- Last OnlineApr 27, 2018 9:04 AM
- GenderMale
- JoinedJul 18, 2010
Also Available at
RSS Feeds
|
![]()
Jul 22, 2010
What with the whole crippling recession thing and the massive black stain currently tainting the south coast, it's easy to imagine corporations as heartless money grubbers oppressing the common man in order to maintain their all-night drug-fueled yacht parties. A young japanese businessman by the name of Rokuro Okajima finds out the hard truth of these rumors when he is slated for death by his company simply because he found out about their plot to sell nuclear weapons to foreign dictators planning to use them to incinerate wide-eyed orphens in the small, undefended nation of Lovey-Dovey-stan.
Oh, wait, did I say that he found out
...
about their plan? What I meant to say was that they told him their plan so that they would have an excuse to kill him instead of rescuing him from a group of mercenaries.
In the face of this revalation, Rokuro, or "Rock" to his captors, decides that any life is better than no life and helps the mercenaries escape their pursuers by dreaming up a manuever so outrageously awesome it has to be seen to be believed. And thus begins the adventures of Rock and the Black Lagoon company.
The BL company is your standard gallery of rougues: Dutch, the charismatic, slightly insane leader; Benny, the nerdy, brainy guy who only does something useful about every five episodes; and Revy, the resident badass who is called upon to do everything that involves making things significantly less alive.
Together, they accept missions from various parties to deliver things from point A to point B on their torpedo boat, The Black Lagoon.
See, calling them mercenaries was a bit of a misnomer. They're more like delivery boys. Delivery boys in the sense that Paperboy was a delivery boy, where everything is constantly trying to kill you.
And as delivery boys, they are pitted against the very dregs of humanity: independent contractors, revolutionary guerillas, nazis, and, worst of all, maids. (Yeah, we know what you're hiding underneath those dresses.)
Luckily, they have the implacable Revy on their side to even things out, as she has the approximate net worth of 5,000 kilojoules of awesome behind her. See, Black Lagoon takes place in the same reality as every action movie in existence in that your ability to get hit by bullets is inversely proportional to how awesome you are. It's hard to notice in the earlier episodes with all of the flipping and shit, but five episodes in she isn't even trying anymore. She just calmly dispatches everyone in her path while enemy bullets clang helplessly against her concentrated cool.
Still, for the most part the gun fights are done well and are entertaining to watch.
The stories are pretty dark, as you may have guessed from the story summary, but what prevents this show from turning into just a group of amoral escapades is Rock himself. He is the ray of light that shows that reason can still prevail in the depths of the underworld. But he is also the glimmer of naivety that violence is not the answer. For in the world they live in, violence is the standard and diplomacy is the exception. Watching his and Revy's philosophies clash is both amusing and terrifying, for it threatens to unravel your perception of the world as you know it.
So if you're looking for a psuedo-realistic action show that threatens to eradicate your bubble of safety and logic, Black Lagoon may be just the show for you.
And seriously, corporations suck.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
What did you think of this review?
Nice
 0
Love it
 0
Funny
 0
Confusing
 0
Well-written
 0
Creative
 0Show all
![]()
Jul 20, 2010
Are you tired of all of the samey action movies? Depressed by Twilight's portrayal of vampires? Frustrated by the lack of copious gore in your everyday life? Well, you might want to consider a once-daily perscription of Hellsing Ultimate.
Hellsing Ultimate is a show driven by killing. The good guys kill the bad guys because the bad guys were killed by even badder guys who kill because they themselves are dead and that's just what dead people do.
So it makes sense that at the top of this kill-stravaganza is the one man who cannot be killed, in this case a vampire named Alucard.
Alucard
...
is the prime field agent for the Hellsing organization, a secret organization devoted to protecting England from the forces of the undead because apparently the rest of the world can just go die in a hole somewhere. During a routine mission, Alucard deems it necessary to blast a hole through a police woman in order to hit the vampire behind her. As this was totally unnecessary and completely dickish, Alucard offers to make her a vampire and she accepts. He then travels the countryside accompanied by his plucky sidekick Seras Victoria, defeating hordes of undead abominations while looking as badass as possible.
Make no mistake, Alucard is the star of the show here. There are plenty of other characters in this show that challenge the badass status quo, but none of them can come close to Alucard's blatant disregard for the laws of mortality. His response to being shot about 40,000 times is to brush himself off and proceed to tell you how useless and pathetic your efforts are. His thoughts on decapitation and dismemberment are basically 'hahahahahahaha, nice try'. One would assume that upon being ripped apart at molecular level, he would simply reconstitute himself into the shape of a middle finger and proceed to rip your skull out of your ass.
At this point you may be asking yourself, 'why should I care about someone who fits the description of Jason Vorhees?' Because the show demonstrates his immortality very tastefully. His numerous reconstitutions are never met with annoyance, but rather excitement. And as he takes injury after injury, blow after blow, shot after shot, you start to get the impression that he wants to die. That he has grown bored with his everlasting permanence and wishes to end his immortal life. That all he desires in the world is the person who is strong enough to kill him and allow him the peace of eternal sleep. And you begin to wonder, when he finds this opponent, the one person in all of the world who can grant his deepest desire, will he surrender to the lure of the afterlife, or will he fight to protect our world?
And then he blows the guys head off and you quickly forget about that. Hellsing is fond of Devil May Cry school of awesomeness in that being really hard to kill doesn't mean you don't have to dodge and that normal people can dodge bullets if they are awesome enough. The story moves quickly and is never boring, and it is interesting to see Seras come to terms with her new status as one of the undead.
So if Hellsing Ultimate sounds right for you, consult your local anime provider.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
![]()
Jul 18, 2010
Do NOT watch this movie. It is the single most soul-crushingly depressing thing ever spawned from the depths of human imagination. It takes all of the closure, hopes, and expectations you had for the end of the series and blasts them into the sun. It is the single worst possible ending to anything EVER.
I guess I should explain myself. Admittedly, the first half of the movie wasn't so bad. It was exciting and tragic and incredibly cryptic, all things we've come to expect from Evangelion. It was all really just a backdrop for the end, when all of the loose plot threads and secrets that
...
the series had been hinting at here and there but never got around to adressing would finally be brought to a glorious and satisfying conclusion that would be sung about by nerds the world over for generations to come. Except that that didn't happen. No, what we got instead was what can only be described as the horrid fever dream of a delusional psychopath bent on destroying the spirit of hopeful geeks everywhere. Seriously, I can't even describe it. I'm not even sure what the hell happened! All that I knew by the time that it was over was that everyone on Earth was dead. Or maybe they weren't. I DON'T KNOW!!!!
So in conclusion, don't watch this movie. You'll regret it for the rest of your life and anyone who says otherwise is a dirty liar that you should reevaluate your relationship with to see if they don't actually secretly hate you.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
|
