Speak Softly & Carry a Gravitational Beam Emitter: Blame! & Its Long Anime Journey

Tsutomu Nihei is probably one of the most unique mangaka out there, and a lot of has to do with what he was originally doing prior to entering manga. Namely, Nihei originally had planned to work in construction, & even attended the Parsons School of Design in New York, but it's that very experience that eventually allowed his debut work to become one of the most striking manga ever, visually. That manga is Blame! (technically pronounced "Blam!", but screw it), which ran from 1997 to 2003 in Kodansha's Monthly Afternoon magazine for 10 volumes. The manga follows Killy (or "Kyrii", depending on the translation), a silent man who wanders throughout "The City", an immense & ever-growing technological structure that has existed for so long that it has encased not just the Earth & the Moon, but is also indicated later on to have reached as far out as Jupiter's own planetary orbit. Specifically, Killy is looking for a human (amongst the few that still exist), on order from a group called the Authority, who has "Net Terminal Genes", which would allow humans access the Netsphere, which in turn would allow humans to finally put a stop to The City's never-ending expansion, as it's allowed to continue because of a group called the Safeguard, which utilizes killer cyborgs knows as Silicon Creatures.

However, to say that Blame! features traditional storytelling would be a bit of a lie.

Seriously, how exactly does one adapt something like this to anime?

Minus the occasional part where story actually gets the focus, reading Blame! is mostly a visual experience, one where Killy (& sometimes his occasional partner, Cibo), without saying a word, simply traverses various sections of The City, almost all of which are empty & lifeless... yet also absolutely beautiful in their scope, scale, & design. As Jason Thompson stated in his write-up of the manga for ANN back in 2013, it kind of feels like a procedurally-generated dungeon you'd find in a Roguelike, with even the back of every Japanese tankouban describing Blame! as being about "Adventure Seeker Killy in the Cyber Dungeon Quest", and considering how The City is designed to expand it makes perfect sense. However, while this extremely visual style of sequential art storytelling might work well for manga, and even then it's something that just won't work for some, it does result in a bit of a conundrum for animation. That being said, Blame! has seen a handful of anime adaptations ever since the 00s, and true to Nihei's most non-standard debut work, there's a long & interesting journey towards its final destination. So let's go over these anime in the order they were made, and see if any of them manage to capture the desolate & (generally) isolating nature of Blame!.

Cibo gets beheaded in Log 2.
Understandably, Cibo in Log 3 does not approve.

First up is Blame! Ver. 0.11, which originally appeared as an early example of "Original Net Animation", a.k.a. the ONA or "Web Anime". While certainly not the first time an anime was made for internet distribution, as the concept had first made waves with titles like Zaion: I Wish You Were Here & even a Black Jack series that barely anyone knows of, Blame!'s first anime adaptation definitely follows the more experimental feel that early ONAs had at the time. Likely due to the restrictions of general online connectivity at the time of the early 00s (i.e. slower bandwitch, & the like), Blame! Ver. 0.11 is a series of six shorts, each no more than 5-6 minutes long... And each one is handled in a very vague & nondescript fashion, though there is a general plot to each. Log 1: Megastructure is nothing more than visuals of the dead & vacuous environments found within The City, with the amelodic & ambient music emphasizing all of that, before ending on a shot of Killy, all by himself. Log 2: Silicon Creatures showcases an encounter Killy & Cibo have with a pair of Silicon Creature cyborgs, only for Cibo to get her head cut off (I should state that Cibo dies a few times in the manga, & comes back in new forms) & a kamikaze explosion to end things off. Log 3: Netsphere goes back to when Cibo was still a scientist trying to find a way to access to Netsphere without proper Net Terminal Genes, only to activate a Safeguard that blows up the lab she's is. Log 4: Administration Bureau has the Authority inform Cibo & Killy about the "random" expansion of The City, & how they can't simply stop the Safeguard from continuing the expansion, leaving the job to our heroes. Log 5: Killy sees Killy take on an enormous Silicon Creature with the help of Cibo in a new flying suit, though not knowing who Killy is, but while the two escape from more Creatures, with Killy firing his iconic Gravitational Beam Emitter (i.e. a "BFG" housed within a small gun) they come across... a second Cibo, this one knowing who Killy is. Finally, Log 6: Cibo is a simple short which sees Cibo, in yet a new outfit, reports an update after meeting Killy on a cliff side, only to then recall that the two do know each other.

