Anime Pilgrimage RTT

Black Lagoon – episode 9

June 15, 2006 on 10:17 am | In Black Lagoon | 8 Comments

“Maid to Kill”

I wrote in my notes “this is clearly the best show ever to be on television”. I was being more hyperbolic than sarcastic, as Black Lagoon packs so much sheer entertainment value that I’m surprised I didn’t simply explode from all of it while watching this on the train.

When I mentioned a couple of weeks back “two types of killers”, I failed to mention the type that is embodied by Roberta: “attack robot from the future”. The coldness of Revy was motivated by some sort of visible anger, but Roberta gives the audience her icy determination to complete her mission.

Roberta opens fire on the Cartel and freaks Garcia out due to her sheer blood bath creating ability. Due to his refusal to leave, Lagoon Company is in a heap of trouble and escapes from the Yellow Flag only to find the determined maid right behind them.

This is possibly the most entertaining episode of Black Lagoon yet, and is certainly the least challenging of them all. The concept that we have on hand is that of a maid who has a shotgun built into her bulletproof umbrella, and a briefcase that is apparently a combination machine-gun, rocket launcher and ammo dump. In addition to this, said maid has the ability to explode a building with a dress full of grenades, escaping unharmed. She can punch through the window of a car and hot wire it without a sound.

But, best of all, she has the power to pull Dutch out of a speeding car. Her, a maid, and him a giant man who has to weigh at least twice as much as she does. Benny questioned her prowess at one point in the episode, and Dutch essentially told him to discard any of his concepts of reality: Roberta really is a Terminator. She has a moment when she displays an emotion: when she gets rejected by Garcia, who is probably her only real anchor to humanity. Her eyes are hidden most of the time, but they reveal her emotions far greater than her actions do. At the moment I can’t tell if Roberta is trying to reclaim that which made her happy, or has just abandoned everything in an attempt to complete her mission. Well, obviously Garcia can’t stay with Lagoon Company: a character design that generic couldn’t survive long in that world.

Next episode is possibly the conclusion of this story, with the meeting of the three most dangerous women in the world. Black Lagoon truly is the best of this kind of show: it’s ridiculous without being totally stupid, by virtue of its entertainment factor.