BLAME! Manga-anime | Permalink

BLAME! appeared a few years before the 21st century, from Tsutomu Nihei, a mangaka who studied architecture, to introduce a different perspective towards the cyberpunk culture of today's (or the previous century) wired and computerized society.

BLAME!, spelt as bu-ra-mu in japanese (probably a translation mistake, as bu-ra-mu (bulamu!) imitates the blast from a gun. Therefore BLAM! would be the correct translation.), is set far, far away in the future, in a planet Earth (I guess) covered up by hundreds of thousands of concrete and metal jungles where different non-human, human, humanoid and computerized beings live connected to some sort of network called the Netsphere, which only a few can use, and try to survive ambush attacks from Safeguards, humanoid-cyborg beings that try to destroy any human (pure human) being, as some of those remaining humans contain a gene, a net terminal gene, that allows them to enter and use the Netsphere to restore peace.

The whole planet is a single city, called the Megastructure. It is probably more than 3000 levels tall, more than 200,00 km of distance from the deepest level to the surphace. The city is mainly just concrete, metal, tubes and cables, layered out throughout corridors, walls and empty rooms. There is no vegetation, and probably no water in the deepest levels. Just darkness, fear and death, mostly.

It is a very dark world. Nothing from the past world, geography, remains. Just buildings over buildings over buildings. Ocassionaly, anybody might find empty rooms or spaces, which can be more than 10,000 km wide, where things are being built or destroyed by builders, robots that only live to build.

The main plot evolves around a human, suprisingly, called Killy (ki-ri in japanese). He is given the task to find the net terminal genes to restore peace, but the world is big and dangerous. He must first fight cyborgs and safeguards, asociate with primitive, modern and lonely societies, and climb up to the top of the Megastructure to find them, but it is not an easy task. In the way, he comes across a rotten human being, which, strangely, seems very alive and can connect to the internet to hack. As the rotten human being firstly began to help Killy, it restored its original body, which was laying around it, and became a white haired woman called Cibo, a bio-engineer and scientist. Killy uses a small gun, which can seem harmless, but creates holes dozens of kilometers long through the megastructure.

The manga is held in 10 volumes. The drawing and art is incredible, not only with the character's poses and astonishing blank and tired faces, but the buildings and scenery themselves are wonderful. That is Nihei's signature, incredible buildings with awesome complexity.

The battles the story includes are incredible too, although you can always expect the same things to happen. There are always dismemberments, blood flying everywhere, bullets, blades, and foreign events that always stop them. Still, they are breathtaking and fast, so fast that pages fly by as you read without stopping.

I really recommend it, if you are a cyberpunk person or a sci-fi fan. It took me a while to localize the manga out there, but there are always a few ways and methods to get the scans or books.

There is also an anime based on the manga, although the story isn't that great, because it takes separate parts from the manga to fuse them into a surreal anime experience. Muffled explosions, weird basses, high pitched sounds and surreal animation is what makes BLAME!, the anime series, another alternative to those who haven't read the manga. But I don't recommend it, because it is pointless unless you read the manga!

If you have read the manga, or have seen the series, I would like you to post a comment, to express what you think of the manga/anime. I don't know if there are enough people out there that have read the manga or watched the series, specially english-speaking people.

Hint: you can watch the anime series on Youtube.com, just make sure you have great earphones/speakers to hear the weird ambience that hums in the anime's scenes.

Have fun!
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