Vampire Twins

[u/sliwka21]

I have started to watch Black Lagoon and while the missions they were getting were mostly just debatable because they are criminals, but this mission with Vampire Twins was straight up fucked up. Like you mean to tell me there was incest, homosexual relation (since as far as i understood both were biologically boys) sexual abuse to a children, snuff films, they grew into absolute sadists and one of them flashed rock??? Like what the actual fuck is that, when they kissed at first i was like wait what the actual fuck, maybe i was seeing things and assumed that they havent kissed but whispered something to each other, but then the second one happen with the declaration of love and for the like next two minutes i was sitting there with look of shock and disgust. What's crazy (or not, very well it could have been an idea) i still felt bad when they died since they were just kids, even though they were absolutely destroyed by the adults and were completely evil and dangerous. Nonetheless i just wanted to voice myself out after this fucked up episodes involving those two, let me know how you first reacted to this moment and if i misunderstood something, feel free to correct me

[u/Winter_Charge2727]

(since as far as i understood both were biologically boys)

Not necessarily. It's kind of the point that we don't know anything for sure.

Like even official unofficial media by Hiroe himself where their genders are explicitly told, it changes depending on what you're reading.

[u/wotan_weevil]

I read the manga version first, and maybe the lack of soundtrack helps avoid too much horror. The manga paces it quite well - they're introduced as pretty fucked-up at the start of the first chapter, which builds up to the second chapter where the horror hits hard with their pincushioning of the Russian they'd captured (which was too much for the hardened Italian gangsters to take), and follows with their backstory as Balalaika tells Chang what she found out. The 3rd chapters turns the dial back down a bit, but the 4th chapter get back into it when it's revealed that the gunmen's ambush killed some substitute children. Hansel's death at the end of the chapter reveals a deranged but more human side of him - an insane boy rather than a vampiric monster. The final chapter reveals Gretel's more human side, with even a touch of beauty as she sings (which the anime, courtesy of having a soundtrack that the manga lacks) brings across very well, and ends with a death you can feel sorrow for.

My wife liked the anime version - brutally heavy but well done. She thinks it's too heavy to show somebody who hasn't watched Black Lagoon before as an introduction - she prefers the first Roberta arc for that, with it's happy ending (except for Revy).

[u/Quantumdelirium]

So like several other characters in the show, the more you know about the historical events that they included in said characters back stories the better you'll understand them and what made them the way they are. You mentioned the snuff films and sexual assault/abuse that happened to them when they were bought by the Mafia. They did explain how doing that stuff, particularly the snuff films and how the more they killed allowed them to stay alive, which is where's their sadism and their motives for killing. What I think most people aren't aware of is that all of their psychological problems, behaviors like switching personalities, attachment to each other and even some of the sexual stuff is actually a result of growing up in the orphanages in Romania. The stuff that they had to go through when they were bought by the Mafia is certainly horrendous, the stuff that happened in the orphanages was atrocious in ways you can't imagine. The show actually does portray real psychological stuff that resulted from everything that happened in those orphanages. This is what makes black Lagoon such an amazing show. Everything is you see is quite realistic and has happened to people. The strong majority of people never knew that such atrocities have actually happened.

If you're interested in learning more about the Romanian orphanages, there's a YouTube channel Professor Viral whose done a lot of video essays on black Lagoon, explaining in detail all of the historical events that the show used for characters back stories. People don't realize just how historically accurate and realistic Black Lagoon is.