If there's any way to best describe Ver. 0.11, it'd be to compare it to the original Æon Flux shorts that Peter Chung made, specifically "Season 2" from 1992. Each of those shorts were about five minutes long, told a simple & standalone plot in a very loose & avant garde fashion, and always ended with the eponymous Æon dying. Similarly, each Blame! short is roughly the same length, tells its own story in a very avant garde fashion, and Cibo winds up dying a couple of times throughout it all. Meanwhile, Killy himself never speaks a word, with the closest being him smouthing Cibo's name at the end of Log 6, though it's Cibo's voice that's heard saying the name. Also similar to Chung's iconic work, though, this ONA is very stylistic with its animation & honestly still looks really cool & interesting to this day. Directed by Shintaro Inokawa (Demonbane OVA) & animated by Group TAC, each episode takes advantage of purposeful animation limitations to make them unique in & of themselves, with the occasional spurt of smooth animation to help emphasize specific moments, and camera angles & movement are handled in very striking ways. For example, Log 3 features the camera slowly spinning around 720°, while moving laterally to the right, to move from Cibo to a male associate she's talking to, helping illustrate the uncertainty of the situation. Also, while the music by Hiroyuki Onogawa (or Kiyoshi, for Log 3) is generally more ambient than anything, there is a really damn good main theme you hear at the end of Logs 1, 2, 4, & 5; Nihei himself apparently hated the music, though. I'll fully admit that this ONA was actually my introduction to Blame!, but I can also admit that this likely wouldn't really work to get someone interested in the manga. However, I do absolutely recommend it to fans of the manga (as it does loosely adapt scenes from it) or people who just like to watch experimental productions, because this is definitely a really cool one to check out.

In 2003, a little after the manga ended, the entire ONA was released on DVD, now titled Blame! Ver. 0.11: Salvaged disc by Cibo, with the subtitle indicating the main gimmick of the release. Essentially, it acts as though this is a damaged info disc Cibo managed to steal from the Safeguard, as all of the menus are done in the symbol-based language of the Silicon Creatures, most of the options simply result in a "File Corrupted" message that you have to back out of, and there's even a bonus short titled Extra Log: Collapsed Data, which explains things from the perspective of the Silicon Creatures, all in their unique language; text-only, though. Shockingly enough, this ONA actually got licensed & released for North America as a sub-only release by Media Blasters in 2005, though it was priced at $20 MSRP (or $25 as a bundle with an XL t-shirt!), and as of this article has actually not gone up in price at all on the secondhand market; MB even properly subbed the Silicon Creature language in the Extra Log, which is neat.

Following that, we move on to the year 2007, with something even shorter than the ONA! Apparently, Tsutomu Nihei had been trying to get an anime movie adaptation of Blame! for a good while, with Ver. 0.11 supposedly being meant as a sort of pitch in order to find any interested companies, before just becoming an ONA. Well, this next anime adaptation was literally created to get people hyped for a movie adaptation, only for it to go nowhere; oops. Prologue of Blame! (though only titled Blame! in the footage itself) is a pair of super-short OVAs, and by that I mean that each one is shorter than an episode of the ONA; including credits, they're barely four minutes each. Both see Killy fight Silicon Creatures, with the first (essentially adapting from the same chapter as Log 2 of the ONA) ending with him being thrown out into a large open area that he manages to survive, while the second sees him kill one with his GBE, only to then see in the distance Sanakan (or "Sana-kan", depending on the translation), a notable recurring character in the manga. To be perfectly honest, Prologue of Blame! is literally nothing more than a pair of teasers that were sold across two DVDs for a CG-animated movie that never actually got made, mainly due to lead production company Micott & Basara, Inc. going out of business in 2011, which is honestly rather sad in retrospect. While they each do effectively nail the general mood of Nihei's manga, and neither feature any voice work whatsoever, there really isn't anything about either that makes them appealing to watch as anything other than as a pitch. The Ver. 0.11 ONA at least had its experimental nature & slick style to its benefit that have allowed it to age rather well, whereas the Prologue OVAs honestly have aged rather roughly. The CG by Jinni's Animation Studios was merely OK for its time but haven't aged as well as the ONA's digitally-drawn traditional animation, & the music by Yuichi "masa" Nonaka has little to no time to make itself memorable in any way. The fact that these were sold on individual DVDs is just absurd, though each did at least come with a unique figure to help justify whatever price point they original had.

Really, there's nothing else to say about Prologue of Blame!, so let's move on to the next adaptation... Which not only did exactly what this OVA did, but wound up actually being successful in leading to something bigger!

