The Portrayal of a Woman

I have been taking a break from normal everyday life and this has allowed me to watch a ton of Anime and I want to talk to you about one Anime, specifically Black Lagoon. The Anime is about a small group of (Mediterranean?) Pirates in the modern day sailing the seas on the good ship "Black Lagoon" and taking jobs from various criminal outfits, these jobs inevitably lead the crew into danger which they then swiftly get out of by way of a lot of guns and explosives and innocent people dying in horrible ways and it's all very silly and done in good fun...

Except that isn't what it's about!

The show is in fact about this woman; Rebecca, often shortened to "Revy" by her crew mates and is also known by her nickname/alias "Two-Hands" on account of having two hands to fire her massive guns with. The character is bloodthirsty and vicious, she is shown to be the strongest of the "Black Lagoon" crew, at least with firearms. Multiple times in the show she is shown to go into a trance like state during her rampages thus allowing her to kill more people, more effectively. She isn't a complete monster though and does show a sensitive side occasionally. She is a decent character, one that I'm interested in and want to see developed further, decent company and looks amazing in her action scenes, she is the sort of character that feminists would look at and say "That was developed as a character not as an object" to. However there is a slight problem...

This one shot. I hate this one shot, it appears in the shows opening sequence so it is in every single episode of Black Lagoon. Revy is shown in provocative ways in the series, I'm not for that but I can also ignore it, additionally in those cases it is only the camera that is the pervert, placed by the "male gaze" as it were. But in this shot Revy's character is undermined, the Revy that is shown onscreen is not the Revy here. You would never find Revy writing "You" on her face unless it is in someone elses blood, you wouldn't find Revy in that pose unless she was pointing a gun at someone's head and above all else you would never ever find Revy poking her tongue out like that. It is offensive to the character. I may not like male directed camera placement, but at least that's over in a few seconds and very rarely affects the character being portrayed. Here, I have to see this shot every single episode and it really annoys me!