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Black Lagoon manages to captivate with intense action and extremely likeable characters. It's only downfall is that it spends far too much time concentrating on the stories of side characters and leaves the far more appealing stories of the main characters up to the viewers imagination.

The characters of Black Lagoon are it's strongest point. Rock stands as the focal point of the series, a businessman who's tired of his life and chooses to enter the criminal underworld. His character could have easily been irritatingly indecisive but he proves to have a strong backbone by standing up for what he believes in, even in the face ... of the toughest criminals. His coworker Revy, is the most instantly appealing character in the show. Although she remains a violent gunslinger throughout the entire series, her internal conflicts are acknowledged and make her seem like much more of a real character. Finally, the last amazing character in this show is Balalaika. Balalaika may be the most badass female character in all of anime, period. In a show that is filled with violent characters, she stands above the rest as the smartest and most powerful. There aren't many characters in the anime that don't acknowledge her power and the few who do don't, don't live very long at all. Overall, all of the other characters in the show were also interesting and I'd have to say the show deserves to be commended for creating so many engrossing characters.

This show is also insanely entertaining. The intro is great for preparing viewers for the carnage that fills almost every episode. The action sequences are all fast-paced and unpredictable, with new characters that always bring a twist to every battle. The ending theme also brought an appropriately dark tone to the end of every episode.

The biggest drawback of Black Lagoon is that it fails to set up a clear narrative and instead chooses to follow the stories of different insignificant characters. New characters are introduced every three episodes who then become the focal point for the next few episodes before they are never seen again. This formula became increasingly frustrating as the show approached it's conclusion and I felt like I knew more about the various side characters than the main characters that I cared most about. The best episodes in this series are the episodes which concentrate on the two main characters, Revy and Rock. Unfortunately, there are far too few of these episodes and the backstories of these characters are left mostly up to speculation. This is unfortunate because the few moments that we get with the two of them seem like they could lead to a far more interesting plot.

Regardless, Black Lagoon succeeds in doing what it strives to do. It's entertaining, has great characters and explores dark themes that most other shows don't dream of approaching. It's greatest downfall is that it doesn't aim high enough. With a bit more ambition, this anime could have had a cohesive plot that focused more on it's great main cast, rather than on irrelevant side characters. Black Lagoon comes close to dark, violent perfection but narrowly misses the mark.
9/10