It is also great because I can watch anime and doramas all day and all night long. I have recently finished Black Lagoon (season 1) and I really like it. Many of the reviews describe it as Cowboy Bebop here on Earth and that is a pretty good summary of the genre of anime it falls into.
Characters
The "main" character is the most boring in my opinion. His name is "Rock" (name given to him by the leader of the group) and he joins this band of because he was inadvertently abducted during a case and after being abandoned by his company he decides to join this team. The job of the Lagoon Company is a lot like Akabane's team in GetBackers, they are "delivery men". They make sure that property (mostly illegally obtained) makes it safely from one party to the next. To ensure the safety they are heavily armed and trained fighters.
Revy (sometimes subbed as Revi and Levi) AKA "Two-Hands" is a Chinese heritage shoot-em-up girl. She has tons of attitude born from years of hardship growing up in New York City. But, it's clear that she's really very troubled underneath the tough exterior. Fighting appears to be all she knows how to do in order to express herself. Despite the multiple spellings of her name, I think it should be Rebi like a nickname of Rebecca. [**although I just saw on a website that "Rivi and Rivy" are nickames for Rebecca so maybe the spelling should be one of those??**] Revy seems to be the real main character of this show b/c she's infinitely more interesting than Rock.
She and Rock are lead by Dutch (pronounced Dutch-y by most). He's a big Black guy who is pretty cool and reserved under pressure. He negotiates most of the deals and has a yet unknown history. If he were to be played by an American actor, I imagine Ving Rhames playing the role....
He's a dead ringer, eh?? Wonder if the artist had him in mind...
Dutch works closely with a woman who heads the Russian mafia (Moscow Hotel) in the South Pacific, Balalaika. She was a former Russian soldier who worked in Afghanistan. It was there that she received the disfiguring scars that she has on her body. She's a great leader and pretty badass in her own right (much more level headed than Revi).
Finally the most minor of the Lagoon characters so far is Benny, the random blond Jewish guy who does the electronics stuff. I think he's American, but I can't remember if they said so in one of the episodes or I'm just making assumptions.
Plot
In 13 episodes there are about five or six different stories, all surrounding different jobs that Lagoon has been contracted to do. The character development continues across the episodes (what little of that there is), but that storyline is contained to two or three episodes. However, I like that well enough. You really are only watching it to see who fights who and how they miraculously get out of each situation. Very few times, despite all of the gunfire, do any of the main characters actually get hit by a bullet -- actually I only think that happens once.
Overall
I like this series. It's fast paced and very watchable. There's tons of blood, likeable characters and tons of nationalities represented in the cast (although they all speak japanese, which is weird but only stand out in the last job when one character, speaking japanese, tells another character to stop talking to Rock in Japanese, as if he doesn't understand the language. :-?)
The story undertones all have a "fight the power" edge to it. Whether or not it is German/American NAZI-ism or South American guerilla fighters and drug cartels or Arab anti-zionist fighters. The "bad" guys are often driven by a desire to overthrow what they consider to be an oppressive regime. Kind of interesting.
Another thing that tripped me out was the ending theme song which was eerily slow and would abruptly cut into the action of the show...I guess this was their version of creating a cliffhanger.
Other memorable characters from Black Lagoon -
Roberta/Bloodhound/Rosarita: South American maid (Columbia is switched for Venezuela half-way through) Her character is a little too resilient, the reference to the Terminator is accurate.
Mr Chan: I don't know what I like him so. He has a good sense of humor, but is also a badass fighter...but, smooth-like. I don't know he has a sexy appeal to him...maybe played by George Clooney, although I've never seen GC in a fighting movie. hmm.... [Eps. 11&12]
Shen Hua: Taiwanese knife thrower, the classy version of Revi [Eps. 11&12]
The old NAZI leader is also pretty memorable, b/c he's so damned offensive...yet, cunning. He masters the back-handed compliments. But he doesn't fight and so there's no real point to a picture of him.
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