In 2009, after finishing up Biomega for Shueisha's Young Jump, Tsutomu Nihei debuted Knights of Sidonia in Monthly Afternoon, the same magazine Blame! ran in. Unlike his prior manga, Sidonia was a much more straightforward story, detailing the battles between the seeming last remnants of humanity found on the giant starship Sidonia & the aliens known only as the Gauna; it ended in 2015 after 15 volumes, marking his longest manga to date. In 2014, it was announced that a TV anime adaptation was in the works over at GC studio Polygon Pictures, with Netflix later being announced as the exclusive streaming home for it, becoming Netflix's first "original" anime; Sentai Filmworks would later give it a home video release. Tsutomu Nihei wound up really liking what Polygon Pictures did with Knights of Sidonia, and in 2015 a second season, Knights of Sidonia: Battle for Planet Nine, would debut. Where things become relevant to us is with Episode 8 of Season 2, "Reunion", as immediately after the OP sequence ends the episode begins with footage of Killy taking on a Silicon Creature... Only for it to be revealed that Blame! is an in-universe TV series that the residents of Sidonia watch; also, by this point, a giant GBE has been revealed in the actual plot. This 90 seconds of footage, later released on its own online with the title Blame!: The Ancient Terminal City (& included as a bonus feature on the home video release), was pretty much Nihei & Polygon Pictures teasing their intentions achieve the goal that was originally put forth with the Ver. 0.11 ONA: A feature-length Blame! movie.

In November of 2015, a few months after Knights of Sidonia: Battle for Planet Nine finished airing, an all-CG Blame! movie would finally be announced, with Polygon Pictures handling the animation production, Takahiro Sakurai reprising his role of Killy from The Ancient Terminal City, & at San Diego Comic Con 2016 Netflix was confirmed to be the exclusive streaming home for it in 2017; Viz Media would then license the movie for home video release in 2018. So, after well over a decade of Tsutomu Nihei's hopes & dreams continually being crushed, how does the final product fare?

Not really worth including a shot from the movie, as it looks
very similar visually to that of The Ancient Terminal City.

Well, first & foremost, if you're already a fan of the manga, then you have to instantly accept that this is NOT a direct adaptation at all. Rather, the Blame! movie takes the Electrofishers story arc, in which Killy & Cibo help a tribe of humans relocate from their current home to one that's safer from attack by the Safeguard, & re-interprets it into so that it can work as a standalone experience; this is also the most "traditional" story arc in the manga, so it's an obvious part to adapt. For example, in the manga Killy & Cibo are told by a dying Authority cyborg they come across about a sector that operates independently of The City that might house humans. This then leads them to encounter the Electrofishers, who save them from an attack by the Safeguard & lead them to the sector mentioned previously, which Cibo identifies as Toha Heavy Industries, based on the logo found on a wall. The movie, however, starts off with a group of Electrofishers, lead by young girl warrior Zuru, who are out on a hunt for food, only to get attacked by the Safeguard & are rescued by Killy, who only agrees to come with them when he's told of the village they come from, one which is protected by an electric barrier they know nothing of, other than it being impassable by the Safeguard; Cibo is then found later on by everyone as it relates to the plot. The other major change is with Sanakan, who in the manga is first found by Killy & Cibo just prior to meeting the Electrofishers, & her true form later revealed as a giant surprise, whereas her introduction in the movie is a shock reveal that, unfortunately, opens up a plot hole, namely in regards to the barrier protecting the village; plus, the reveal in the manga came because of a plot point regarding Killy, which is non-existent in the movie. Finally, considering how prevalent Toha Heavy Industries is in Nihei's career, being name dropped in numerous works & even being the namesake of a joint venture between Nihei & Polygon, it is amusing that it doesn't appear at all in this movie, not even as an Easter egg, or something.

However, this is honestly just me nitpicking the movie as a fan of the manga, and that isn't fair, because Nihei & Polygon Pictures didn't aim in that direction with this movie. As mentioned, this is a standalone feature that tells a fully self-contained plot, though the end still sees Killy continue his search for Net Terminal Genes. And, as a standalone film, it's honestly really good. Sure, the plot beats themselves are rather standard fare, and you can figure on what will happen next relatively easily, but the storytelling itself is very solid, & there's still a bit of a melancholy to the ending. Also, while it doesn't have the same overall mood or aesthetic as the manga, or even Ver. 0.11 or Prologue, the feel that Polygon went with works on the whole really well for what this movie aimed for, which was a "lighter sc-fi" feel. However, it's easy to find people who will crap on Polygon Pictures, namely due to how it executes its CG, and this film is good proof of that. Visually, the film looks rather good, and the subtle cel shading helps keep it from feeling as instantly outdated as Prologue of Blame! now does, but the main thing that will annoy some viewers will be the frame rate. You see, traditional film runs at roughly 24 frames per second/fps, and this is true of "traditional" anime, even when drawn digitally (as is the case now, since no anime is still made using cels). Part of the problem with early CG anime, though, was that it was produced at a higher frame rate, resulting in the animation being "too fluid", which in turn made it feel "fake". Therefore, some CG anime studios try to course correct now by having their final product aim for 24 fps, in an effort to make it feel more like traditional anime. Unfortunately, this can result in stuttery movement if not handled well, and that does come across in this movie. During action sequences, when things are moving fast, everything looks just fine, but during slower parts you can definitely see the stuttering when characters animate, either while walking or even while talking. To be fair, I did get used to this as the movie went on, but for some this can be a deal breaker.

