In the distant technological future, civilization has reached its ultimate Net-based form. An
"infection" in the past caused the automated systems to spiral out of order, resulting in a
multi-leveled city structure that replicates itself infinitely in all directions. Now humanity has
lost access to the city's controls, and is hunted down and purged by the defense system known as the
Safeguard. In a tiny corner of the city, a little enclave known as the Electro-Fishers is facing
eventual extinction, trapped between the threat of the Safeguard and dwindling food supplies. A girl
named Zuru goes on a journey to find food for her village, only to inadvertently cause doom when an
observation tower senses her and summons a Safeguard pack to eliminate the threat. With her companions
dead and all escape routes blocked, the only thing that can save her now is the sudden arrival of
Killy the Wanderer, on his quest for the Net Terminal Genes, the key to restoring order to the
world.
(Source: Official Website)
I went into Blame! knowing absolutely nothing about the movie, with my only knowledge being a single trailer along with knowing it was a sci-fi movie alongside the animation company being Polygon Pictures. ~~~__Visuals__~~~ I guess Polygon Pictures by this point is pretty well known for the unique cgi style they use in most of their movies. But even though it was cgi, I never had any issues with the visuals of the movie. Every single scene to me looked incredible, even though they didn't use a massive color palette. Mostly greys and blacks for every scene, but then combined with flashes and dots of color in certain scenes. To really bring out specific parts of the scenes and help to change the mood of the scenes. The only thing I feel will turn people away is the cgi characters not always being every-bodies favorite. They do require a small amount of time to get used to, but once you do they look fine. ~~~__Sound & Music__~~~ While the visuals were stunning, they were assisted an insane amount by the music and sounds that appear in the movie. Just the right amount of atmospheric building sounds and music in the background, to help propel a slow scene of characters walking through a bland grey hallway into something much more impressive. Meanwhile it does a great job of building up for fight scenes, or slowing down when necessary. But never once felt to me like it was overpowering or imposing, and instead helped to capture the tone of the scene perfectly. ~~~__Characters__~~~ To be honest, the characters might be the weakest point of the movie. We have a village full of half starved people fighting every day for their lives. Who are just trying to find enough food to keep living. A Mysterious traveler Killy who wonders into the village, and proceeds to assist the villagers to survive in this world. Alongside a strange robot Cibo that never really gets explained. And that is kinda the weak spot, none of the characters really get explained. Sure some of the it can be understood without much story or character building. Like with the villagers, most of them don't really require more knowledge and information to be dedicated to them. The basic idea of the villagers is simple, they require a safe place to live in which they aren't hunted constantly. With only a couple villagers playing large roles, but those roles are dedicated to protecting the village, or protecting people who could help the village. Some rather unfortunate romance between some of the villager characters, but it is never the main point, so it never really does get any time dedicated to it if it isn't part of the larger plot points. The Mysterious traveler Killy, who is a strong silent character. He doesn't speak much, and doesn't really hold conversations with anybody. Merely speaking in order to gain the necessary information needed to further his goals and mission. But even though he doesn't speak or show emotion really, he has moments that you can tell he does care about the villagers that he ends up helping. Then we have the Strange Robot Cibo, who never really goes from just that, a strange robot. Well robot, or human, not really sure and never explained or had any time dedicated to even trying to question it. Another kinda quiet character who wants to achieve the same goals as Killy, and therefor just happens to decide to work with Killy. But even Cibo, with how emotionless and giving off a feeling of simply going through the motions of talking with the villagers as something to do without any meaning, still has moments of wanting to assist the villagers. ~~~__World & Story__~~~ Both the world and the story seem like large massive questions, that never get explored in this movie. And instead seem fully willing the leave the audience questioning what is going on in this world. The same can be said for the story, or at least the larger story that obviously is occurring. While the movie seems to just be a diversion from the ultimate goal for Killy and CIbo. The story contained in the movie is the villagers trying to find more food and information about the world that could help them stay safe. And the larger mission of Killy and Cibo just happen to be a good way to attempt to achieve those goals of finding food. But the larger story of Killy and Cibo is never a focus, and never fully explained. Just that they are trying to figure out the secrets and restore the city, and one part of that goal is tracking down humans who might have a gene that is incredibly important. ~~~__Conclusion__~~~ Even with the story and world lacking in development and leaving you with questions, along side the characters who never got developed. I enjoyed every second of this movie, and would love to see more from the world. Just what I saw intrigued me as to the larger world and story, and made me wish to get more to this story.
