing in just this episode and likely more to follow.

If the anime is 1-cour running for 12 or 13 episodes, then the last episode should air on December 23 or 30 of this year. Alternatively, if it’s 2-cour running for 24 or 26 episodes then it should wrap up its first season by either March 16 or March 30, 2024. Whichever of those comes first, I’ll save a spot in my schedule for that and cover it in a post in the future.

Call me biased in favor of the series, but I’m glad to see something I cheerlead for in the beginning get one of its dues and I hope I can say the same for The Elusive Samurai when it releases in 2024.

Tomorrow I’ll be covering a media company that is on a slow and steady decline. Stay tuned. Here’s a hint: