Blame!


Blame!, pronounced "blam", is a ten-volume Japanese science fiction manga by Tsutomu Nihei published by Kodansha from 1998 to 2003. It was first published in the Magazine Afternoon in March 1997 till September 2003. A six-part original net animation was produced in 2003, with a seventh episode included on the DVD release. An anime film adaptation by Polygon Pictures was released as a Netflix original in May 2017.

Plot

, a silent loner possessing an incredibly powerful weapon known as a Gravitational Beam Emitter, wanders a vast technological world known as "The City". He is searching for Net Terminal Genes, a extinct genetic marker that allows humans to access the "Netsphere", a sort of computerized control network for The City. The City is an immense volume of artificial structure, separated into massive "floors" by nearly-impenetrable barriers known as "Megastructure". The City is inhabited by scattered human and transhuman tribes as well as hostile cyborgs known as Silicon Creatures. The Net Terminal Genes appear to be the key to halting the unhindered, chaotic expansion of the Megastructure, as well as a way of stopping the murderous robot horde known as the Safeguard from destroying all humanity.
Along the way, Killy meets and joins forces with a resourceful engineer named Cibo and several groups such as a tribe of human warriors called the Electro-Fishers. Cibo and Killy are often pursued by the Safeguard, who view any human without Net Terminal Genes as a threat to be extinguished on sight. Because of the size and nature of The City and the violent lives led by its inhabitants, there are virtually no recurring characters and any alliances made are short-lived.

Setting

The City is actually a structure that began on Earth. The mechanical beings known as Builders, which move around renovating and creating new landscapes, appear to have begun building without end, creating an enormous structure with little internal logic or coherence. The City appears to be organized into distinct floors, with layers of an unknown nigh-indestructible material called "the megastructure" between them. Traveling between floors is extremely difficult as the megastructure is almost indestructible and approaching the floor boundaries results in a massive Safeguard response. Only a direct Gravitational Beam Emitter blast is known to have been capable of penetrating the megastructure.
Each floor consists of a crust of kilometers high buildings haphazardly built together. Above the crust is an empty sky all the way to the floor of the next level. Descending from the sky are staircases which take upwards of 10 days to climb. The floor of the next level is made of megastructure, but also serves as sunlight/night sky for the floor below.
The City, and the Builders, were once controlled by the Netsphere and the Authority but they have since lost the power to control the expansion of The City due to the chaotic and dangerous manner of its growth. Without intervention by a user with Net Terminal Genes they cannot reestablish control over The City nor the Safeguards, whose original job was to eliminate any humans who try to access the Netsphere without Net Terminal Genes. The Safeguard now attempts to destroy all humans without the Net Terminal Gene as the degradation of The City has corrupted their true goals.
In regard to the scale of the structure, NOiSE, the prequel to Blame!, states in its final chapter that "At one point even the Moon, which used to be up in the sky above, was integrated into The City's structure". It has been suggested by Tsutomu Nihei himself in his artbook Blame! and So On that the scale of The City is beyond that of a Dyson sphere, reaching at least Jupiter's planetary orbit ; this is also suggested in scenarios such as Blame! vol. 9, where Killy finds himself having to travel through a room roughly the size of Jupiter.

Media

Manga

The original Japanese manga was collected into 10 volumes by Kodansha's Afternoon KC division. In February 2005, Tokyopop announced that it has licensed Blame! for U.S. distribution, with publication beginning in August 2005. After releasing the final volume in 2007, the series has gone out of print with several volumes becoming increasingly hard to find. In 2006 the Tokyopop distribution was nominated for a Harvey Award in the category 'Best American Edition of Foreign Material'. In February 2016, Vertical announced that it had licensed the series.

Volumes

; Tankōbon release


; Master's edition

''Blame! Academy''

Blame! Academy is a spin-off series of Blame! by Tsutomu Nihei. Set in the same "City" as Blame!, it is a parody and comedy about various characters in the main Blame! story in a traditional Japanese school setting. Various elements in the main Blame! story are being parodied, including the relationship between Killy and Cibo, and Dhomochevsky and Iko. It was irregularly published in Afternoon. A compilation volume, titled Blame Gakuen! and So On was published by Kodansha on September 19, 2008.

''Blame!²''

Blame!², subtitled Chronicle of the Escape from the Megastructure by the Eighth Incarnation of Pcell, is a full-color, 16-page one-shot. Like NSE: Net Sphere Engineer, Blame!² is a sequel to the original Blame!, taking place at a point in the distant future. It was published March 21, 2008 in the second volume of Kodansha's Weekly Morning Special Edition magazine, Mandala. This one-shot was also compiled in one volume with Blame! Academy, titled Blame Gakuen! and So On in 2008. Set an undefined but long time after the events of Blame!, it follows an incarnation of P-cell. After Killy's success in Blame!, humanity has begun to dominate The City once more and began wiping out most Silicon Life. After P-cell escapes the extinction as the sole survivor of her kind, she is saved from death by Killy. She eventually makes it to the edge of the City, where it is implied she travels to another planet and restarts Silicon Life civilization using the stored gene-data of her dead companions.

''NSE: Net Sphere Engineer''

NSE: Net Sphere Engineer is a sequel to Blame!. It was originally published as a one-shot in the Bessatsu Morning magazine. This one-shot was compiled in one volume with Blame! Academy, titled Blame Gakuen! and So On in 2008. NSE: Net Sphere Engineer follows a "Dismantler", a Net Sphere Engineer in charge of disabling the remaining nexus towers that summon Safeguard interference upon its detection of humans without the net terminal genes. Like Blame!², NSE is set in a long but undefined time period after the events of Blame! However, it is implied it is even later than Blame!² as Safeguards are now very rare encounters.

''Blame!: The Ancient Terminal City''

A trailer revealing a special Blame! short, appearing at the beginning of the 8th episode of Knights of Sidonia: Battle for Planet Nine, was released in November 2014. The episode aired in May 2015. The short is contextualized as a TV program that the people of Sidonia tune in for.

Film

Plans for a full-length CG animated film were announced in 2007. However, this proposed CG film project was not released before Micott and Basara filed for bankruptcy in 2011.
It was announced in November 2015 that the series will get an anime theatrical film adaptation. The film is directed by Hiroyuki Seshita and written by Tsutomu Nihei and Sadayuki Murai, with animation by Polygon Pictures and character designs by Yuki Moriyama. It was released globally as a Netflix original on the 20th of May 2017.
On October 5, 2017, Viz Media announced at their New York Comic Con panel that they licensed the home video rights to the film and plan to release it on Blu-ray Disc and DVD.

Reception

Manga

Jarred Pine from Mania.com commented "is not an easy task" to talk about the story in the first volume as "it leaves quite a gamut of questions open for the reader, nothing on the surface to give the reader a sense of direction or purpose."
Pine said Blame! doesn't have a mass appeal and "there will be quite a strong line dividing those who love and hate Nihei’s unique and convoluted cyberpunk journey."