Blade Runner Black Out 2022


Blade Runner Black Out 2022 is a tech-noir cyberpunk anime short film directed by Shinichiro Watanabe. The short is one of three short films, alongside ' and ', that serve as prequels to the live-action film Blade Runner 2049. It debuted on 27 September 2017 on Crunchyroll.

Plot

Three years after the events of Blade Runner, the Tyrell Corporation has developed the new Nexus-8 line of replicants, who now possess natural, open-ended lifespans equivalent to that of a regular human. This causes a massive backlash among the human populace, who begin hunting down and killing replicants, seeing them as a now very credible threat to humanity. One of these replicants, Trixie, is attacked by a group of thugs but is rescued by Iggy, who effortlessly disarms and kills them. Iggy reveals to her that he used to be a soldier on a planet called Calantha but deserted when he realized the enemy soldiers he had been fighting and killing were also replicants.
Iggy recruits Trixie for an operation carried out by an underground replicant freedom movement to destroy the Tyrell Corporation's database of registered replicants, so that replicants can no longer be hunted. Trixie befriends Ren, who is a technician in charge of launching nuclear missiles and a replicant sympathizer. Ren agrees to redirect a test missile to detonate over Los Angeles, blacking out the city and wiping out all electronic data. At the same time, Trixie and Iggy hijack a fuel truck to physically destroy the Tyrell Corporation's servers. However, Trixie is killed while battling security forces with Iggy. The operation is a success, with the servers destroyed and power to Los Angeles disabled. Iggy manages to escape and removes his right eye, the only thing that can identify him as a replicant.
The ending narration states that in the aftermath of the Black Out, all replicant production was banned and the Tyrell Corporation went bankrupt, only for the Wallace Corporation to acquire the company and restart production of a new model a decade later.

Cast