In the end, the Blame! movie is a really good sci-fi movie to watch if you're looking for something worthwhile on Netflix, and at the very least I hope it gets you interested in the manga. For fans of the manga, you might wind up nitpicking all of the differences to hell, like I did, but try not to let that get in your way of enjoying it for what it is, because it is not a bad movie, by any means. Even those who aren't big on Polygon Pictures generally admit that this is one their best productions, so that should say something. At least Tsutomu Nihei finally got what he had wanted for so long, and it only reinforced his working relationship with Polygon Pictures. While this does bring us up to speed in terms of Blame! & its various anime adaptations, I figure we should end with something amusingly circular. Therefore, let's take a quick look at the manga adaptation of the movie based on the manga!

Yep, to go alongside the movie, Kodansha hired artist Koutarou Sekine (Ninja Slayer Kills!) to do a manga adaptation which ran in Shonen Sirius magazine, the same place as Nihei's current manga series, Aposimz. Vertical Comics would then license this manga for English release in 2019, calling it Blame!: The Electrofishers' Escape; listings online also call it "Movie Edition", but that's nowhere in the book itself. In regards to the plot, it's 99% the same exact story, with the only real differences making themselves known in the latter half, starting with the second part of the Automated Factory that Cibo leads everyone to half-way in. And even then, the changes really just amount to Sanakan's reveal pretty much being made blatantly obvious now, instead of being a sinking feeling in the movie. Also, the climax in which the Electrofishers' village is attacked removes, well, most of the actual attack, which in turn removes the entire character development for supporting cast member Fusata, despite him appearing early on in the manga; it's not a major thing, but it is noticeable. However, true to Nihei's original manga, Sekine's adaptation is a really brisk read, compared to the ~105-minute length of the movie, making it a case of whether you prefer getting straight to the point or wanting things to simmer for a little bit between scenes. As for Sekine's artwork, while he understandably can't possibly match up to Nihei when it comes to environments, the backdrops seen in this manga adaptation are still solid & do a good job establishing the cavernous feel of The City. Where Sekine does best, though, is with his characters, who all look accurate enough to the movie, while also having (arguably) a little more emotion to their faces when is really counts, while Killy & Cibo are converted over very well, too. I could point out that Sekine does make characters like Zuru or Cibo a little more "full" in a specific place, but it's rather minor, and Zuru's combat outfit does otherwise keep things to a minimum. He's also solid with action, making everything easy to instantly get a bead on & enjoy.

Overall, Blame!: The Electrofishers' Escape is a very solid adaptation of the movie, and one that I can honestly see some people actually prefer over Polygon Pictures' product, namely those who aren't exactly fans of their use of CG. The changes seen in the latter part of the story, though a bit annoying, don't really detract much from what's otherwise still a fun sci-fi story.

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No One is to Blame!?

To this day, Tsutomu Nihei's Blame! remains one of my favorite manga of all time, and while it's (generally) loose storytelling might seem a bit hard to adapt properly into anime, it's not for a lack of trying. Nihei really felt that his manga could be adapted into that medium, and while it certainly took a while to actually get there, the path is filled with unique experiments. The Ver 0.11 ONA still remains a rather cool & visually intriguing take, one that honestly nails the manga's general aesthetic, and I think the gimmick of the later DVD release actually works even more so in its favor; I fully recommend giving it a watch. In comparison, Prologue of Blame! is definitely something that might have looked neat for its time, but I think that if the planned movie had been made in that style, it would have aged rather harshly today; still, the OVA also nails the manga's visual style well. As for Polygon Pictures' results, the end results are overall very good, but they also showcase a concerted change in style, mainly in an effort to help make it more palatable to a more general viewing audience. As a fan of the manga's harsher & more purposefully vague execution, it does bugs me a bit, but it's also something that I have to put aside & accept, because the end result is still a very enjoyable movie, & the manga adaptation of it is similarly really good.

Does this mark the end of Blame!'s long journey in anime? I honestly can't answer that, and maybe that's for the best. While Tsutomu Nihei finally got what he had tried for so long to accomplish, you never know when someone else might try to convince him to give it another go... And So On.

Blame! (Manga) © Tsutomu Nihei

Blame! Ver. 0.11: Salvaged disc by Cibo © Tsutomu Nihei/Kodansha/e-Records

Prologue of Blame! © 2007 Tsutomu Nihei・Kodansha/Micott & Basara・beagle・Geneon

Blame! (Movie) © Tsutomu Nihei・Kodansha/Blame! Production Committee

Blame!: The Electrofishers' Escape © Kotarou Sekine 2018 © Tsutomu Nihei 2018 © Toajukou Dougaseisakukyoku