Blame!

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.

Huh! From where to start about this one?

I am a huuuuge fan of Blame! manga. It's the best manga I ever read and I always present it as a reference point to something different, original, breathtaking and ultimately enjoyable. Though, not so much for mainstream audience.

What about the anime? There must be two points of view in reviewing it. Why? Because First one from a perspective of someone who read the manga and second one from a perspective of a first timer who hasn't got a clue about original material.

As someone who read the manga I was expecting the full story with deep development of main character(s) and much better representation of vast areas of Megastructure and everything else what can be found in it. What did I get? A spin off story of a small village in Megastructure with characters which are almost irrelevant in the original story. We didn't get to see a lot of characters, Silicon beings are missing, it's even hard to tell that Killy is main character, not the villagers. Many, many details missing not to mention that original story is spread through huge time period. I would lie if I would say that I didn't enjoy it. It's solid SciFi anime if you don't take into consideration the original work.

As for second point of view, for someone who never read the manga.... Watch it. Maybe there will be sequels/prequels. Maybe even pushes you toward reading manga. It's a great slice of Blame! universe where much more can be told in future movies (hopefully there will be more)

***sorry for a bit fragmented review, this is my first ;)

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.

I was surprised to so see such a low rating on IMDb. It's clear that those who follow this manga feel it was butchered but for me, it was a really fresh concept and pretty epic by all accounts. Would love to see more ! If you enjoy anime, this is definitely worth watching.