Black Lagoon is a cult favorite for a reason. Set in the fictional Thai port city of Roanapur, the series follows the Lagoon Company, a mercenary crew that runs jobs for basically every criminal organization operating in the region: yakuza, triads, Russian mafia, Italian mafia, cartels, and anyone else willing to pay. The story begins with Rokuro Okajima, a Japanese salaryman who’s kidnapped by the Lagoon Company during a job and eventually joins them under the name Rock. From there, the show becomes a stylized, bloody, and deeply cynical crime thriller about what it means to survive in a place where the law has already lost.

Creator Rei Hiroe cites John Woo, Quentin Tarantino, and James Ellroy as influences, and it shows — in the gunfights, the dialogue, the grimy noir atmosphere. But Black Lagoon works because it’s more than slick crime-action. Its characters are shaped by war, trafficking, colonialism, religious hypocrisy, and violence they can’t outrun. The female characters in particular — Revy, Balalaika, Roberta, Eda — aren’t “badass female characters” dropped into a male crime story. They are the story. Black Lagoon rarely makes the safest all-time anime lists, but that’s why it belongs here. The style is obvious, but the substance is easy to miss.