Sister (and brother) of night: the tragedy of Black Lagoon’s Hansel and Gretel
One of the most enjoyable anime series I’ve watched recently is Black Lagoon: an in-your-face, bad-ass, politically incorrect adrenaline rush of foul-mouthed dialogue, Hollywood blockbuster-style gunfights and huge-ass explosions. It’s a hard-boiled tale on modern day pirates, gangsters and all manner of other colourful characters who live on the wrong side of the law, and its moral stance is decidedly ambiguous. While I won’t pretend for a split second that it’s inoffensive and relaxing entertainment that’s suitable for all the family, I find it to be a refreshing change; a guilty pleasure, if you will. Unplug your brain, sit back with a beer and enjoy the sharp script and non-stop action.
The first arc of the Second Barrage presented us with two villains who managed to outdo even those of the first series. Black Lagoon thrives on its larger-than-life characters, and these two were no exception: they’re a pair of young twins who specialise in assassination but with it being Black Lagoon a pair of kids with homicidal tendancies isn’t enough. These two are androgynous borderline vampires with implied twincest tendancies and they kill people with unnerving ease. For fun. While the series usually delivers its impact through outrageous people and situations, I’d never seen it go all dark and serious before…until now.
The first half of the story arc pans out as you’d expect it to after watching the ones that preceded it: there’s a lot of bloodshed, a lot of damaged property and a lot of people arguing over how to stop the killings upsetting the town’s relative definition of peace. There are two new faces in town and I’ll admit that it’s hugely entertaining to see them wreak havoc with such gleeful abandon. One of my favourite scenes occurs after the twins create mayhem at a local bar: dragging a dead mafia henchman out of the building, the boy asks his sister for help. “Girls shouldn’t be expected to lift heavy objects,” she cheerfully replies, as she loads her semi-automatic rifle and opens fire with a plushie dangling incongruously from the barrel like a schoolkid’s lucky charm. It’s surreal, wrong on so many levels but damn, it’s sure as hell fun to watch.
Part of the operation to restore some semblance of order to the town is an investigation into where these kids came from. Their real names are unknown but they are referred to in the criminal underworld as Hansel and Gretel, two merciless and highly efficient juvenile killers who have earned an impressive degree of noteriety. Eventually Hotel Moscow’s agents piece together their murky origins: a shocking tale of neglect, exploitation and abuse. Every character in Black Lagoon has an interesting and shady past of course, often involving a traumatic childhood (the female lead Revy being a case in point) but the back-story of Hansel and Gretel goes far beyond merely explaining their behaviour. It is shocking and utterly tragic to the point where I feel justified in writing an entire blog post about them.
The political background, that of orphaned Romanian kids falling through the cracks in a country’s crumbling social system, is based on real historical events and as such strikes close enough to home to make most viewers feel uncomfortable; because this sort of thing could actually have happened. The story of how the children were effectively sold into slavery, brainwashed into believing that the world is devoid of any brightness and comfort and forced into activities that don’t need to be more than implied to be shocking is, I hope, less likely to have happened in reality. It’s just that it’s so painfully sad.
Sparing you the worst of the details doesn’t spare you from feeling unbelievably sorry for these kids. Squeamish viewers may find some scenes too graphic but the very idea that the two of them are the survivors of such a sick system of crime and pitiless torture is what chilled me. It makes the suffering of the stars of Gunslinger Girl, a masterful portrayal of the emotional results of making killers of innocent children, look relatively painless. It plumbed depths that only Naoki Urasawa’s Monster has conveyed with such bleak and gritty effectiveness.
Saying that this Hansel and Gretel are survivors is implying that they made it through a traumatic experience but they are so mentally broken, so incapable of growing up and living in a normal society, that the idea of ‘surviving’ rings hollow for me. As The Lagoon’s Rock grudgingly admits, he can hardly adopt the girl after what the world has turned her into, and how many dangerous enemies her actions have made for her.
