Two Paragraph Review: Blame! (2017, Netflix)

Copyright: Netflix

Disclosure: I’m a huge fan of the Blame! manga which is easily the best work of art in this genre I ever read and one of the best comics/graphic novels in general. This is why I’m delighted to say that Blame! Netflix adaptation is both true to the spirit of the Tsutomu Nihei’s original and successful in plotting its own artistic course. In the film, Killy as a wanderer comes across a village in the megastructure when local electrofishers might sit on the best clue he came across since he started looking for the net terminal gene, hoping he will stop the rampant Builders and Safeguard, while allowing people back into the system.

If you didn’t read the manga (and in many cases, including my own, even if you did) this will probably make very little sense to you, but the movie manages to come to grips with its complex and odd narrative structure in a very elegant fashion, just like it approaches its animation. The visual style of the manga is distinctive and presented in full glory here, finely combined with CGI animations of the characters and fight scenes. While the film is more talkative than the manga, all of the foreboding feel of it is in there, making this a worthy interpretation of the brilliant work of art made by Nihei almost two decades ago. So, to compress my review, I can only tell you: go see Blame! on Netflix, it’s good.