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Black Lagoon is an action manga that was adapted into two 12 episode seasons and a 5 episode ova. The two seasons might as well be one since they both aired in 2006 and even have the same op and ed. The ova aired in 2010. It's about a Japanese salary man who is kidnapped by and then joins a group of pirates operating in south east asia after being left for dead by his company superiors. Despite now being a pirate, he retains the appearance and morality of a normal salary man.
The first problem I had was that nothing the characters do feels important. They do stuff for money and that's basically their entire motivation. This would be fine if character interaction and development took center stage, but it kind of doesn't either. Most of the run time is taken up by action scenes or discussing gang politics. Here's another thing, Rock, the mc, doesn't fight. It's kind of a problem when your main character can't engage with what takes up most of the run time.
As the series progresses, less time is spent on random jobs Black Lagoon takes on, and more on longer, complicated plots that involve the various syndicates in the crime ridden city setting. This both leaves less time for the main characters to interact and is hard to care about because everyone and every group is made up of awful people with meaningless, petty goals. There also isn't any "filler" between arcs, episodes where the characters can interact in more casual, mundane situations.
Revvy serves as the main source of fan service and might as well be the actual main character since we constantly see her going around killing people. If you watched nothing but the op, any person would guess that she's the main character. Rock, Benny(the computer guy) and even Dutch(the ship captain) take a back-seat to her and even seem to diminish in importance as the series progresses. A few times during the series, Benny calls Rock a friend, and I thought that was pretty unearned considering how little we've seen them doing stuff together and talking. I'm not sure whether the source material or anime is at fault.
When I first started watching the series, I thought Rock's salary man skills would somehow end up being extremely useful, like in an isekai, and he would eventually confront his old bosses
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