The seas of Southeast Asia can be a perilous place, especially with the likes of the mercenary PT boat The Black Lagoon - manned by Dutch, Revy and Benny - roaming the high seas. The Lagoon Company are not the sort of people that you would want to mess with and certainly not the sort of people that meek and mild company man Rokuro Okajima thought he would end up joining. But, having been hunted by his employers, Rok has no option except to join the privateers...

Black Lagoon: Barrage 2 - Volume 3 represents the end of Black Lagoon for the present with the final four episodes, Two Father’s Little Soldier Girl, The Dark Tower, Snow White's Payback and The Gunslingers. Within these four episodes we have finally come to the face-off between the Russian and Japanese Mafia’s, with our own favourite privateers caught in the middle. As each episode passes, the action is cranked up to ludicrous heights.

Although the show has had its fair share of violent action and skimpy clothing, if you dig a little bit deeper you discover that all along the show has also been exploring various philosophical and religious themes, primarily existentialism as put forward by Jean Paul Satre. The central position of which is that life lacks meaning and it is up to the individual to create meaning. A good example of this would be a photograph: to one person it’s just another image, to another it is a picture of a lost loved one. It is not the picture which has intrinsic meaning.

Within the context of the show Rok, especially, has to assign meaning to the actions of those around him, in order to make a choice about who to side with. With meaning comes responsibility, a second tenet of existentialism and this ability to take personal responsibility for your actions is a theme which runs through the whole show.

The disc continues to present a very clear image, it’s just a shame that such an action orientated show only provides an English or Japanese Dolby 2.0 audio track, with subtitles. Extras on this last disc are a bunch of trailers for other shows, a trend which is increasing as the credit crunch bites and the smaller distributors try to keep costs down. Expect a lot more bare bones discs in the future.

What we finally have here is an anime which is not afraid to have something to say wrapped up in uber-violence and a great script.

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Charles Packer