------------------------------------- | Blame! The Movie : Review | ------------------------------------- Blame! The Movie is an Netflix Original animated by Polygon Studio which is adapted from the hit manga of the same name , written by Tsutomu Nihei. The movie is about a dystopian , post-apocalyptic , Sci-Fi world and even though I haven't read the manga , I went into the movie pretty hyped up having heard great things about the manga. Did I like the move ? In a way , yes. But was it any good or worth your time ? Let's find out shall we ? ----------- Story - 6 ----------- Okay , the start of the movie was.., Epic! The world looked and felt atmospheric , dark and it was great. within the first few minutes , we get to see people's struggles , desperation to survive. I got immediately interested in world , which seemed to be the main selling point of the show. But as the series movie progressed , I felt more and more disappointed as it failed to explain any of the concepts of the world properly. There was this talk of a netsphere , net terminal gene and all this gibberish which immediately caught my interest but didn't put much effort into explaining any of them. And when it reached the ending , everything became even more convoluted and left me wondering "What the fuck just happened? " , and not in a good way like Evangelion series. --------- Art - 9 --------- THANK YOU POLYGON !! My previous experience with Polygon was a series called Knights of Sidonia , which was also a Netflix original written by the same author. And that particular series had one of the worst Artworks I've ever come to pass. But this time it's different , The movie looked stunning from start to end. Everything from the color palette , lightning and special effects truly captured the feeling of a dark and desperate world. Character models looked and was animated great ! battles scenes truly looked epic and smooth with vibrant reds and blues. So in the Art and Animation department , Polygon really hit it out of the park with this one. ------------- Sound - 7 ------------- Music for the series was composed by Yugo Kanno and he did a great job with it. Everything blended in with the atmosphere quite nicely and specially Killy's Soundtrack sounded great. All the sound effects with the battle scenes were on point and sounded good. To cap it off I found no fault with the voice acting either. In short this had a good soundtrack , it could have been better but it's lived up to my expectations. ------------------ Characters - 5 ------------------ Characters of this movie suffered the same fate as the World of the movie did. They immediately caught my attention , but then was left without exploration or depth. Worst part of it was even the main character Killy was treated the same way. Even after finishing watching the movie , I had no idea who Killy was. All the information that was given to us was that his name is Killy , He got a really cool gun and he might be the last hope for humanity. That's it. The movie didn't really do enough to care about most of the side characters except for a few. It felt like they ran out of time to give the characters much depth. ----------------------------------------------- Enjoyment and Overall Experience - 5 ----------------------------------------------- I didn't hate the movie , I loved the atmosphere and visuals of it. I would be really happy if we get a squeal to this and explore the world and characters more , and get answers to all the questions that left unanswered. So all in all , it was a movie that didn't give enough but left me wanting more. Do I recommend it ? If we will have good squeals to this movie that builds on this world and characters that was presented in this movie , Then yes. If not , then no , It wasn't a good stand alone movie. --------------------------- | Recommendations | --------------------------- [Attack On Titan] A non Sci-Fi version of Blame! , a dystopian world , humanity under attack and forced to live under shadows.
# BLAME 8/6/7/8/8 ___ Note: I'll use my MAL reviewing format until I tweak it for AL. [link Here ](https://desozone.wordpress.com/main-info/review-scoring-explanation/)is how my _"review"_ system works. __W.I.P__ ___ __✦Story✦__ Hmm.... rather complex story that takes it rather slow, whilst indulging lot of stupidity. I mean to be honest, the world premise / setting did remind me of matrix a lot, whilst design made me think of nier automata. Anyhow about the story. Essentially it's a little dystopian survival story with some drama and few rather "wow" twists. We get bunch of essentially "cavemen" trying to survive in a rather fcked up world that's taken over by AI. And luckily enough our MC "Killy" gets discovered and thus there it starts to roll towards "hope". Now this is a story where more I would talk the more likely it would become a spoiler so I'll just remain to general gist and what I felt about the movie. Probably the most enjoyable aspect I loved about this movie so much, was the tension. It was one of the most tense Anime movies I've watched. The whole world discovery, story reveals, drama and "twists" were especially amazingly conveyed. Although I love how ignorant and stupid were the normal survivors there, but that was generation gap does and loss of information. What I disliked the most would be probably how long/far the story arched. It was slow paced which was good to grasp story correctly and build tension, BUT since it was only 1 movie I feel like sequel is a must. It did get me interested enough to eventually read the manga. Long story short, it's rather complex and interesting story, but it's short length leaves a lot of open questions, but for what was presented and explained, it was great. `8/10` ___ __✦Character✦__ Honestly, the weakest aspect. Most characters I didn't care about (well, they were cannon fodder anyways.) and only worthwhile characters were Killy img220(https://i.imgur.com/j5kcPhW.jpg) and ~!Cibo img220(https://i.imgur.com/Fk2KURc.jpeg)!