History Manga / BlackLagoon

** On the rare occassions that anyone in Lagoon antagonizes Balalaika, she's usually rather nonchalant about it. ''Usually''.

** Roberta and Fabiola have been known to dual-wield firearms on occasion too - it's not really their signature fighting style, though.

* LipstickAndLoadMontage: DragonLady Shenhua is shown putting on lipstick during her introduction scene, while she and Leigharch prepares to rescue Revy.

* LittleUselessGun: Subverted. While Fritz Stanford is bragging about the enormous handgun he plans to use to kill Revy, a custom-built gold-plated Luger chambered for .454 Casull, she's loading her regular handgun, a custom-built 9mm Beretta, and shoots him before he can finish speaking. Before she finishes him off, she tell him that "if you can hit your target, pretty much any gun will do the trick."
** Later on, Balalaika is negotiating with some Yakuza and demands they let her examine the boodyguard's gun. Then she insists he also hand over his backup gun and she begins to mock him for having such a little weapon. However, she then opens fire and kills the two men, stating that perhaps it wasn't so useless after all.

* MenAreTheExpendableGender: Not surprsing since this is basically a thinly-veiled action movie parody that plays many tropes of the genre dead straight. However, it's notable that there aren't that many more women in the antangonists than there are in the mooks, and fewer still actually die. Female characters will threaten and battle each other violently but, so far, none of them have ever killed another woman on-screen.

* AdaptationExpansion: The anime version removed characterization and changed mood-setting moments to the story compared to the more psychological and action-oriented manga version. On the other hand, the anime added a lot more action scenes to the "Rasta Blasta" arc which introduced Roberta (for instance, the physics-defying car chase between her and Lagoon Company isn't present in the manga). The opening chapter of the series ([[TheOneWith the one where Rock torpedoes the helicopter]]) is extended across two episodes.

* NotSoDifferent:
** Balalaika and Rock are both just chasing their hobbies, be it "saving people" or "going to war".

* DamnItFeelsGoodToBeAGangster

* RatedMForManly: Just about everyone, but especially the girls. A Chinese-American that doesn't give a single fuck about who gets into the crosshairs of her guns? An ex-Spetznaz ColdSniper leader of the local [[TheMafiya bratva?]] A freaking ''nun''?! Yeah, this is a WorldOfBadass (or, to be precise, City of Badass) alright!

%%* RatedMForManly:

* TokenGoodTeammate: Rock for the Lagoon company because he was a non-criminal civilian; Lotton the Wizard for the CarnivalOfKillers and later Sawyer and Shenhua's PowerTrio because of his chivalry.

* RealityEnsues: [[spoiler:What happens when a CharlesAtlasSuperpower human goes up against an extremely well trained special forces? In the anime at least, She. Gets. [[GameBreakingInjury Wrecked]]. Also what happens when untrained and undisciplined Cartels go up against the ''same'' special forces? They get introduced to the CurbstompBattle, with none of them landing any shots on their more skilled and disciplined opponents.]]

* StoryArc: For the most part, ''Black Lagoon'' contains nothing but self-supporting arcs describing the crew's current job. They will reference past events, but they rarely influence each other. The biggest exception is Rock's [[spoiler:failure to save Yukio]], which deeply shakes his worldview, and directly informs his actions in the succeeding arcs. Additionally, that Garcia and Fabiola didn't thank him (and in fact, [[spoiler:Fabiola ''shot'' him. It was a blank, but still, [[RealityEnsues blanks can still hurt]]]]) for [[IDidWhatIHadToDo doing whatever he had to]] in order to save [[spoiler:Roberta]], has him even ''more'' depressed when "Wired Red Wild Card" begins.

%%* DamnItFeelsGoodToBeAGangster

* Drivingquestion: In the L'homme sombre arc, it's whether Dutch is tied to the Le Cinq Doigts agents in their quest to hunt for black African men [[spoiler:in relation to the aftermath of post-World War II Burkina Faso]].

* TheAbridgedSeries:
** [[https://www.youtube.com/user/TheresABulletInMyLeg There's A Bullet In My Leg.]] Unfortunately it only lasted 5 episodes before the creators cancelled it.
** ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxdnRZbYnzE Dark Swamp.]]'' Done by the same team as ''[[WebVideo/PokemonTheBridgedSeries Pokémon 'Bridged]]'', taking major liberties with the premise, mostly giving Rock {{Telepathy}}.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIsY8Hz_bFY Negro Lagoon.]] You wouldn't think would be possible to make this show more audacious, but somehow they manage.

* ShoutOut

** From the first light novel: "Never speak of the [[TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles turtles]]!!" ([[ItMakesSenseInContext It Makes (just a bit more) Sense In Context]])

--->'''Revy''': ''Bang.''

