Apart from being blown away by the aesthetics, the dynamics of the action scenes (even if half the time you can't be entirely sure what exactly is going on. fuck it, they're still awesome), and the incredibly dense atmosphere I love that it's one of the most radical/ pure modern literary works (not surprised a Japanese author came up with it): the city as an embodiment of modernity has become so all-encompassing that there are no borders to it, there is no outside, no nature, not even bacteria. Time and space have largely become meaningless or extremely distorted (this is also mirrored in the structure of the comic: you have no idea how much time passes between chapters or how long Killy has been on his quest; at one point when Killy is in an escalator, a whole month passes between two panels which are largely similar).riley-o wrote:Blame #1-66 - 8/10
Don't have a clue who any of the characters are, what any of their motivations are, reasons for any of their actions, what the overarching conflict is, and half the damn time I don't really even understand how the action is supposed to be playing out in the art ?!
Still pretty great, if only for the world and its inhabitants (whoever they are).
This IMHO explains and justifies the emptiness there is to it: you can barely make out a rough plotline (Killy looking for net terminal genes to stop the structure's aimless growth), you don't know much about the characters, the ending seems to be cathartic (?); often, it's very repetitive (Killy encounters enemies, then BOOOM). I also love the fact that the gravitational beam emitter makes 100 kilometers long holes (and produceds the sound word BLAM, which btw is the original title of this series - the English publisher just seemed to think that Blame! made it sound more artsy or deep or whatever), but in the end it doesn't make a damn difference.
Sorry for rambling, but Blame is one of my absolute comic favourites and I read the whole thing at least every couple of years.