Black Lagoon/YMMV

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• Arc Fatigue: The El Baile de la Muerte arc. It lasted three and a half years and was comprised of so many Xanatos Gambits that even fans were getting confused and frustrated at the end. Even the author admitted the arc was dragging.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Just who is Eda, really? Is she a goofy, so-called nun who only occasionally who takes her job as a CIA agent seriously? Or is she really a cold, domineering mastermind whose appearance to others is merely a convincing deception? Whatever it is, she's definitely not who she appears to be.
  • Balalaika. Just Balalaika.
• Complete Monster: Chaka from the "Fujiyama Gangster Paradise" arc. He makes the neo-Nazis look like fine upstanding citizens by comparison.
• Creepy Awesome Hansel and Gretel
• Crowning Music of Awesome: The title song, Red Fraction. Gratuitous English Word Salad lyrics or not, it's awesome.
  • The closing theme to Roberta's Blood Trail (OVA 1 at least, is the only one out by the time of this edit) is an awesome rendition of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," played over images of Rock, Balalaika, and Mr. Chang's early childhoods. May double as an Ear Worm.
  • Revy seems to have good taste in pump-up music, putting Peach Headz Addiction into her walkman before taking down Luac and his crew, and blasting "Guitar Wolf" on the radio while Rock is driving her and Ginji to the Bowling Alley where Chaka and his men have holed up.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Roberta.
  • Hansel and Gretel has a decent fanbase despite only appearing in three episodes.
• Evil Is Sexy: Balalaika is hot. Revy is hot. Shenhua is hot. Eda is hot. All of the main female characters are, to some degree, evil (as is everybody else in this series). And they are hot.
• Fridge Brilliance: The omakes have two:
  • After Hansel and Gretel traumatize Garcia with torture and sexual advances, Garcia is left crying about something called Marathon Man. Marathon Man has a well known torture scene in it.
  • Dutch's past isn't what it seems, which makes him running out of the omake where everyone's de-aged make more sense.
• Genius Bonus: Black Lagoon can be said to be made of these, containing varying references to languages, firearms, music (From Rob Zombie to Creedence Clearwater Revival) and quite a few about Westerns like The Wild Bunch (one of the characters in which was called "Dutch"...). It also contains a surprising amount of philosophy; themes such as Sartre's existensialism, consequence ethics, nihilism, phenomenalism, and Kierkegaard's "knight of faith" are openly discussed by characters (if not using those exact words).
  • As an example, take the firefight in the Yellow Flag which serves as Fabiola's introduction. Halfway through the fight, she throws away her right-hand handgun and breaks out a China Lake 40mm grenade launcher, an exotic weapon which even the denizens of Roanapur don't recognize (witness Revy's reaction). A little research shows that the China Lake holds a maximum of four grenades, and Fabiola doesn't seem to have a spare mag ready to hand. Alert readers will notice that Fabiola launches all four grenades during the fight. When she cocks the launcher again to threaten Gustavo, she's bluffing - she's out of ammo. It partly explains why she needs a stiff drink, and why her knees give out a little later.
• Magnificent Bastard: Balalaika, Chang and Rock.
  • Eda shows signs of this trope on occasions, and through Character Development even Revy starts to have her moments.
• Memetic Mutation: Amen, hallelujah and peanut butter.
  • From the previous scene: "You got FUCKED!"
• Moe: Young Balalaika. Hansel and Gretel. Garcia and Roberta. And Fabiola.
• Narm: Potentially lapses into this whenever Revy decides to go on a philosophical rant.
• Nightmare Fuel: Hansel and Gretel, creepy even by this show's standards. Some of the more...creative deaths can have this effect on people as well.
• The Scrappy: Chaka made number one on a poll of "worst characters" in the manga. Yukio was also on this list.
• Selfish Evil: Most characters in the series are casually mass-murdering, torturing, heavy drugs&weaponry-smuggling, meat-slavery-running, etc, Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids JerkAsses or NietzscheWannabes. It's such a thoroughly amoral Crapsack World Failure Is the Only Option Trauma Conga Line ensemble, environment, and tone to the show that there is very little whatsoever available in the way of morality, conscience, hope, idealism, or compassion. The closest approximation might be the point-of-view main male protagonist.
• Tear Jerker: The last third of episode 15. Oh God. Also, Episode 24, though maybe not as much.
  • Hansel and Gretel's deaths are some of the most heartbreaking deaths for such fucked-up villains, ever.
• What an Idiot!: Chaka. He KNOWS that Revy's a gunslinger, from a town reknowned for its toughness all over Asia...so, to attract her attention, he abuses and mistreats the man she's protecting, hoping to get her to draw her gun. Not to mention his treatment of Yukio, who has a badass protector of her own in Ginji Matsuzaki.
• The Woobie: Garcia, Yukio.
  • Iron Woobie: Rock, Roberta
    • Jerkass Woobie: Hansel & Gretel, Revy, Balalaika. Ibraha from the "Lock and Load Revolution" arc also counts.