Watching a pair of innocent-looking assassins dispatching hardened criminals started off as another “wtflolawesome!” Black Lagoon story full of slick, undemanding entertainment; by the end though the violence stopped being a part of the entertainment value and became part of a heart-wrenching tale of two innocent souls that could never find their way out of darkness and into the bright, hopeful light of day. That fact that Black Lagoon of all things could deliver such a sucker-punch of a dramatic storyline that shows gratuitous violence, but later makes you question your moral standards in enjoying it, took me completely by surprise. Needless to say it was difficult viewing and I hope for a more jovial arc to cheer me up afterwards but the blurring of the line between guilty pleasure and morality fable was a masterstroke of storytelling.
Hah, FIRST!
Excellent call on your conclusion: “but later makes you question your moral standards in enjoying it, took me completely by surprise. Needless to say it was difficult viewing and I hope for a more jovial arc to cheer me up afterwards but the blurring of the line between guilty pleasure and morality fable was a masterstroke of storytelling”
I intend to start next year by blogging on one of the central themes of my anime hobby, that of the guilty pleasure and this post has provided me with some excellent material. The Hansel and Gretel arc was one of the most difficult viewings I’ve had in an anime and I stuck with it only because Black Lagoon has been quite excellent up until then. It failed to disappoint after this arc as well.
I did not take the same pleasure as you did, as I was more disturbed than titillated. But hell, it was something.
The fun thing about Black Lagoon is that while the focus is heavily on gratuitous violence, and you certainly can enjoy it simply on that level, it offers more than that. Sure, no one’s going to mistake it for Lain or whatever, but its exploration of the characters and commitment to maintaining a morally ambiguous stance (as you noted above) do give food for thought. As a result we get story arcs like this one. We also get some really nice character moments, like the (mostly) verbal showdown between Rock and Revy, or the conversation between Dutch and his Nazi employer.
Another nice touch is the little bits of realism that show between the improbably bouts of violence. I was particularly impressed with the Islamic terrorists being part of the real Abu Sayyaf. And the weapons are all real (even the pump action grenade launcher that has shown up in the manga).
IMHO what makes Black Lagoon such a great action show is that it doesn’t just rely on the violence and eye candy, but is compelling on multiple levels. There are plenty of Hollywood productions that could learn from it.
Oh yeah, there was another thing I wanted to mention.
The torture that the twins went through, unfortunately, does happen all the time. Maybe not in Romania, but certainly in Africa. There children are kidnapped and forced to do unspeakable things to survive. Ironically, Black Lagoon (often written off as only well-executed disposable entertainment) does a much better job of depicting the horror of this than ‘big issue’ movies such as Blood Diamond.
child soldier with teddy bear:
http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/04Z25tDbA297m/610x.jpg
What I liked from this arc was that no-one really ended up happy afterwards. And that’s how life is sometimes. The ED of the last episode of the arc is perfect for it. :3
I thought about writing something along very similar lines after watching these episodes… Now I don’t have to!
It did seem to work very as a tragic and well, just bloody sad story really, which is surprising given the overall feel of the show. I would have expected a twist like that to feel awkward and unwelcome, but the fact that I could look past the fact Black Lagoon’s extended cast look like they’re on their way to a costume party and actually be affected by the twins story speaks volumes.
Most disturbing thing of all is that we know that kind of horrific abuse of kids who are supposed to be being cared for goes on not only under tyrannical regimes like that in Romania, but also in our own back yard given the recent inverstegations on Jersey.
When I reviewed the first volume of Second Barrage on DVD, the phrase “grim and uncomfortable” was about the only way I could pin down the viewing experience for this particular story arc and to be honest, I don’t think those words say anything like enough to do it justice.
I think you’ve pretty much nailed down how well both this arc and Black Lagoon as a whole works – On the surface, it’s a fantastically presented action series, but once you scratch that surface in some of the darker arcs it reminds you of just how fucked up the world can be in a way that transcends the comic book violence and characters that it often employs. I can’t really think of any other series that manages that juxtaposition, most shows tend to go for either the larger than life action or the dark, disturbing underbelly, not both.
I loved the first season of Black Lagoon, but at first I did sigh when I saw the twins – I had just watched Shana, containing another pair of disturbing siblings. But contrary to Shana, Black Lagoon went beyond and ended up with something poignant. Yes, the next arc will be more jovial, and the last long arc affirms the strengths of the series so far (a third season has been approved, I believe).
