Blame!
Encyclopedia
, pronounced "blam", is a ten-volume 1998 cyberpunk
manga
by Tsutomu Nihei
published by Kodansha. A six part original net animation
was produced in 2003, with a seventh episode included on the DVD release.
, a silent loner possessing an incredibly powerful weapon known as a Gravitational Beam Emitter, wanders a vast technological world known as "The City". He is searching for Net Terminal Genes, a (possibly) extinct genetic marker that allows humans to access the "Netsphere", a sort of computerized control network for The City. The City is an endless vertical space of artificially-constructed walls, stairways and caverns, separated into massive "floors" by nearly-impenetrable barriers known as "Megastructure
". The City is inhabited by scattered human and transhuman
tribes as well as hostile cyborgs known as Silicon Creatures. The Net Terminal Genes appear to be the key to halting the unhindered, chaotic expansion of the Megastructure, as well as a way of stopping the murderous horde known as the Safeguard from destroying all humanity.
Along the way, Killy meets and joins forces with a resourceful engineer named Cibo
and several groups such as a tribe of human warriors called the Electro-Fishers. Cibo and Killy are often pursued by the Safeguard, who view any human without Net Terminal Genes as a threat to be extinguished on sight. Because of the size and nature of The City and the violent lives led by its inhabitants, there are virtually no recurring characters and any alliances made are short-lived.
Killy's origin and motives are unknown. He speaks very little and rarely hesitates to fight. He also has shown superhuman levels of endurance and strength, and appears to be able to heal extremely rapidly. However he usually relies on his GBE to dispatch the opposition. Killy is in fact a prototype of the Safeguard, who, over 3,000 years earlier, was sent on a mission to find the net terminal genes. Due to his long life he can no longer remember who had sent him on his journey in the first place or any other memories that took place thousands of years ago. As Killy grows older, it appears that he will only lose more information to be replaced by the new.
Early on in the story, Killy asks the people he comes across not only about net terminal genes, but if they know anyone who sees letters and numbers in their eyes. After meeting the Electro-fishers and falling unconscious, he awakens and realizes that these letters and numbers are part of a scanning ability, which allows him to recognize Sanakan as a safeguard. Later in the story he becomes stronger, to the point of being able to kill silicon creatures without the GBE, and survives the direct attack of a level 9 (the highest known level) Safeguard.
, or is the head scientist of the Capitol corporation. She tries to access the Net Sphere with an artificially created version of Net Terminal Genes; the experiment fails with disastrous results and summons the Safeguard, leading to the destruction of the entire facility.
During their journey, Cibo undergoes many changes of bodily form, emphasizing the transhuman nature of life in the Megastructure. Cibo cracks security systems and gathers information to help her and Killy's journey. She speaks more than the rather taciturn Killy, often serving to advance the plot.
Later in the series, Cibo is hybridized with a Safeguard entity, and creates an artifact called "the Core". The Core's purpose is like that of a human womb and is used to bear a child with net terminal genes.
is a high level agent of the Safeguard who first appears as a short, young girl with black hair. She appears to have a particular interest in wiping out the human tribe of Electro-Fishers, and seems to know Killy from the past. Sanakan uses a GBE similar to Killy's (sometimes hand-held, sometimes an integral part of her body).
Sanakan has 3 forms. The first is a child form, which is used to infiltrate human settlements and later destroy them. The second one is her Safeguard form. Her third form is a humanoid woman. According to the manga, the Safeguard form of Sanakan does not hold her consciousness, but is only a remote body controlled by the main Safeguard system; Cibo uses this fact to temporarily disable Sanakan and a number of Safeguard units by hacking into their control system.
At first Sanakan is an antagonist; later in the story, she is given a new mission is to protect Cibo and the Core. During one battle she is killed by the Silicon Creatures; her leader warns her that if she goes back to base reality with a Safeguard form (with her consciousness permanently installed) and she is killed again, they can't revive her again. Sanakan agrees to this condition and rescues Cibo from the Silicon Creatures, but she later gives her life to protect Killy from a First Class Exterminator Safeguard. She ends in a temporary storage area abandoned for ages, where people sleep eternally.
The City is actually a structure that began on Earth
. The mechanical beings known as Builders, which move around reforming and creating new landscapes, appear to have begun building without end, creating an enormous structure with little internal logic or coherence. There exists some kind of major isolation system between the gargantuan floors of The City. Between them, there are entire layers of an unknown, nearly-indestructible material called "the megastructure". Attempts to approach the megastructure result in a massive safeguard response so as to prevent trespassing. Bypassing the safeguard is pointless, as it is nearly impossible to even scratch the megastructure. Only a direct Gravitational Beam Emitter blast is known to have been capable of digging a hole into a megastructure.
