Blame!

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!

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.

Blame! throws us into an unknown far-future post-apocalyptic setting that's unlike most post-apocalyptic settings we're used to. Natural formations like land, sea, sky, plants, and rocks are completely non-existent and what we are left with is a colossal, cavernous, metaled mess of a megastructure. Any adjective with the basic meaning of "large" that I could have chosen to describe this structure should be seen as an understatement since - according to the manga from which this film is based on - the megastructure itself, which initially started on Earth, now extends past the orbit of Jupiter.

The massive labyrinth interior of the megastructure is created and maintained by "Builders" (giant skeletal, mechanized creatures who slowly roam around)and to us humans, their design theory can probably be best summed up as ordered chaos gone amok. The viewer is overwhelmed with scene after scene of grand metal-type architecture. One can't wait to see what fresh, new, metallic gloomy backdrop is waiting around each and every corner. The animation used to depict this cold and miscalculated world is phenomenal. Based on this reason and the given "nature" of the setting, any viewer who is attracted to films because of their dark atmospheres should give this one a try.

Not to say the story is dull by any means. Plot elements include a tribe that's on the brink of destruction who question whether they are the only humans left, hyper robots with spider-like bodies and ultra-artificial human faces who eliminate humans upon detection, a wandering protagonist with a synthetic body and a super gun, a female engineer sidekick with Netsphere (cyberspace)insight and the ability to transfer her consciousness into reanimated forms, and that's just to name a few. This is a sci-fi nerd's wet dream.

Some might criticize the protagonist's quiet and shadowy attitude, but I suppose it fits since who knows how long he has been wandering around for. Maybe thousands of years? I found myself longing to know more about his own history, the sights he'd seen, and the experiences he'd had along the way.

My own point of criticism would be the children characters' "coming of age" story whose names, faces, and personalities seem to all run together. Their part in the film should probably be included, but maybe with a little less focus and their characters a little more distinguished.

One warning I give to the potential viewer is there are some sci-fi concepts in the film which are unexplained and rely wholly upon the audience's familiarity with sci-fi in general. Some examples of these concepts are transhumanism and theoretical replication technology.

Have fun watching Blame!. I thought it was a blast!

The animation style plus the "world" really hit the mark with me and the story is unique enough to immediately capture my interest, but the characters need additional development, hopefully the promised sequel will flush out and fill in what's missing.

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.