I fell down the Blame hole again as I seem to do about once a year over the last three years. I originally read the manga back in July of 2020 during, what was for me, the worst period of the pandemic. I had largely enjoyed the months of May and June but July was when I had to make some radical shifts in direction when it came to my personal life and health. I won’t go into detail but suffice to say it was a fairly uncomfortable period both physically and mentally which is why Blame was probably the absolute worst thing I could have read. That being said it eventually became one of my favorite non-gay manga and every time I start the first chapter I immediately get yanked in headlong towards the fleshy, mechanical center of a truly unique piece of art. In loose terms the manga is about an unfathomably large city built out in a radius around earth that has become rampant and expands chaotically due to a convoluted struggle between ancient humans on earth and an afflicted computer interface that they once controlled. The main character is a mysterious human (but not really) who is searching endlessly and ceaselessly for any remaining humans who possess the proper genetic material to mend the schism that is basically ruining all the fun for everyone everywhere. The structure they all have to traverse is later revealed to occupy most of the solar system and each area is built with complete disregard to any type of habitability or coherence.

With all of that said, I finally watched the anime. It was bad. I remember seeing previews for it in 2020 when I first read the manga and the tagline was something like “the manga once thought unadaptable is finally realized” which in hindsight was about the worst sentiment they could have used. It has only the most tenuous threads attaching it to the original to the point where it’s hard to even call it an adaptation. The plot does involve the two central characters from the manga, yes, but aside from the the themes and “vibe” for lack of a better word are completely absent. This is going to become a soliloquy in broader terms about adaptation itself and why often times it is a futile even if the end results are of sterling quality. It’s kind of like having kids and investing in the idea of turning them into small versions of yourself when they will inevitably transform into some kind of mocking parody, even if they end up being decent human beings. You can tell I’m quite jaded about the idea of procreation. In Blame specifically the adaptation did what many failed attempts usually do and tried to make a story that isn’t about human dramas about human drama. I think this is a failing of most adaptations of video game properties but also, unfortunately many manga as well. The creators clearly looked at Blame as a whole and found the single sliver that had the most relatable human drama and focused the entirety of the run time on that, but Blame isn’t about people, at least not in the sense that their drama and struggle is integral or transformative to the plot. Whenever there are human characters in small pockets throughout the story you are given the sense that the world they inhabit is so unthinkably massive that the exact drama you’re seeing is likely playing out many times over in equal measure and intensity all over. Aside from the central two protagonists, one of which is basically an emotionless soujorning automaton who dispenses death metal album covers, the human characters are seen so briefly that you don’t even have time to remember their names. They are consumed by the turning gears of the insane machine or they are left alone to their devices within mere pages, usually with a disheartening, or more often soul crushingly bleak non-conclusion. Because of this Blame is often rather impenetrable to new readers because there is so little in terms of common mooring to attach one’s squishy emotional tow-line. In simple terms the manga is about the mass picture while the anime film was about the micro picture. It hitched it’s mooring line to a brief yet admittedly impactful segment in the early part of the story in order to suss out what little human drama was already present and expand that into a ninety minute misinterpretation of themes. The main side characters in the film were actually so minor in the manga that I didn’t remember them being actual characters until i reread it with the intent to find them. The “protagonist” Kiri was also depicted as a stoic yet altruistic badass who does such good to the other human characters that they remember him as a legend for literal centuries after he is gone. In the manga Kiri is more of an audience surrogate to get thrashed around in the world like a surfer caught in a violent swell. He almost never speaks, famously smiles only twice in the whole story, and treats basically every other human character with complete disregard unless they are actively helping him. He is even shown to be incredibly sadistic when it comes to the other forms of life living in the gigantic structure he wanders through, going so far as to murder the children of the main antagonist species which are simply referred to as Silicon Life to distinguish them from humans. He is a literal and figurative robot who has a single goal and stops at nothing to keep tracking that goal, even shaking off dismemberment and decades long convalescence. The only even remotely human side he ever shows is his ongoing companionship with the other main protagonist of Shibo who is by far the more compelling and relatable character. Next time I’m going to get into Shibo and why she is awesome