This year I watched several really good anime about some people who, from the point of view of the law, are themselves not so good. Throughout the year I managed to take in the Space Adventure Cobra TV series, Lupin III: Bye Bye Liberty Crisis (among other Lupin shows) and the entirety of Black Lagoon. These shows feature a space pirate, international thief and violent hit-woman, respectively . I had a highly enjoyable time with this group of ruffians. They provided me with quite a few memorable moments.
Cobra has some sweet villains, the standout being the early-series antagonist, Crystal Boy (Bowie?). The transparent-skinned, golden skeleton-ed, menacing foe looks cooler in the Cobra movie, but he is still pretty awesomely evil in the TV show. Cobra‘s second arc has him working undercover on a drug bust by playing (professionally) some crazy hybrid of (American) football, baseball and MMA. Yup, the shows becomes sort of a sports anime. Also, there are swords with talking faces and a robot chicken that reverses time.
Bye Bye Liberty Crisis is directed by my personal favorite anime director Osamu Dezaki. His Lupin movie isn’t as good as Hayao Miyazaki’s, but it does offer up its fair share of memorable moments. Probably the most enduring image of the film is that moment when about a thousand jeeps parachute out of the sky, all for the sake of hunting down one guy, Lupin. Shit is unexpected and ridiculous.
Black Lagoon. Now, Miss Revy isn’t exactly as witty or charming as those other two fellows mentioned above, but she is as memorable of a character, if not more so. Real talk: her back story may be a wee bit cliche, and if a dude had a similar one I wouldn’t be as into his character. However, (a) Revy is not a dude, she is a hot lady; ergo I am more interested (b) though her back story may not be original, it is still compelling because unfortunately, a lot of it actually happens to (too) many young girls (c) the places they take Revy’s character as a result of her past are pretty bold places to take a protagonist. The unrefined and unhinged nature of Revy only adds to my interest in and attraction to her character. Theron Martin is cray.
Oh yeah, she and the Lagoon crew also get in a lot of cool gunfights with the likes of nuns, maids and vampires.
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