The City, and the Builders, were controlled by the Netsphere and the Authority but they have since lost the power to control the expansion of The City due to the chaotic and insecure manner of its growth. Without intervention by a user with Net Terminal Genes they cannot reestablish control over The City nor the Safeguards, whose original job was to eliminate any humans who try to access the Netsphere without Net Terminal Genes. The Safeguard now attempts to destroy all humans without the Net Terminal Gene as the degradation of The City has corrupted their true goals.
In regards to the scale of the structure, NOiSE
, the prequel to Blame!, states in its final chapter that "At one point even the Moon, which used to be up in the sky above, was integrated into The City's structure". It has been suggested by Tsutomu Nihei
himself in his artbook Blame! and So On
that the scale of The City is beyond that of a Dyson sphere
, reaching Jupiter's planetary orbit (32.675 AU
, or roughly 4,901,250,000 km); this is also suggested in scenarios such as Blame! vol. 9, where Killy finds himself having to travel through a room roughly the size of Jupiter
(roughly 143,000 km.).
manga was collected into 10 volumes (tankōbon
) by Kodansha
's Afternoon KC division. In February 2005, Tokyopop
announced that it has licensed Blame! for U.S. distribution, with publication beginning in August 2005. After releasing the final volume in 2007, the series has gone out of print with several volumes becoming increasingly hard to find. In 2006 the Tokyopop distribution was nominated for a Harvey Award
in the category 'Best American Edition of Foreign Material'.
Cyberpunk
Cyberpunk is a postmodern and science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life." The name is a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk, and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk," published in 1983...
manga
Manga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
by Tsutomu Nihei
Tsutomu Nihei
is a Japanese manga artist. His cyberpunk-influenced artwork has gained a strong cult following. He has a relatively large community of fans in Germany where his manga Blame!, NOiSE and Biomega were published by Ehapa. Blame! was also published in France and Spain by Glénat, in the US by Tokyopop...
published by Kodansha. A six part original net animation
Original Net Animation
An original net animation is an anime that is directly released onto the Internet. ONAs may also have been aired on television if they were first directly released on the Internet. The name mirrors original video animation, a term that has been used in the anime industry for straight-to-video...
was produced in 2003, with a seventh episode included on the DVD release.
Plot
KillyKilly (Blame!)
-Description:Killy is a fictional character from the manga series Blame!, by Tsutomu Nihei. He is tasked by an unknown agency with finding a human in the 32-AU radius Megastructure who still possesses the Net Terminal Gene, a genetic marker necessary for safe access to the Netsphere, from which...
, a silent loner possessing an incredibly powerful weapon known as a Gravitational Beam Emitter, wanders a vast technological world known as "The City". He is searching for Net Terminal Genes, a (possibly) extinct genetic marker that allows humans to access the "Netsphere", a sort of computerized control network for The City. The City is an endless vertical space of artificially-constructed walls, stairways and caverns, separated into massive "floors" by nearly-impenetrable barriers known as "Megastructure
Megastructure
A megastructure is a very large manmade object, though the limits of precisely how large this is vary considerably. Some apply the term to any especially large or tall building....
". The City is inhabited by scattered human and transhuman
Transhuman
Transhuman or trans-human is a term that has been defined and redefined many times in history. In its contemporary usage, “transhuman” refers to an intermediary form between the human and the hypothetical posthuman.-History of hypotheses:...
tribes as well as hostile cyborgs known as Silicon Creatures. The Net Terminal Genes appear to be the key to halting the unhindered, chaotic expansion of the Megastructure, as well as a way of stopping the murderous horde known as the Safeguard from destroying all humanity.
Along the way, Killy meets and joins forces with a resourceful engineer named Cibo
Cibo
Cibo is a main character in the manga BLAME! by Tsutomu Nihei. She is the head scientist of the Bio-Electric Corporation in the Capitol and joins Killy on his quest for the Net Terminal Gene....
and several groups such as a tribe of human warriors called the Electro-Fishers. Cibo and Killy are often pursued by the Safeguard, who view any human without Net Terminal Genes as a threat to be extinguished on sight. Because of the size and nature of The City and the violent lives led by its inhabitants, there are virtually no recurring characters and any alliances made are short-lived.
