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Aug 15, 2008
Story & Art - 10 & 9
The art is the story. BLAME! has extremely little dialog and no narration except for an occasional "39216 hours later" or so. Therefore the development of the story is almost solely communicated through the visuals. It is entirely up to you to perceive, ponder about and interpret the present and the past. As you get more familiar with the universe you might be able to draw conclusions about something that has happened earlier, which back then wasn't quite completely understandable and so on...
A critic might call BLAME! confusing, as a bad thing, but the thing is, if it is
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confusing in a bad way is up to you. Whether you actively engage in interpreting it or not and how far your imagination takes you. Personally I'm rather tired of much of the modern day's entertainment which sole purpose seems to be passivate the perceiver to do nothing but sit back and enjoy a ride. BLAME! however is very stimulating and I've spent endless hours thinking about it from different angles just because it can be interpreted in so many ways and that is a beauty in itself. A friend of mine told me, after I had forced him to read it, that he found some of the parts of the manga to be extremely confusing and he had no idea what was going on, my response to him was going on a rant about how I've interpreted it, but I ended up apologizing to him for ruining the pleasure of figuring these things out for himself. On a side note, my friend did not think badly of the manga overall, rather he said that it was one of the best manga he had read. So it could be perceived as confusing so perhaps it's not a person-who-dislikes-confusing-and-cloudy-stories' first choice but I would still recommend it because in essence it's not a mystery manga or anything like that. It is a cyberpunk / action with an intensely dark and brooding atmosphere which sticks like feathers to tar, to the back of your mind. In that aspect it is emotionally provocative, it creates an unique and perhaps disturbing emotion within you which stays with you even after leaving the manga, when you're onto doing something else.
A critical aspect of the art is it's portrayal of this vast and seemingly endless setting filled with colossal structures which seem to have been abandoned since who knows when. Great drawings of cold machinery, some seem to have broken down from having been put out of use, while some still function for the sake of functioning after all this time. Our protagonist's fate is to wander these hallowscapes and when reaches new areas we are given no clues to where we've stumbled into other than our surroundings and the people we meet. The detail is not only fantastic but Nihei Tsutomu's ability to draw perspective truly creates a world in 3d. Even the character design immediately captivated me. This pale, grim expression on the character's face, led me to believe that this was a hardened man who's been through a lot. I felt as if I was getting to know this character by looking at him, even though I've just begun reading the first chapter and he has barely uttered a word.
As for the action scenes, we're allowed to witness the devastation and intense power depicted very clearly. They are for the most part, in contrast to the story, easy to follow. This straight-forward approach spares us the self-righteous rants and interrupting one-liners and just delivers plain awesome action.
Character - 8
It's a cold and harsh world which has no room for harboring the soft or the weak. This is a fact which we are constantly reminded of as we meet the characters of BLAME!. The characters show no particular depth, yet serve their purpose very well. Some have their logical reasons while some remain a mystery. There is not much character development but there is some, it is enough, but there is left room for more. Most of the characters portrayed somewhat cold and indifferent, it is after all understandable and I wouldn't have it any other way, weep scenes would feel kind of out of place, besides there's nothing quite as beautiful as when you catch a small glimpse of emotion through that hard shell which they've grown over time.
Enjoyment - 10
I barely took a single break while I was reading the manga for the first time, I was glued to it. That said, it's not the absolute most enjoyable read. However, like I've said before, I've spent endless hours just thinking back on it, going over it in my mind and attempting to interpret it from as many angles as possible. I get a slight tingly feeling in my stomach just thinking about it. BLAME! has continuously kept me stimulated even when I'm not reading it, practically infinite enjoyment.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Jun 10, 2008
I'll try too keep this review rather short and concise, but I'll probably just start rambling and won't be able to stop myself if I get out of hand. Since I'm such a rambler, please forgive me if it sometimes seems somewhat unorganized even though I'll do some organizing when it's done. If you're not bothered to read the whole things I wrote 3 pros and 3 cons at the bottom.
