Black Lagoon, vols. 6 & 7 (Rei Hiroe)

[chomiji]

Volume 6 contains the complete "Greenback Jane" arc. Revy and Rock are back in Roanapur. Revy's cracked-out girl-talk reunion session with Eda at the Ripoff Church (featuring cards, booze, and guns) is interrupted by a frantic fugitive from violence: Jane Bai, master counterfeiter, who turns out to be the hottest piece of contraband in play in Roanapur at the moment. The rest of the story is a crazy caper that seesaws between frantic Loony Toons chase comedy and a building-destroying level of violence. There's a little romance (for one of the most unlikely characters), the return of Shenhua (as part of a quirky miniboss squad that puts Black Lagoon squarely over the line into fantasyland for the first time), and some very nice scenes for Eda, ranging from the wacky to the rather sinister.

Volume 6 also starts a new, longer arc, "El Baile de le Muerte" ("The Dance of Death"), which continues in Volume 7 and beyond. Given the name of the arc, no one should be surprised to see the return of Roberta the Maid (a/k/a the "Hound of Florencia") to Roanapur - but she's not the only interesting visitor to come back to the Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy. Her young master, Garcia Lovelace, shows up, trailing the hyperkinetic and well-armed teenaged domestic Fabiola Iglesias, who learned virtually everything she knows from Head Matron Roberta and has a similarly bad effect on bars and other criminal hideouts. Everyone's assuming that Roberta is out to revenge Garcia's father - but he was killed back in South America, so why is she in Thailand?

Black Lagoon, vols. 6 & 7 (review)

Poor Jane really gets played like a pinball, doesn't she? Eda ia so evil ... but even she has her soft spots - and Rock/Revy is clearly one of them.

And poor Revy ... she has no clue how to express anything she's feeling to Rock, and what she does say simply whizzes over his head, unnoticed. I have to say that no matter how painful this stuff is to watch, I commend Hiroe for keeping Revy in character.

The bad-guy squad in "Greenback Jane" is pretty silly. I find myself wondering whether they're leftover characters from some early proto-manga that Hiroe never got to publish.

Fabiola's escapade at the Yellow Flag was hilarious, and her sneaking off to take a swim later while Garcia is asleep was such a great counterpoint. I like Revy's reactions to her, too. There's a lot going on there, on multiple levels.

I also liked the nutty gun and explosives experts!

Chang is developing in interesting ways: I liked his insistence that Revy ask Garcia about smoking in the hotel room. I'm hoping Hiroe gives Dutch some more to do in the future, though, because I feel like a great character is being wasted.

Comments

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

GJ is definitely one of my less-liked arcs as a whole, although there are individual scenes (Eda and Revy's conversation at the beginning, all the Shenhua bits, etc.) that I adored. Jane herself I'm rather of two minds about; on the one hand, like Red, I find her rather unlikable; OTOH, I do recognize that what I dislike about her is just what you've noted, it's a not-uncommon sort of monomaniacal and socially tone-deaf sort of geeky personality type. So while I don't really like her, I like that character exists, if that make sense -- in far too many media you'd only see that sort of character as a nerdy male, and they'd probably be sort of sexless supporting characters. So I love that she's there, in all her abrasive-self-absorbed geek glory, and I love that geeky version of Slap Slap Kiss between her and Benny -- it all ends up being yet another example of Hiroe writing competent, non-stereotpical-role female characters in ways that are usually reserved for males (and the male characters, at least the more sympathetic ones who are likeliest to *not* be killed off before the chapter is over, thinking it's perfectly cool that the ladies are just as smart or ruthless or deadly as the guys are...)

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Very good points. Because Jane isn't a typical female character, and I find her style of dressing (modest yet attractive) also worthy of note.