By James Robert Shaw (The Wind up Geek)
(Updated February 24, 2017; 19:14 PST)
Blame! (pronounced Blam!) is here, it’s real and it’s finally happening with a full length animated feature coming in 2017. Based on the short story Blame by Tsutomu Nihei, (later serialized from 1997 to 2003), it was originally announced for a feature-length CG rendered film in 2007. Micott and Basara (Appleseed Ex Machina) were to provide animation services with Production I.G for background, but the project was halted when Micott and Basara filed for bankruptcy in 2011.
Now Blame! has been animated by Polygon Pictures, the same company whose work can be seen in the television series Transformers Prime, Tron: Uprising, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and Knights of Sidonia (シドニアの騎士). Yuki Moriyama (亜人, English: Ajin) is character designer.
In the manga, the main character known as Killy is a man of few words. As he journeys through a huge future dystopian maze, he uses his powerful weapon to dispatch cyborgs and other threats. He seeks the Net Terminal Genes, a possibly extinct genetic marker that gives humans access to the Netsphere, a computerized control center for The City. Killy wants to use Netsphere to stop the destruction of the last pockets of humanity. But the murderous horde known as Safeguard is out to find him and to stay alive Killy makes alliances where he can among the leftover human tribes of The City.
In 1995 Nihei’s original short story of Blame (without the exclamation mark) won the ‘Special Jury Award’ in the Four Seasons Award manga contest held by Kodansha’s Monthly Evening. Blame! would be printed in North America by Tokyopop from 2005 to 2007. The Tokyopop distribution was nominated for a Harvey Award in 2006 for ‘Best American Edition of Foreign Material’. The manga is currently licensed under Vertical.
Blame! will be released May 20, 2017 globally as a Netflix original.
Source(s): Buzzap!, Mikikazu Komatsu, Al Young, Screen Anarchy, Tsutomu Nihei’s Twitter and Crunchyroll.
Video Source(s): King Records.
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