Personally I watched this before Ayakashi - Japanese Classic Horror which this is a spin-off from and you can go ahead and watch this without having seen it.
First of let me start of with that
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the art was really intriguing. I like animes with a more experimental approach to the art. Not nearly as experimental and artsy as Mind Game, which remains as my favorite anime-art to date. Sometimes the art just feels like stylized art with a filter put on it, which is pretty lame. Despite that this is one of my favorite arts to date. It goes very well with the stories and really raises the mood and atmosphere rather than just being a medium of information. Not recommended for fans of the stereotypical huge eye school anime style.
The soundtrack is good though it's fairly underused throughout the series. The sound effects feel fitting. The voice actors do their jobs as they should, it feels natural and synchronized with the animation, correct tone etc.. Onto the substance of the anime.
Mononoke is composed of five arcs, all of which are only related by the recurrent main character and similar plotline. The story follows a wandering medicine seller who combats malicious spirits. One gets to observe group psychology as unsuspecting humans confront supernatural as well as life threatening situations. Note that I said observe, one never really feels 'connected' and feels for the characters. It is the result of a main character with nerves of steel and a heart of ice, I'm not saying his character is bad though, it's a very intriguing and interesting one. I really like the main character, I fell in love with him the first episode, so damn cool ^^. This is one of those odd and seemingly emotionless types. There are a few moments where he gets a little too flat (for example in the last arc). You never get a background or introduction on the arc characters, it charges almost immediately into the story. The result is as said before, makes you more of an observer instead of feeling with the characters. This deems the horror part of the story pretty useless since you won’t feel their fear as a spectator. Or I don’t know, maybe I'm just hard to frighten? I hope I don't seem like too much of a "zomg-iem-totali-not-afread-off-anithyng" type :P.
The most important part of the anime are the mystery aspects, figuring out the not so understandable main character and of course the mystery of the Mononoke - the supernatural haunter - itself. The medicine seller needs to know a mononoke's shape (Katachi), truth (Makoto), and reasoning (Kotowari) in order to combat it, as he tries to figure this out you get to know the story of the mononoke as well as the story of the people involved. The mysticism remains truly thick throughout the series. Though each arc has its conclusion, but if you didn't really pay attention and didn't try to figure it out at least partly by yourself the conclusion might not be so clear. One of my favourite pleasures while watching it was the almost surreal symbolism playing mind games with me. It's not quite surrealism though, since surrealism holds no sense at all and most usually no symbolism. This is one of the most thought provoking anime titles I've ever seen. Though I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who have seen A LOT more thought-provoking animes than me, but I'd say that I've had my fair share, I'm pretty sure they'd agree with me anyway.
Here are a few pros and cons. I tried to write what others might consider as cons and pros.
3 Pros (if you consider these as pros):
- Thought-provoking
- Atmospheric
- Interesting and realistic* group psychology scenarios
*Not realistic in the sense that nothing out of this world is occurring but in the sense that the characters react as real human beings would.
3 Cons (if you consider these as cons):
- Unscary horror
- Unsympathetic characters
- You may find the conclusions blurry
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Mar 9, 2008
If you're looking for a full-fledged fast-paced non-stop adrenaline pumped action anime (comparable to action movies like Die Hard or Crank (not story wise or anything just pace-ish)). Then you can stop looking, this is it, the ultimate action anime. Badass protagonists, lots BIG guns, wannabe super-villains who get their asses kicked, zombies, vampires, nazis (possibly a Indiana Jones homage, lol?) and spice it up with a little humor between the action scenes (are there other kind of scenes in this anime?).
Great, if you're looking for an anime for entertainment and willing to overlook the fact that there is no character progression at all and
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that the story is horrible. Basicly they skipped the story and extracted (and greatly improved) only the action scenes from Hellsing TV, later on it starts to shoot off though, but the story is still tremendously bad. It completely lacked lacked the criterias for a "superb" or "masterpiece" anime, that is in my educated opinion; thought-provoking, plot- or character-driven anime. But it wasn't trying to be anything like that. This anime is none other than pure entertainment. So shut off your brain and enjoy.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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