Balalaika is the Perfect Strong Female Character: Part 1
Thereâs a reason I used the softest portrait of Balalaika for his essay that I could find: for all the talk of what a âbadassâ she is, she owns her femininity. She neither plays up her sexuality as a âvixenâ nor downplays it as a âtomboy.â She wears her hair long because she wants to, and it doesnât get in the way. She has long, well-manicured nails because she wants to have them, and they donât get in the way. Anyone who makes the mistake of making assumptions about her sensitivities as a woman quickly finds out that sheâŠthinks itâs completely irrelevant.
In essence, I think thatâs whatâs great about Balalaika as a female character: she just is who she is. She values her objectives above anything else. She doesnât try to prove anything to anybody, because she stays so focused that she doesnât have to.Â
Plenty of people call her âfry faceâ or âthat Ruski bitchâ behind her back, but never to her face. Thatâs not because they think sheâll take personal offense, or even that one of her male subordinates will kill them to âdefend her honor.â Itâs purely because if youâre the type of person who would say that, youâre on unfriendly terms with her. If youâre on unfriendly terms and you see her or one of her subordinates face to face, youâre already dead. Nothing she does is ever completely personal. She is ruthless, but never malicious or spiteful.Â
Thatâs not to say that sheâs emotionally flat pragmatist robot. She clearly has a rich inner life. She often feels compassion for her enemies, and has real friendships with outsiders like the members of the Lagoon Company. In keeping with such complexity, sheâs not opposed to random acts of kindness.Â
The same woman who got discharged from the Russian military for saving a child in Afghanistan hereâŠ
Is the same woman who looks a child assassin (who tortured one of her subordinates to death) in the eye as she has her snipers shoot them in the leg. The show doesnât show it in real time, of course, but apparently it takes him several minutes to slowly bleeds to death in the clip below. In both cases she did what she did because it would be âshamefulâ to do otherwise in a way that has nothing to do with her sex or gender.Â
Itâs no wonder the subordinate in question that the child murdered cried out for his âCapitĂĄnâ until his last agonizing, grizzly final breath.Â
Balalaika deeply respects and cares for her subordinates as much as hey respect and care for her. That becomes very apparent towards the end of the clip when she converses with the snipers who shot the boy about how emotionally difficult the entire ordeal was. If you donât have the stomach to watch, Iâll spoil it for you now: itâs her right hand man who says âthat was hard to watch.â Balalaika sincerely apologizes.Â
There wasnât a single moment of the scene in which she felt good about any of it.She simply calculated that such a method was absolutely necessary to honor the dead and maintain the reputation of Hotel Moscow, the crime syndicate that quite literally keeps Roanapur from collapsing in upon itself.
There are several moments throughout the series and OVA in which Balalaika seems outwardly calm and collected in moments of emotional turmoil. She will  will freely admit to feeling grief, regret, and/or hesitation about a ruthless action she has taken or is about to take. However, Rei Hiroe has written her win a way that never lets you think for even a second that sheâs afraid to cry or express her emotions, and it is glorious!
Balalaika is so pragmatic at her core that she is more inclined to kill a rival mafia boss because their men are generally unruly rather than of any real threat they pose to her operation. She says as much to her right hand man while observing a yakuza beating Rock in an attempt to get attention from Revy. Her ire is raised not by the attack on her ally: she simply cannot stand to see âsoldiersâ misbehave. Both she and Sergeant Bosco (her right hand) say they wish they could wipe out the entire yakuza based on that unruly scene alone. Of course, no action is taken. She remarks upon it and moves on so as not to compromise her larger objective.Â
I wouldnât rule out possibility that she âbreaks down and lets it all outâ in private, and it certainly wouldnât change my opinion of her. Given her position as the head of Hotel Moscow (and the most powerful person in all of Roanapur), those private moments are so few and far between that we never get to see them on the page or screen. Alternatively, she may be one of those people who doesnât express sorrow with tears. Either way, you never get the sense that sheâs struggling to âkeep it together,â Â in public, even when we know she feels emotionally devastated. That has nothing to do with being a woman: it has everything to do with being a good leader.
Unlike Berserkâs Casca, with her frequent emotional breakdowns on the battlefield over her commander/love interest, in front of her male subordinates, that gets men killed on more than one occasionâŠnobody feels the need to baby or defend Balalaikaâs her. They respect her. They donât treasure her as âtheir only flower.â (Sorry Judeau, but that line makes me cringe every time.)
Carefully observe the body language and positions of Balalaika and her subordinates carefully in this short clip.
She leads her men into battle. No henchman is ordered to handle the man whoâs been running around town calling her a âfry faced Rutsky bitch,â and plotting to assassinate her. No subordinate dares to insult her by trying to handle the man himself. She doesnât need them to because she can hold her own physically and mentally in a fight as well as any of her subordinates.Â
If you pay attention to the overall context of the scene, it becomes clear that she didnât come down there to kill him personally because she was offended by what he said about her. She felt it was necessary to maintain her relationship with Dutch and the Lagoon Company: a critical neutral party in her territory that she canât afford to alienate. Balalaika is a very good friend to have indeed.
Sheâs a true leader that knows itâs her duty to protect and maintain order amongst her subordinates and the territory that she calls her own. In a better world, that would be the gold standard for leadership regardless of the sex or gender identity of the leader.Â
Thatâs why I call her The True Goddess of War.âą
Originally posted by warriormonk-devildog
NOTE: I titled this âpart 1âł because thereâs a lot more I want to write about her as a character. This started out as a much longer essay, but I decided to break things up for the sake of clarity and readability. Expect more Balalaika worship in the days and weeks to come. ^_~
Screencap source: Apres Moi Balalaika tribute AMV.
Special thanks to @opinionatedashellblog, @odilekuronuma (who wrote 2 of the 3 Casca analyses I linked to above) and @murasakihime. I wouldnât have been inspired to write about any of the female characters I have from Black Lagoon thus far if it werenât for you.
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