Black Lagoon, vol. 12 by Rei Hiroe

[chomiji]

The Black Lagoon manga is back after another hiatus.

The crime organizations that run the city of Roanapur have reached a fragile and likely temporary peace. The ceasefire might be shattered by the latest events, though: someone (actually, several someones) has been targeting big black men around the city. The victims are associated with a variety of Roanapur's leading crime syndicates, so the heads of those organizations together request the Lagoon Company to investigate. It seems clear that Dutch will be on the list of targets, so the Lagoon crew don't hesitate for a nanosecond to accept the job.

And besides, this may give Rock, Revy, and Benny more information about their mysterious boss.

The assailants turn out to be a quintet of rather elegant young ladies whom we first meet at a bar, where one of them creates a distraction by challenging the prize fighter who's the establishment's main attraction and beating him to a pulp. They are all of different ethnicities but apparently speak French among themselves, and their noms de guerre are also French. They are very good at what they do, but they are not getting along with each other at this point: their immediately previous job resulted in a death on their side, and there's a blame game being played.

The story is told mainly from Rock and Revy's viewpoint. Mr. Chang has assigned Shenhua to work with them, so we get some of the typical comic animosity between her and Revy. Revy gets a couple of quality scenes on her own, good psychological stuff. We do get a few tiny bits of Dutch's actual background, and we see Feng again, which is fun.

Hiroe's art style has gone weirdly backwards: he's using the classic manga Big Eyes, Small Mouth style seen in the first couple of tankoubon volumes. In the previous couple of volumes, his drawings of Dutch and Benny in particular were showing a craggier, more realistic look, and Balalaika, Rock, and Revy were drawn a bit more realistically as well. Now everyone except Dutch looks rather like the child assassins Hansel and Gretel from the early days: youthful and creepily doll-like.

This arc is not resolved. I hope we don't have to wait another two and three years for it to finish.

---

Hi! I'm back too!

Comments

[yhlee]

*waves hi*

I only saw a couple eps of the anime (too violent for me to handle, ironically) although a friend of mine assured me it was very good! :D

[chomiji]

Um, Yoon? Threshold Winnower in action? XD

But yes, casual violence and Black Lagoon go together like peanut butter and jelly. Smilla had me watch a couple of episodes of the anime. Hiroe was heavily influenced by Hong Kong action movies. It's easier to take in the manga.

[yhlee]

Right, but I don't "see" images when I'm writing or reading. With a visual medium like anime or manga it's kind of unavoidable. XD My tolerance for violence/gore is also higher in manga (I can skim pages, I don't have to see the violence acted out/animated) than in anime, in anime/animation than in live-action. XD

[chomiji]

Oh yeah, I now I remember that. Sorry! =.=;

[yhlee]

Oh, no worries! I don't expect people to track my quirks. XD

[lauand]

Okay, no idea about Black Lagoon, but I'm very glad to hear from you! :)

[chomiji]

*tackle glomp*

[lauand]

*glomps back*