Blame!

This movie was much better than I expected.

As a fan of the Blame! manga, I think the film keeps the same pace and atmosphere as the original.

The movie has no deep development of characters or the universe, but it gave enough details without destroying the original pace of the narrative, what many screen adaptations are often do trying to explain everything in a limited time.

It's definitely worth watching.

An automated city continues to grow inexorably. A glitch has caused the pest control system to classify humans as vermin to be exterminated. The huge, lifeless city sprawls on for ever with only a few humans surviving a meagre exist.

I loved the premise of this film. The first half an hour is excellent and really immersed me into this juggernaut of a system that has gone runaway.

Then some new characters appear with some very special talents. These newcomers "break" a lot of the world's set up and make the main characters survival seem a bit trivial.

What really let this down for me was the pace. I am accustom to Eastern films having a more considered and careful approach and normally enjoy it. But here it feels like nothing happens for really long stretches at a time.

Then when the action does start, someone pushes a button that fixes the situation. I feel this time could have been spent on more action or better characterisation.

I enjoyed the bits I enjoyed very much, but feel it could have been condensed to a much, much shorter film.

The visuals and the overall concept are great. The world is believable and explorable. I wanted this to be as wonderful a film as it looked.

Trope alert: They took the basic villagers against an overwhelming outside threat from Seven Samurai or Princess Mononoke, and the "system" seeing humans as the problem, from basically every science fiction film or book.

Cliché anime characters fill the world. The tough, spirited young teen; the wise old leader; the guy who is afraid; the wimpy young teen that everyone protects even if they die to do it.

Add the handsome, battle-scared loner who has traveled the unsurvivable depths of the city. He doesn't blink, he doesn't emote, he says about ten words in the whole film, yet let him in with his superweapon and let him walk behind you. You can trust him, he has intense blue-eyes and hero hair.

What made me go ballistic were the endless dramatic pauses. They could have tightened it by fifteen minutes. The standard time is running out, war is here, people are dying in horrific explosions. Oh, I know, let's walk slowly to do the only thing that might save everyone from a gruesome death. Cue the extended standard hero fight.

Other characters stop to stare at each other or talk. If our base/home/village is being overrun and you stop and want to talk about your loss or tell each other about how much you love them, I am going to slap you until you wake up.

Hint: If you come to a vast factory that can make hundreds of football stadium-sized batches of anything in a few seconds, how about creating some automated weapons systems, powerpacks, weapons, vehicles, or hover tanks? I understand that is too easy. If your plot is destroyed by something simple, then your plot is too weak.

Here's my suggestion. These films take years of incredibly hard work by thousands of extremely talented people. Several months into the planning, ask some of your staff if the plot or characters reminds them of another film. If so, change it or you risk this becoming another cookie-cutter trope anime film.

I haven't read the comic series and I have gone through some of your negative comments. I just watched this movie and I must say it was pretty awesome!

The environment in which it was set was mind-blowing and very creative, the plot seemed pretty good and it left me wanting to see more.

All in all I can say that, if your not a die hard fan of the comics, you'll probably enjoy this movie!

I suppose after the gigantic Netflix logo spins around on the screen, announcing yet another copycat production, the expectations drop considerably. Fortunately but it seems (I didn't bother to check) like Netflix just signed the cheque to purchase the title, I doubt they could have much to do with this movie. Firstly, it's anime made by the Japanese in Japanese language and everything about it is Japanese, it feels way more genuine than Appleseed. The story was excellent and the visuals were absolutely stunning, I think that's why I'm giving it 7 stars. Otherwise it wasn't a masterpiece but still very solid and enjoyable. The characters were a little bit flat, for example they don't seem to be bothered much when dozens of men and children get ripped to shreds or lose limbs, they all mostly stare at the camera with their fakely large eyes. But well, it's mostly an action anime, so there isn't much time to develop any depth. So yes, there is a lot of shooting, running, action but the balance is right - there is also a lot of suspense, story, sci-fi, dreamy cityscapes, exoskeletons, cyborgs, monsters and heroes. However, it's far away from the American superhero movies with happy ending, the overall mood is gloomy, post apocalyptic and the ending is more of a "walk into the mist" rather than "drive into the sunset" which I personally like.