Back when I started curating Anime.About.com, one of the first feature articles I put together was a four-parter which involved a number of anime at different "course levels." An anime that required no understanding of Japanese culture or Japan to begin with was a "100-level" anime. Another that was still easy to get into but would be best appreciated with a little foreknowledge was a "200-level" anime. A show pitched mainly for Japanese audiences, or which one wasn't likely to find accessible unless you were already steeped in the tropes and quirks of anime generally was a "300-level" anime. (I later refined the categories a little, but the basic concept remains intact.)
For the average adult (most likely male) Western audience member, Black Lagoon actually isn't difficult to get into at all—provided they don’t mind being dropped into the middle of the most violent, raunchiest, most foul-mouthed, cynically-scripted story this side of, well, every 1980s-era Chow Yun-Fat action vehicle and every 1990s Michael Bay production. Black Lagoon was created in homage to and for the audiences of exactly those things, and like a lot of anime itself, you either eat this stuff up or you run like hell.
But if Black Lagoon the anime is like that, it's only because Black Lagoon the manga, the source material—which started hitting shelves in 2002—is also like that. Form is merely following function, and Black Lagoon's function is to dance right on the line between being entertaining and being repugnant.
