2014-06-25

Blame! Ver. 0.11

Blame! Ver. 0.11 is an ONA series based on the manga Blame! by Tsutomu Nihei.  The ONA was originally released in 2003 and consisted of six 5 minute episodes and 1 special episode.

    The story presented in the ONA series is a bit different than in the manga.  In this one is has Cibo as more of the main character than Killy.  She is using him to defeat the silicon beings and to stop the structure from its uncontrolled expansion.

    There is not much to say for the plot and development of this series, it only spans about 30 minutes worth of time, much of that wordlessly.  The series is confusing and disjointed in the way it tells the story.  If one watched it with out reading or understanding the premise for the manga you would be incredibly lost and perhaps turned off from the manga its self.  This was not very good.  In fact it was quite disappointing.  The artwork was low quality and the entire project seemed pretty low budget, given the amount of still frames used in it.  It would be really nice to see a proper animated rendition of Blame! and it appears this was initially meant as a sales pitch for a feature length adaption.  I would wholly welcome a feature length adaption of the manga if handled by the right people, but i don't see that happening.  The current popularity of the anime adaption of Nihei's manga Knights of Sidonia is questionable, even though I think its fantastic!  But, I ultimately don't control anything the industry does so it doesn't matter what I think.

    Either way, I would avoid this series, even though you wouldn't be wasting too much time.  Its not good and confusing.  Instead stick with the manga.  It was, surprisingly, released on DVD in North America by Media Blasters...crazy!

    One thing that I forgot to cover in the review of the manga was how much it initially reminded me of something that Moebius might come up with, in scale and set design.


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