Wednesday, July 6, 2011

[Ended][OVA] Black Lagoon Roberta's Blood Trail: The Dark Side of Rock


While we've grown accustom to crazy gun battles started by Revy in Black Lagoon series, "Rock" is probably considered to be the least psychotic person here...until now.

Like I said in the previous posts, even though Rock's appearance in this story is not anywhere close in comparison to other major characters, this is really a story about him. He is probably the biggest focus on character development aside from the primary villain, Roberta.

You can watch this OVA series in may different ways: as a huge mindless over the top action gun battle anime or a game of chess where different political, military, and drug cartels are playing to try to gain control of the region. The story showed us both explosiveness and intricacy.

While certain elements, such as the gun battle and the physical abilities of certain people are just outright ridiculous, the story as a whole in my opinion managed to still stay within the realm of reality, well, just barely.

Final scoreboard:


Drama: 88 (Dark and Twisted)
Comedy: 86 (Fabiola provides some)
Action: 93 (Physically impossible but fun to watch)
Art/Animation: 90 (OVA Quality)
Sound/Music: 90 (Interesting choice of ending theme)
Character: 88 (Development of Rock)
Plot: 87 (A bit over the top)
Ending: 89 (Life moves on)

Re-watch value: 60 (Second time through sorts out more confusions)

Overall: 89 - Darker, Bloodier, and more Explosive than ever

Recommendation:
The bottom line is, if you liked the two original Black Lagoon series, chances are, you'll love this one. There are just as much excitements here as the previous ones, and there are a lot more to explore for what has become of "Rock".

4 comments:

AnimeAddict said...

Where did you find the subbed version? i've been looking it for the past week and nothing

The Evil Cat said...

Well, I didn't watch English subbed version. Can't help you here, sorry.

Anonymous said...

Could you tell me what that last bit was about? with those borders? Didn't Rock win (against Mr. Chan?), he saved the right?

Anonymous said...

Black Lagoon is based on Hollywood action movies. When has its actions ever been not reality defying or ridiculous. I mean BL never cliamed to be realistic so I don't get all the complaints it gets whereas Bleach and Naruto go even more ridiculous and yet no one ever complains about them being reality defying.

As for Rock, IIRC, other than trying to save the maid. He manipulated the situation in order to destroy Roanapur cause he wants revenge on Roanapur but the CIA screwed him over.

As for why no one trys to capture Roberta, if you can remember, the US teams mission didn't include capturing Roberta, the Farc group have very little luck against Roberta cause she herself used to be Farc and thus knows how those guys operate whereas Hotel Moscow didn't want to kill or capture Roberta; they just wanted to give the US team a chance to leave the city.