Black Lagoon/Headscratchers

• Just to begin with...the Black Lagoon is a World War Two-era PT boat. Those things were largely built out of wood, and were almost all destroyed by a few years after the war was over. How was this one missed? Also, if I were up to various illegal shenanigans, I wouldn't want a vehicle that draws the eye merely by existing---using this vintage collector's item for their illegal errands would be like running drugs in a Cord 812 automobile. Even people who aren't interested in what I'm doing would be interested in the car/boat.
  • Rule of Cool.
  • I'm no expert, but you're remembering the show is set fifteen to twenty years ago now, right? Would they have been anywhere near as noticeable in the 90s?
  • Replaced with armored plates. So perhaps Dutch replaced the entire boat with modern armored steel.
  • Several PT boats were sold off to private entities after the war. I know several went to Iran, some to England, etc. Also, considering that the reason they are rare was that they were all lit on fire by the US Navy, it isn't unreasonable that some of them might have been burned on paper, but actually were sold off to people.
• What language is everybody speaking exactly? I can understand with translation conventions that English or Japanese stands in for whatever the characters are speaking, but it seems like, save for the episodes taking place in Japan, nobody has any problems communicating verbally with one another despite being of different nationalities.
  • Officially they speak English to each other. But most speak in their native tongues around their countrymen.
• It's been over a year. WHERE IS CHAPTER 82?
• To some extent, Black Lagoon Jumped the Shark with the whole "El Baile de la Muerte" arc. Bringing the Killer Meido back to Roanapur...maaaybee. But making her that crazy, and having her take down US Special Forces in the numbers she does? Please. Not that the arc didn't have some good aspects...but still, it dragged on far too long.
  • That arc is pretty much the reason this troper stoped reading Black Lagoon, though I'll probably begin again any time now... But yes, I felt the same way, and I honestly had no idea what was going on aside from "Psycho-maid needs to kill everyone". Seriously, if someone could explain to me what the hell was going on in that arc, please tell me.
    • The somewhat short version is that Roberta's situation serves as the catalyzing agent for a number of Roanapur's latent-yet-constantly-boiling-under-the-surface tensions between criminal factions to hit the very tense edge of a boiling point. Roberta drives herself insane in order for a suicidal chance to take out the US special forces because their bombing of, and meddling in, the affairs of South American drug cartels and FAR Cs resulted in the death of her beloved benefactor. Garcia and Fabiola come to stop her and save both her life and her "Roberta" personality and place in their house. Boss Chang of the Chinese Triads realises that this going down in Roanapur is, both on its own and due to the instability it will cause in the knife-edge balanced environment, going to light up the proverbial powder-keg. Likeise, if Roberta kills the American team IN Roanapur, then the city will face the retribution and armed intervention of the US Government which it has enjoyed freedom from since coming into existence. As seen later, he also wisely realises it will give Balalaika/Hotel Moscow a clandestine chance in the resulting chaos to finally strike out and destroy the incredibly tense armistice that exists between the Russians and the Chinese, who have been battling for years for total dominance in the city. On top of that, the CIA, personified by Eda, is pissed at the Special Forces (specifically "Grey Fox") for stealing and putting their own plans into action in the field, and because they threaten her division's position. Therefor, they attempt to play the field from the background anonymously, helping Chang, Roberta, and Rock. Ah, Rock. He's in the toughest position of them all, because Chang, representing the controlling faction(s) of Roanapur, drafts him to monitor, analyze, and somehow control Garcia, Fabiola, Roberta if possible, and the ENTIRE situation at large in order to make sure that Roanapur doesn't descend into the critical mass meltdown of chaos, anarchy, and self-destruction. It should be noted that neither Chang nor anyone else really thinks Rock is capable of this, and expect to take advantage of the situation in their own ways. Rock spends a long, sleepless, painful time drafting out ALL the possible motivations, interactions, and outcomes of every single choice that the involved parties can make...and then attempts, over the course of the Arc, not so much to control, but to steer, co-opt, predict, and coerce all the involved players such that the entire unholy mess is defused as cleanly as Humanly possible without getting himself or the others killed. For these purposes, other than contacting and controlling all the involved parties, he drafts Revy, Shenhua, Sawyer, and Rotton (as well as workign with Garcia and Fabiola, and later involving Benny and Dutch). Things go sort of according to his plan, which surprises the hell out of a lot of people, continuing the grand tradition of Rock earning a lot of respect points from high places and his fellow workers, whilst forcing Revy to acknowledge he's finding his own place in the "world of darkness" to which she was sure he didn't belong.
    • For what it's worth, the author also admitted that the arc was starting to drag and said he was trying to wrap it up quickly.
    • This is the usual reaction to trying to understand a Gambit Pileup
      • The OVA seems somewhat a saving throw on this as it condenses things down and only leaves what's really needed, it also makes the final battle seem far less lopsided and ridiculous at least in my view. It's a bit hard to be exact, but it seem she only seems to manage to kill maybe four or five of the Spec Ops team while being virtually torn to shreds by them in return. She only lives because they allow it (which is unbelievably charitable given the situation frankly) and we see probably over a dozen guys return unscathed, while she's clearly crippled for life, which is more in keeping with what you'd expect from the setting when one lone badass tries to fight an elite military unit.
• In the end of the OVA, who exactly were the three people at the gates of Lovelace manor?
  • OP here. After giving it some thought, they seem to be the Gray Fox commander and the wife and kid of the Japanese guy whose ghost has been haunting Roberta throughout the series.
• Why does Revy call Balalaika "Big Sis?" It's obviously a translation of Neesan which is often used amoung non-siblings to denote respect, but what was the specific event that made Revy so respectful of her? Conversely, why would Balalaika tolerate it if they don't have some history?
  • Revy and Balalaika are both extremely dangerous women, and they've been shown to respect each other, which is probably why Revy likes her so much that she calls her by a familial nickname (besides the fact that Balalaika's older). Revy is often feared but very few people afford her honest respect, and Balalaika's one of those.
• The Japanese manga shows that the Lovelace patriarch died in Venezuela in 1991 (Which is said in his gravestone), but the North American one said that he died in 1996. What gives? Man I'd like to know which is the truth here?
  • They both are. The English one was probably so delayed they changed the date to keep the ages and dates more realistic.