** Hansel and Gretel can apparently do picture-perfect impersonations of each other, right down to their voices. Apparently they've decided to take after [[Manga/{{Monster}} a certain blonde serial killer.]]
*** Their names are also of German origin. ''Manga/{{Monster}}'' takes place in Germany. (as well as the Czech Republic)

* ThatMakesMeFeelAngry: Gretel states she feels a little bad about killing a couple of orphans so they could be used as decoys.
* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech:
** Lots of people give them in this series, especially Revy and Balalaika, but one that's of special note is [[spoiler:Eda]] explaining to Mr. Chang why the Triad is nothing but street trash compared to the might of the United States, which is probably the first time in the entire series that ''anything'' made him lose his cool.
** Rock gives Revy some harsh criticism in episode 7. She nearly killed him for it, were it not for the fact that he finally showed some backbone, refusing to back down, and pointing out that she's the reason that he feels like he's making something of himself for a change (after having lived his life sucking up to his bosses prior to joining the Lagoon company). She does change her attitude slightly towards him afterwards however.
* TheTriadsAndTheTongs: Mr. Chang and his Sun Yee On syndicate. Probably the most influential of Roanapur's four major powers, but not the strongest (that'd be Hotel Moscow).

* TookALevelInBadass: Rock, definitely. [[spoiler: Garcia, by the end of ''El Baile de la Muerte.'']] And in one of the {{Omake}}s. we see that [[spoiler: Sgt. Boris]] of the ''Vysotniki'' used to be a [[{{Bishonen}} scrawny, girlish-looking boy]]...until he joined the Soviet Army.
* TraitorShot: An extremely subtle one in the conclusion of the "Freakshow Circus" arc. A minor mob boss, out of his element in the pirate city of Roanapur, is spazzing out that he needs the mob in Florida to send him more men after he got all his own men killed by Lagoon Company and other Roanapur denizens. The local expert on Roanapur keeps trying to tell him that things just don't work the same here and that it's not their turf, but the minor boss won't listen to reason. The advisor leaves the room, sighs, and as he leans we see a concealed gun in his coat. Another character strongly implies later that the advisor is probably just going to shoot the minor boss to clean up the mess rather than let him create a bigger one.
* TranslationConvention:
** English is the universal language used when most of the characters communicate, although the mafia and yakuza gangs presumably speak their native languages internally. For easiness' sake this trope is in effect, with the exception of scenes where people who don't speak each others' languages appear.
** Which gets kind of weird in the Japanese audio, because characters who have been heard in Japanese are revealed to have been speaking in English all along, and thus have to speak GratuitousEnglish when in-universe Japanese characters are around.
** Gets even weirder in the English dub: When Revy gets pissed at a street vendor and starts yelling at him, he yells right back at her, but in the Japanese audio he clearly didn't understand her and was snapping at Revy to speak Japanese. Also, since Ginji magically speaks English now, his dialogues with Revy are rewritten so that they actually understand each other instead of talking past one another in the original Japanese.
*** A shortcoming of the English dub is that in the "Fujiyama Gangsta Paradise" arc, Laptev and Balalaika's lines in [[GratuitousRussian Russian]] (present only in the Japanese audio) are omitted and simply replaced with the English equivalent.

* TragicDropout: The MafiaPrincess Yukio Washimine was forced to drop out of high school to take over her late father's {{Yakuza}} group. Needless to say, she wants nothing to do with her father's business and just wants a normal school life, but the family honor compels her to take control of the gang.

* VillainProtagonist: The Lagoon Crew murder and transport contraband [[HiredGun for whomever is willing to pay for such services]], including [[SlaveryIsASpecialKindOfEvil the transportation]] and [[WouldHurtAChild willing abandonment of a child deemed as cargo]]. Dutch and Revy, captain and second-in-command, respectively, have deliberately removed and actively discourage any inclination towards justice amongst the crew. With Hotel Moscow as prominent customers, the local police force over-worked and eagerly-bribed, the local church working well within and beneath the sight of the black market and the city's arms race, and an entire city comprised of mercenaries and pirates, they simply work to the best of their abilities.

* ArtisticLicenseCars: Roanapur is supposedly set somewhere in Thailand, but the people there drive left hand drive cars on the right side of the road - Thailand however is a right hand drive country.
* ArtisticLicenseGeography: The series explicitly states that Roanapur is in UsefulNotes/{{Thailand}}. But… every car shown in the series has the steering wheel on the left side and traffic in and around the city drives on the right (like in the USA and China). In reality, Thailand's road rule is the opposite – traffic there drives on the ''left'' and most cars have their steering wheels on the right (like in the UK and Japan). It would make a lot more sense if Roanapur was in neighbouring Cambodia. This is an unusual bit of CriticalResearchFailure on Rei Hiroe's part (considering how much really obscure stuff he gets correct).

* BadassCrew: Black Lagoon crew itself. For some people's definition of "crew", Balalaika's ''Vysotniki.

* BadassPacifist: Rock, who is able to argue with some of the most psychotically violent characters on the show, and not get killed. Sometimes he even wins.

* AsianSpeekeeEngrish: Largely averted, however Shenua speaks in heavily-accented and broken English, leading to Revy dubbing her "Chinglish."

** In the original manga and Japanese dub of the anime, Alfred calls Dutch "Jungle Bunny-kun".

%%* WorldOfCardboardSpeech: Delivered by Rock at the conclusion of the penultimate episode of the second season.

* OfficialCouple: Hansel/Gretel, Benny/Jane, [[spoiler:and Garcia/Roberta.]]

* EveryoneCanSeeIt: Rock and Revy. Eda constantly brings him up with Revy, and the one day Rock wasn't with her Bao asked if they had had a fight.

* FieryRedhead: TheProtagonist herself.

---> "[[ProductPlacement Tokarev, Makarov, Kalashnikov, Heckler and Koch...]] [[Anime/DaiMahouTouge Kill 'Em All!!]]"