BLAME! MASTER EDITION 1

Wow, this is such interesting world building.

In 2023, if seems as if every franchise will have it's lore over explained. Every tiny bit of minutiae will be explored and covered via side stories told in every form of media imaginable. “Blame!” is the opposite of that. It throws you head first into the deep end of a foreign, dangerous, and alien world. And in that way it's thematically apt!

This is a world long dead, living on via inertia alone. The inhabits of this city don't know much more than the reader, and any answer is slowly revealed simply by exploring further into the city. The artwork here is beautiful, filled with detailed cityscapes and horrifying creatures. I think the action scenes can be a bit messy, but the imagery itself is enough to keep reading.

I'm not entirely sure why I've avoided this for as long as I have, but I'm excited to finally get around to reading Blame!

I am flummoxed. I very much wanted to like this book. I feel like it would increase my “cool” factor exponentially if I did, but alas I was confused and slightly perturbed.  As a reader I don't have a whole lot of experience with Manga as a genre. I have dabbled in it, but never went swimming. That being said, I have quite a bit of experience in reading the cyber punk genre which is one of my favorites. Manga absolutely excels in it. “Ghost in the Shell,” and “Akira” are bonafide classics and rightly so.  But “Blame!” just didn't do it for me. I can appreciate the quality of the artwork and the simplicity of the dialog: the dialog is minimalistic and it relies on the stark visuals to convey meaning and tone. But, I think it reached to far into starkness and loses any sort of context for the story. I got lost repeatedly and the characters ended up meaning nothing to me. Any die hard manga fan should check out this novel but the average reader trying to branch out would be well served to check out “Akira” or “Ghost in the shell”.

Eh maybe I am just not cool enough.