~ . Also zuru was very cute :) ~!img220(https://i.imgur.com/92xHNF3.jpeg) !~ But yeah why it was weakest? Aside character irrelevancy I think most of them were rather weak and stupid. But that came with harsh environment, lack of materials and lack of resources to train/study. Plus heavy generation gap of prior history. Essentially main characters were great, rest of em were pretty much useless. Thus why I found this being a weakest link in the movie. `6/10` ___ __✦Art & Sound✦__ This time around I'll start with sound. All I gotta say I'm not sure whenever I liked or now, but for sure OST in this movie had great presence and went along rather good with what was happening on the screen. Art & animation. I'm still not fond of CGi Anime.. quality & artstyle was great, but slower movement is simply painful to my eyes. It feels like playing game with horrid framerate... very laggy and janky. But all things considered it was good enough... `7/10` ___ ✦__Enjoyment & Overall✦__ I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. I loved the tense story presentation and the depressing world there. It has it's issues, but as far as Anime movie can present a story for it's duration. It was damn enjoyable. But of course, It would need bunch of movies or long series to give the full awe and explanations for both storytelling and action. A.k.a suffers from it's short length. `8/10` ___ __✦✦Final score✦✦:__ `8/10`
__~~~BLAME! ~~~__ __~~~Preface~~~__ I believe that the key factor which makes a piece of text worth reading, or any piece for the matter, is trust. At its foundation lies transparency, the idea that the author will not deceive you about their intent or what they are trying to convey. Permit me then, this very transparency in saying that I am not a fan of sci-fi. Thus, you may come to the conclusion that this isn’t a review whereby you’re meant to ascertain whether BLAME! is worth your time or not, because surely there is a more objective review out there for that. Before I even start, let me concede that objectivity is not the goal here, but rather just me talking about some of my gripes with the genre and why I don’t particularly enjoy BLAME! as a result of that. However, before I start, you may have come to wonder why I would even watch a sci-fi movie if I don’t like them. Well, there are two reasons, the first was vital to me watching it around this time and not at any other, and it came about as a result of a certain experiment. However, whether this recent reason which forced my hand existed or not, I would have watched BLAME! at one point or another. The second reason is stubbornness. You see, I do not fall into the mental trap of thinking that a genre is inherently worse than any other just because I’ve yet to see a piece which gets me to love it. Simply put, think of it like a fuzzy eater who doesn’t like much food, yet they try everything over and over in hope they will find something to love. This is indeed my relationship with sci-fi, a search for the piece that will turn it all around, and unfortunately, BLAME! wasn’t that. However, it also reminded me of some beauties of this genre, and I will certainly talk about them. My usual reviews are split into Story/Characters/Sound/Visuals categories, however, I do not have much to say about some subjects here, and thus, to avoid being formulaic, I will merely have one big section dubbed ‘The Review’ to give my overall thoughts, and a sub-section for my miscellaneous thoughts, conclusive with the review’s summary. Before I begin, allow me to apologize for this novel-sized preface, and say that I will try to contain all manner of spoilers in the spoiler tags, if however, you wish to go in this movie completely blind, please stop reading here. __~~~The Review~~~__ The premise of BLAME! initially struck me as an ordinary premise of its genre, but I do think the setting of an infinitely self-expanding city naturally paves way for an interesting mystery which speaks to the core of its creation. Whether this is a genre-staple or not is something you’d have to ask its own experts, not being one, I can neither confirm nor deny this, but I can express praise and state that it’s an idea I find very interesting. The opening sequence has some pretty striking imagery of a cold, metallic city which is nigh indifferent to the humans inhabiting it. The setting is further enhanced by the foreboding Watchers, great metallic beasts which immediately engaged my attention and… they were never seen again after the movie’s prologue which was a big disappointment. Anyway, the prologue features a group of young children going out of their fortified village to scour the city for food, they are almost immediately ambushed by a group of exterminators, which you can think of as the fodder-level enemies of humans, yet fodder-level or not, they are dangerous nonetheless and kill a sizable chunk of the group as the kids try to retreat. And their reaction to this horror is one of my first gripes with what I’ve seen from the genre, it’s cold and stiff. Now, one could make an argument that these kids are battle-hardened veterans, something which could be attested to by the rust on their gear, but how the main character and few surviving members react to the slaughter of their friends, you’d think they were indistinguishable from the robots they were fighting against. The rest of the story plays out in a way where even I cannot complain about the pacing. The fights are hype enough, but lack emotional engagement because the cast isn’t particularly lovable. The stakes however, are very high. For all we know, this is the last remnant of humanity fighting for survival, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this factoid wasn’t true, we will see. __The spoilers below are in reference to the ending, kindly do not open unless you viewed the movie. __ ~!There is a plot twist somewhere in the middle of the story which shakes things up, and forces humans to leave the village. The ending is a timeskip which goes far into the future, and highlights how uninteresting the cast is, by making you part with them and waiting for you to realize you kinda don’t care. !