The Bloodhound of Florencia returns.
So after experiencing the longest, most excruciatingly boring 22 minutes of my life watching K-On!! 13, I decided to watch Black Lagoon. Specifically, the new OVA: Roberta’s Blood Trail.
It’s genuinely an awe inspiring experience, going from something so cute and useless that I can feel my life slip away one frame at a time, to something so bloody and visceral that I feel life is too short to enjoy something like this. Maybe it says something about my psyche, but honestly I don’t care.
Summary
The OVA literally continues from where season 2 left us almost 4 years ago. Well, at least in numbering (episode #25). So everybody’s favourite maid, Roberta (aka the Bloodhound of Florencia) is on a path of revenge for her master’s assassination. Well, he wasn’t the target for the assassination per se, just unlucky to be attending the inaugural meeting of a new political party he happened to be a part of. Anyways, she’s been killing off the conspirators involved in the hit one by one, which has led her to Roanapur. The new young master (kid who was saved in the first season) takes over the family business, but first thing’s first: save Roberta. Obviously someone else has to take up Roberta’s place in her absence, and filling in the shoes of the mad-terminator-maid is a young girl, probably trained by Roberta herself. And just like the actual Bloodhound of Florencia, this young one can bust up a bar pretty nicely as well. Anyways, long story short, the Young Master actually wants Rock to go out and find Roberta and put a stop to her madness.
Thoughts
As the episode began, things moved pretty normally (read: lots of blood and violence), but it wasn’t until the bar showdown scene that I had a grin as big as Revy when shit hit the fan. Besides that one fight sequence, the rest of the OVA was pretty light on action scenes. Yes, there was the usual dosage of dirty politics and social commentary going on, but for the most part, the OVA felt like just a regular episode of Black Lagoon. Heck, I didn’t even notice a jump in animation quality from what Madhouse did back in 2005 & ’06.
Yes, the whole episode nicely set up all the pieces and things progressed at a smooth pace, but the ending just felt like a typical episode cliffhanger. Given the fact that this was only a 27 minutes episode with no obvious jump in visual quality (I saw the ANBU-umai TV Edit release of course) and hardly any story progression, I’m left wondering as to why is this an OVA?! Why not just start season 3 instead? This was the only disappointing thing about the OVA, that it was an OVA. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I loved everything about the episode, but this ain’t no Hellsing Ultimate!
Apart from that, I must say I was really happy to see something from Black Lagoon again. It was like revisiting old friends, catching up with them and seeing that they’re all still up to no good.
I totally love this series, I’ve been waiting for ages since the end of The Second Barrage for the continuation of it. The manga is awesome, but honestly, action this good needs to be animated.
As a side note, I believe it was done as an OVA in part to escape censorship by TV Broadcasters or something.
I doubt censorship would have been any issue, I mean 2nd Barrage had significantly questionable content. This OVA is practically tame compared to the Vampire Twins arc.