Black Lagoon Roberta's Blood Trail

Title:Black Lagoon Roberta's Blood Trail
ブラック・ラグーン (Japanese)
Overall:Rent
Keywords: , , , , , , , ,
Notables: Animation - Madhouse
R1 License - FUNimation
The assassination of the head of the Lovelace family in Venezuela sets his maid, a former terrorist named Roberta, on a bloodthirsty quest for revenge at any cost. The search for the culprits leads her to Roanapur, causing a massive commotion in Thailand. Garcia, heir of the Lovelace legacy and someone who regards Roberta as a precious family member, also travels to Roanapur and wants to make a deal with the Lagoon Company.

A five episode OVA to be released starting in July 2010.

Spin-off of Black Lagoon - Part 1 and Part 2
OverallArtAnimationCharacter Design MusicSeries StoryEpisode StoryReviewer
Rent 10 10 9 8 8 7 Ggultra2764 [series:2332#1552]
With this OAV series being focused around Black Lagoon's El Baile De La Muerte arc from the manga, the return of Roberta in crazed revenge easily had the potential at creating the best material to be seen from the series thus far. For four out of five episodes, the series does well at delivering its stuff. Roberta's carnage that she tore throughout Ronapour in the show's first season was but a small sample of how crazed she could be in committing to what she considers a just cause. Here in Blood Trail, the death of her elder master causes her to snap and each appearance of her onscreen does well at depicting how crazed the woman had become, especially as she becomes more mentally unstable as events press on throughout the series. The woman brings her crazed revenge to the streets of Ronapour which does more than enough to make the middle section of Black Lagoon enough of a treat as she clashes with the American military, Ronapour's resident thugs and even some creatures from her past before becoming the Lovelace family maid.

Roberta doesn't get all the focus of this OAV as a few prominent characters also get their focus in the form of Rock, Roberta's young master Garcia and new character Fabiola Iglesias. The role of the three characters throughout Blood Trail is trying to prevent a tragic outcome involving Roberta, though each have differing motivations for their actions. Rock finds himself internally struggling throughout the series over how to avert another tragedy in Ronapour like what happened with those he met during the second season of the series while clearly realizing just how deep he has fallen into the snares of Ronapour's criminal activity. Garcia and Fabiola, being personal confidants of Roberta, are trying to make sure she is still alive despite being used by others within Ronapour in dealing with the Terminator maid and Garcia finding himself wondering how he can save Roberta from her mental instability towards the later half of the series.

The title's biggest weakness which keeps me from wanting to give it a Buy clearly comes from its final episode. With pacing seeming a bit rushed, some inconsistent developments involving Roberta and a confusing resolution concerning Roberta's fate, this episode could get fans fuming with how Black Lagoon's woman of war seemingly gets humbled by the events of this sloppy finale, especially with how different the events were laid out in the manga.

On the visual end, Black Lagoon takes its well-detailed environments and character designs plus fluid, intense actions scenes from the first two seasons and takes things up a notch with the OAV animation budget. There are plenty of insane, fluid action scenes to get out of this season kudos to Roberta shaking things up and the quality of settings and character designs are noticeably up a notch with more defined and clean details. The show's soundtrack retains the high-octane musical selections of the first two seasons, including a remixed version of the Red Fraction OP used for the first two TV seasons.

Overall, Roberta's Blood Trail mostly delivers with offering a good amount of the best material you can expect out of the Black Lagoon franchise to date with its intense action scenes and focus on multiple characters effected by Roberta's actions. The subpar final episode of the series does kill its overall quality to a degree, though what is offered by the earlier four episodes is enough for me to give Roberta's Blood Trail a strong Rent recommendation.

Last updated Friday, July 15 2011. Created Friday, July 15 2011.
Unevaluated Jan-Chan [series:2332#967]
YEP!! The first episode of this OVA has lost none of the verve and violence of the original series.

Last updated Sunday, July 18 2010. Created Saturday, July 17 2010.

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