Black Lagoon: The Second Barrage

Name: Black Lagoon: The Second Barrage
Genre: Action
Released: 2006-10-03

BLACK LAGOON The Second Barrage

8.2(343,660)

MAL Score

Ranked #476

Popularity #435

Action
Adult Cast
Organized Crime

Episodes: 12
Duration: 23 min per ep
Aired: Oct 3, 2006 to Dec 19, 2006
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

Rokurou “Rock” Okajima now works with the Lagoon Company, a pirate-for-hire outfit based in Roanapur, Thailand. What began as reluctant involvement has turned into a new life in a grim port city ruled by hardened criminals and corruption—far removed from the routines of his former salaryman days.

With only his clothes, his conscience, and little else left from his past, Rock takes on dangerous jobs alongside the rest of the Lagoon crew. Constantly criticized for hesitating in a world that rewards ruthlessness, he’s pushed to choose between adapting to Roanapur’s violent underworld or risking everything to reclaim his freedom—either path poised to affect the people who took him in.

Otaku Consensus

The Second Barrage is the season where Black Lagoon’s crime-cinema swagger hardens into character drama: Sunao Katabuchi’s direction keeps the gunplay sharp, while the writing gives more weight to relationships, backstory, and Roanapur’s moral rot. Critics and fans consistently praise its Hollywood-inflected attitude, mature adult cast, and especially the darker Yakuza-centered material, with the main recurring criticism being that the series still favors arc-based impact over a single overarching narrative.

Why You Should Watch

Watch The Second Barrage if you want anime crime fiction with adult consequences, not shounen escalation: gunfights are staged like pulp cinema, but the real hook is how each job exposes a different layer of organized crime culture. It scratches the same itch as Cowboy Bebop’s cool professionalism and Hellsing Ultimate’s violent bravado, but trades supernatural spectacle for mafia, triad, pirate, assassin, and yakuza power games. This is especially strong for viewers who like morally compromised casts, English-language action-movie attitude, and dialogue that lets characters clash over ethics instead of pausing for speeches about friendship. The dub has a strong fan reputation, the sub is also respected, and the follow-up OVAs are widely treated as essential viewing.

Key Characters

R
Rock Okajima
Rock remains compelling because he is not physically dominant in a cast of killers, making his conscience, negotiation skills, and adaptability the series’ most volatile weapons.
R
Revy
Revy is the fan-defining face of Black Lagoon’s violence: a tomboy gunfighter whose charisma comes from how naturally she turns anger, instinct, and professional skill into intimidation.
B
Balalaika
Balalaika stands out as the series’ model of organized-crime authority, projecting command less through theatrics than through disciplined menace and strategic patience.
D
Dutch
Dutch gives the Lagoon Company its professional center, balancing criminal pragmatism with the kind of calm leadership that makes the crew feel like a working outfit rather than a loose gang.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
Madhouse’s production leans into a Hollywood action grammar: hard cuts, gun-metal staging, and confrontations built around attitude as much as choreography, a quality repeatedly singled out in reviews of the series.
2
Sunao Katabuchi’s direction keeps the season structurally arc-driven rather than quest-driven, which lets each criminal faction feel like a different test of the cast’s values instead of another step in a conventional plot ladder.
3
The Second Barrage broadens the underworld beyond generic gang warfare by foregrounding mafia, triads, yakuza, assassins, pirates, and adult mercenaries, matching the high-percentage AniList tags rather than using crime as mere backdrop.
4
Reviewers note that the writing deepens the character relationships and adds more backstory compared with the first season, making this cour feel less like a repeat of the original formula and more like its escalation.
5
The English dub has an unusually strong reputation among fans for this type of series, with community recommendations often placing it alongside the Japanese track rather than treating it as a compromise.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: The Second Barrage aired as a compact 12-episode cour from October 3 to December 19, 2006, the same year Madhouse was also associated in fan conversation with high-profile titles such as Nana and Hellsing Ultimate.
Fun fact 2: Rei Hiroe created the original manga, while Sunao Katabuchi directed the anime adaptation at Madhouse, giving the series a notable pairing of seinen crime source material and prestige studio execution.
Fun fact 3: One critic notes that Black Lagoon was redone for its DVD release, with the DVD version described as more detailed and the characters looking more like actual people than in the broadcast version.
Fun fact 4: The opening theme performance is credited to MELL, while EDISON is credited in the research data for both music and the first ending theme performance.
Fun fact 5: The production credits include Hideki Okamoto as episode director for episode 7, with Kei Tsuchiya and Manabu Akita listed among the key animators.