@Ghostlightning: congrats on getting to the comment box first! Much appreciated. The feeling I got from this arc was hard to describe; the way it tricked viewers into feeling guilty for enjoying mindless violence suggests to me that the series is more clever than it lets on. Glad to see my writing is of some help with your posts too!
@Ian K: so many good points there…yeah, I agree that BL has more going for it than just the (admittedly very good) action – I personally love the moments of character interaction you mention. The realism and the way in which it copies Western action movies and does the job better than most of them is also something it should be commended for. The real-life intances of child soldiers in Africa was also something that shocked me to the core when I first heard about it.
@TheBigN: the way that it all ended on such a bittersweet note was probably the only way it could have ended…and that end theme will haunt me forever, seriously. Like the ending to Gunslinger Girl’s first season did.
@ayase: glad to hear I saved you the trouble! ^_^ In all seriousness though, it is shocking to think that, as improbable and dramatised as stories like this appear to be, the reason why Black Lagoon is so immersive (at least for me) is that for all the over-the-top-ness it is fundamentally realistic.
@Hanners: I really enjoyed your review and can concur that it’s a difficult part of the series to put into words. The series gets a lot of comparisons to Cowboy Bebop but at the same time BL is a lot darker, more brutal and I suppose more cynical too. I’m afraid I can’t think of a series that does the juxtaposition so well either! I guess I could bring up Gunslinger Girl again, if only because it finds the bundle of raw nerves labelled ‘empathy’ and gives them a good tug.
buster_machine: yeah, the psychopathic kids thing has been done before but that just made the end of this arc pack even more of a punch. *makes a mental note to catch up on Shana* I’m completely in favour of a third season of this though!
Ahh Black Lagoon. Coincidentally, I just gone done rewatching that series as part of my post-JLPT binge. This arc was definitely one of the more intriguing ones, I agree. I have to say, though, I was just as interested in the development of Balalaika’s character in this arc and some of the unveiling of her story. I’m surprised you didn’t touch on that at all.
Yes, it is heartrending, isn’t it? Particularly the ED song and animation at the end, “The World of Midnight”.
Hansel and Gretel’s lives, short-lived as it were, are an interesting study. But what really draws out the charm of the series (and the moral ambiguity) is the camaraderie among the Hotel Moscow old guard, the company of Russian deserters that formed the core of the operation. They are not generic mafioso types that grunt and die in various violent ways (we have the Italian mafia in the series for that). They are real humans who went through the hell of Afghan in the 80s, then making their way in the rough and tumble underworld.
P.S. Just to point out a technical error. It is not a semi-automatic rifle that Gretel is toting, but a fully automatic General Purpose Machine Gun (GPMG). I wonder what those twins are eating to lift that monster of a gun and fire from the hip/shoulder. =)
Neolistic: I’m hoping we see more of the Moscow crowd later on in the season – it’s missing the character study of the main cast that endeared the first season to me. I was under the impression that the gun the twins are using is a vintage Browning semi (according to the ANN trivia page, anyway) but I’m no expert on such things!
Yeah, the scenes with these two were kinda “i wanna puke” kind of scenes.
But when you got to know their story you feelt sorry for them. But with that kind of history, there is no way that they can adapt to a normal social life. So I do find that the ending is the best possible.
And I do wonder what Rock saw there… which made him run out of the room and start throwing up.
My opinion on Black Lagoon is a litlte mixed. It’s a fun series all right. I found some arcs distateful though, including the vampire twins and the maid. Although there were poignant moments, the kind of ones that skip my heart. My favourite episode has to be 7, simply brilliant. All the more powerful because I didn’t expect that kind of intelligence and emotions. When Rock and Revy shared their cigarette lights, it was sublime. I also loved Balalaika and her past, the alternate paths she could’ve took, the choices she made, and how it transformed her from that sweet little girl to um, you know what she is now -__-. Didn’t really like the last arc though with samurai guy.
Is it sick when I say I enjoyed the whole arc heartfully and wished those two would survive, thus so even kill Balalaika?
No really, this was a bitter arc from a bitter fate, and I really wished they would somehow get out of it all, but seeing how they behaved until then I knew it is impossible – even more so for them to actually get sane again.
Still, that was really something.