~ Anyway, our cast of debatably human creatures return to the village, their attempts fruitless, and now the residents have to find a way to get food. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that, during their retreat, one character is saved by an edgelord named Killy. Now, visiting his [character page]( https://anilist.co/character/3762/Killy) on Anilist will state that he is the main character, but he literally never gave me this vibe during the movie so I will continue referring to the female kid whose name eludes me as the MC. The manga may do the job of positioning him to be the MC far better, and I intend to read it, but this is a review of the movie, and the characters will be dissected as such. Now, Killy is a weird character, and one of few notable ones aside from our MC, a robot named Cibo, and the head of the village who, according to Anilist doesn’t even have a name, and is instead referred to as ‘pops’. If he does have a name, do pardon my forgetfulness, I am not good with those. The reason I say Killy is weird mostly has to do with how uninteresting he is, given the role he plays. He is mostly stiff and dull, doesn’t evoke a sense of an interesting mystery, and gives the vibe of being vacuous, in a bad way. He is equipped with an extremely strong gun with a long-ass sci-fi name I couldn’t bother remembering, and a pretty competent fighter too, and has come to the village searching for a human with the ‘Net Gene Terminal’, a concept with which the viewer will not be acquainted during this movie, but my guess would be that it’s the: ~! admin code which would allow the owner to control the city, and grind it to a halt. !~ Pops is a character I like decently enough, you can clearly see that the duty of caring for the last remnants of humanity and being their leader wears on him. I connected with this character the most, yet the writing never allowed for neither proper development, nor any catharsis to his character, thus at best I’d give him a strong six. The female kid MC is boring, dull and a microcosm representing most of the cast. Cibo is… whatever. The one thing I can say I loved in this movie was the amount of metallic imagery and vast spanning shots which highlight the city. They did a good job of capturing the atmosphere of the piece, and this is one of sci-fi’s greatest strengths, atmosphere. Especially true here, the cinematography had me hooked from the start, and that’s worthy of praise. The animation wasn’t bad, the movie is rendered in CGI, and the issue is that it’s sometimes incredibly choppy. I remember a shot early on as some people were walking with camera positioned over someone’s shoulder, it deadass appeared to me they were animated in 3 frames per second. This almost never happens, and stating that it’s a big issue would be a disservice to the movie, but when it does, it’s incredibly jarring and thus, worthy of mention. The music is alright. There’s a piano track that’s played, and arguably overplayed, as it accompanies some weird scenes where it doesn’t belong. It’s mostly quiet and subdued but I don’t mind. I do wish it was more in spirit of the genre. Sound effects were awesome, but I think having those in such high quality is a staple of this genre, as it was always about many interesting sounds you don’t often hear in real life. Voice acting is stiff, I didn’t enjoy it very much. It almost has zero emotion and acts as a very weak sell to engage you further. Whenever I do the voice acting section in my other reviews, I usually name standout performances, however, I’ve none this time around. I didn’t particularly enjoy it. For clarity’s sake, let me mention I watched the movie subbed. ~~~__Miscellaneous Thoughts__~~~ A section where I ~~freestyle~~__ bullshit__ my way into making this review seem convincing. To start, let me say I’ve genuine appreciation for people who write reviews for a living, even writing something as measly as 1.5k words took its mental toll on me, one which I hope isn’t reflected in the quality of my writing, but I leave that to your judgement. Let me also say that, if any mistakes were made at any point here, feel free to point them out to me, as I, to yet again be completely transparent, didn’t watch the entire movie very attentively, and my attention would go all over the place from time to time. I could blame the movie for this, but you would also be right to be mad with me for not giving it proper respect, that is also fine. So, I’ve also said some things about sci-fi, but I hope that if you’re a fan of it, you didn’t take it to heart. Let me proclaim that I absolutely do not think any genre is inferior to another, and that this is merely a matter of preference. However, I am constantly searching for a new thing which could potentially make me into a fan, and in my defense, I think that’s enough for now. I will definitely find something I like one day, and I will likely review it. Just a shame BLAME! wasn’t it really, but who knows, it may still be, if the manga is good. Before I summarize this vichyssoise of verbiage, let me thank you for sticking through with this review of mine, I genuinely appreciate it. ~~~__Summary __~~~ BLAME! is a stiff movie complimented by nice atmosphere and decent fights. A quick and somewhat engaging watch which feels like an advertisement for its manga counterpart. I’d recommend checking it out if sci-fi is your thing, and if not, I wouldn’t count on it to change your impressions of the genre.