Anime Pilgrimage RTT

Black Lagoon – episode 8

June 13, 2006 on 11:31 pm | In Black Lagoon | Comments Off on Black Lagoon – episode 8

“Rasta Blasta”

Looks like our friends at the Lagoon Company are going to be dealing in multiple episode stories from now on.

Rock delivers some arms to the mafia and picks up a child for sale into the deal. Revy doesn’t appreciate the child, but Rock can accept that he may just be the son of the South American Loveless family.
Garcia warns the Lagoon Company that his family’s maid, Roberta, might be coming to salvage him.

The first thing that this episode does is show that Revy does not have a soft spot for children. If anything, she treats them more poorly than she would an adult simply because they’re easier to bash around. Were it not for Rock’s presence on the ship, I doubt anyone would have listened to Garcia. Although who wouldn’t listen to Garcia, furbished as he was with the voice of Ikura Kazue? Ikura Kazue being featured in this episode acts as a City Hunter reunion for Ikura and Koyama Mami, yet another reason for my love of this show to blossom.*

Roberta is remarkably polite (and voiced by Tomizawa Michie! I’m drowing in my beloved seiyuu of the eighties and nineties here!) to the point that many fans would fetishise her mode of speech in addition to her dress code. The whole episode is a build-up to a “the maid will shoot things” scenario, and this expectation is met only in the last seconds. Roberta had an explosive umbrella, sure, but what the eff was it? It’s the key ingredient to a satisfactory conclusion next up, I expect.

The style of the animation is of the normal standard, but this episode commits one of the most cardinal, and stupid, of anime sins: the photograph with a face obscured by a bright light. In this instance we can see the Loveless family father and maid, but the son is obscured. What point is there in undermining Garcia’s claims when his story correlates with the truth? Damned Balalaika and her naturally lit offices!

So Rock is different to Revy and Dutch, so children like him more. What of Benny, though? Poor fellow doesn’t get any say in the reconciliation of humanity with piracy. Probably won’t even get to see a maid in action.

In the even more unforgiveable stakes, next episode is called “Maid to Kill”. I did not authorise this!

*Anecdote: I hate fansubs’ inability to translate cast lists. To find out that this was Ikura Kazue, I had to listen to my ears based on roughly six years’ experience of hearing Ikura’s voice, then read out “Ga-ru-shi-a” in the cast list, read the kanji next to it, then compare that kanji to Ikura’s listings online. That’s hard work right there.