Blame! is a 2017 CG anime film directed by Hiroyuki Seshita (Knights of Sidonia and Ajin: Demi-Human) and produced by Polygon Pictures (Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Transformers: Prime, and Knights of Sidonia). It was released globally on Netflix on May 20, 2017, but on March 27, 2018 it was released on home video. I can safely say that if you have Netflix, you should probably have watched this already. And if you have Netflix and haven’t watched it, you should. If you don’t have Netflix or want to share this film with friends who don’t have Netflix, then you should definitely pick this one up.

Blame! is based on the ten-volume 1997-2003 manga series of the same name by Tsutomu Nihei (Knights of Sidonia) and is set in a future world where centuries earlier, humans lost the cybernetic ability to communicate with their city through the “Netsphere” thanks to an infection that deleted the Net Terminal Gene from their DNA. Once cut loose from the computerized control network for The City, humans were deemed illegal residents and mechanical killing machines were set upon them, nearly wiping out all of humanity. Once that was taken care of, The City began multiplying and expanding in all directions.

Now, centuries later, a group of children wearing machine-camouflage venture into The City in search of food for their slowly starving village. When that plan falls apart, they are rescued by the sudden appearance of the mysterious stranger, Killy (Takahiro Sakurai), who functions sort of like Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name (complete with music cues) in the context of this story. Killy has been traveling for who knows how long, searching for anyone who might still carry the Net Terminal Gene and can take control of the City.

There’s a lot to unpack in this story and Sadayuki Murai’s screenplay doesn’t spoon feed you anything, so that right there makes me like it a lot more than I ever thought I would. We are dropped into this world and have to figure out what’s going on as events play out. Eventually there are info dumps to help get viewers up to speed, but most of the information you really need to follow the narrative is revealed through dialogue and action.

The design of this world is mind-boggling. Everything, from the camouflage uniforms that the Electro-Fishers (our heroes) wear, to the nightmarish Safeguard robotic hunters, to The City itself, is gorgeous and meticulously detailed. I could seriously put scenes on pause and just look at this thing for ages.

The action is frenetic and exciting, the character designs are solid, and the climax of the film is astoundingly violent and nihilistic. That nihilism doesn’t win out, though, setting up a conclusion that echoes the end of The Road Warrior and sets up Killy as a mythic hero, never resting until his quest is completed.

If I had to find something to complain about, I suppose Killy is fairly one-note. By keeping him mysterious, we don’t really get to know anything about him or his history (so I guess it’s good that there’s a sequel on the way!!). For example, he claims to be human, but is clearly some sort of cybernetic being and while everyone seems to know this, they still consider him – as well as the robotic scientist Cibo (Kana Hanazawa) – to be humans-of-sorts. Granted, the Electro-Fishers have been living in their isolated village for 300 years, so they may have lost touch with what exactly makes a human human.

Blame! is a solid science fiction action-adventure with hints of A Fistful of Dollars and The Road Warrior blended into a high-concept original world where humanity is on the verge of extinction and The City is a sprawling, living, ever-expanding entity. It’s a concept that is ripe for exploration, spawning any number of potential stories, and from what I’ve read, the original manga had virtually no recurring characters beyond Killy and Cibo. It seems there’s a lot more that can be mined from the source material, and I, for one, can’t wait to see what’s next.

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Blame! Movie (BD) [Blu-ray] (Blu-ray)

Blame! (BD)

An “infection” in the past has caused automated systems to spiral out of order, resulting in a multi-leveled city structure that replicates itself infinitely in all directions. Now humanity has lost access to the city’s controls, and is hunted down and purged by the defense system known as the Safeguard. In a tiny corner of the city, a little enclave known as the Electro-Fishers is facing eventual extinction, trapped between the threat of the Safeguard and dwindling food supplies. A girl named Zuru goes on a journey to find food for her village, only to inadvertently cause doom when an observation tower senses her and summons a Safeguard pack to eliminate the threat. With her companions dead and all escape routes blocked, the only thing that can save her now is the sudden arrival of Killy the Wanderer, on his quest for the Net Terminal Genes, the key to restoring order to the world.

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