Characters
is the main character. He is on a journey to find a human with Net Terminal Genes to access the Netsphere. He is equipped with the Gravitational Beam Emitter, a small but incredibly powerful weapon that resembles a gun and is capable of destruction on a massive scale.Killy's origin and motives are unknown. He speaks very little and rarely hesitates to fight. He also has shown superhuman levels of endurance and strength, and appears to be able to heal extremely rapidly. However he usually relies on his GBE to dispatch the opposition. Killy is in fact a prototype of the Safeguard, who, over 3,000 years earlier, was sent on a mission to find the net terminal genes. Due to his long life he can no longer remember who had sent him on his journey in the first place or any other memories that took place thousands of years ago. As Killy grows older, it appears that he will only lose more information to be replaced by the new.
Early on in the story, Killy asks the people he comes across not only about net terminal genes, but if they know anyone who sees letters and numbers in their eyes. After meeting the Electro-fishers and falling unconscious, he awakens and realizes that these letters and numbers are part of a scanning ability, which allows him to recognize Sanakan as a safeguard. Later in the story he becomes stronger, to the point of being able to kill silicon creatures without the GBE, and survives the direct attack of a level 9 (the highest known level) Safeguard.
, or is the head scientist of the Capitol corporation. She tries to access the Net Sphere with an artificially created version of Net Terminal Genes; the experiment fails with disastrous results and summons the Safeguard, leading to the destruction of the entire facility.
During their journey, Cibo undergoes many changes of bodily form, emphasizing the transhuman nature of life in the Megastructure. Cibo cracks security systems and gathers information to help her and Killy's journey. She speaks more than the rather taciturn Killy, often serving to advance the plot.
Later in the series, Cibo is hybridized with a Safeguard entity, and creates an artifact called "the Core". The Core's purpose is like that of a human womb and is used to bear a child with net terminal genes.
is a high level agent of the Safeguard who first appears as a short, young girl with black hair. She appears to have a particular interest in wiping out the human tribe of Electro-Fishers, and seems to know Killy from the past. Sanakan uses a GBE similar to Killy's (sometimes hand-held, sometimes an integral part of her body).
Sanakan has 3 forms. The first is a child form, which is used to infiltrate human settlements and later destroy them. The second one is her Safeguard form. Her third form is a humanoid woman. According to the manga, the Safeguard form of Sanakan does not hold her consciousness, but is only a remote body controlled by the main Safeguard system; Cibo uses this fact to temporarily disable Sanakan and a number of Safeguard units by hacking into their control system.
At first Sanakan is an antagonist; later in the story, she is given a new mission is to protect Cibo and the Core. During one battle she is killed by the Silicon Creatures; her leader warns her that if she goes back to base reality with a Safeguard form (with her consciousness permanently installed) and she is killed again, they can't revive her again. Sanakan agrees to this condition and rescues Cibo from the Silicon Creatures, but she later gives her life to protect Killy from a First Class Exterminator Safeguard. She ends in a temporary storage area abandoned for ages, where people sleep eternally.
Setting
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
. The mechanical beings known as Builders, which move around reforming and creating new landscapes, appear to have begun building without end, creating an enormous structure with little internal logic or coherence. There exists some kind of major isolation system between the gargantuan floors of The City. Between them, there are entire layers of an unknown, nearly-indestructible material called "the megastructure". Attempts to approach the megastructure result in a massive safeguard response so as to prevent trespassing. Bypassing the safeguard is pointless, as it is nearly impossible to even scratch the megastructure. Only a direct Gravitational Beam Emitter blast is known to have been capable of digging a hole into a megastructure.
The City, and the Builders, were controlled by the Netsphere and the Authority but they have since lost the power to control the expansion of The City due to the chaotic and insecure manner of its growth. Without intervention by a user with Net Terminal Genes they cannot reestablish control over The City nor the Safeguards, whose original job was to eliminate any humans who try to access the Netsphere without Net Terminal Genes. The Safeguard now attempts to destroy all humans without the Net Terminal Gene as the degradation of The City has corrupted their true goals.
In regards to the scale of the structure, NOiSE
NOiSE
This article is about NOiSE the manga. For other uses, see Noise . is a one volume manga created by Tsutomu Nihei as a prequel to his ten-volume work, Blame!. Noise offers some information concerning the Megastructure's origins and initial size, as well as the origins of Silicon life...
, the prequel to Blame!, states in its final chapter that "At one point even the Moon, which used to be up in the sky above, was integrated into The City's structure". It has been suggested by Tsutomu Nihei
Tsutomu Nihei
is a Japanese manga artist. His cyberpunk-influenced artwork has gained a strong cult following. He has a relatively large community of fans in Germany where his manga Blame!, NOiSE and Biomega were published by Ehapa. Blame! was also published in France and Spain by Glénat, in the US by Tokyopop...
himself in his artbook Blame! and So On
Blame! And So On
Blame! and So On is an art book published in 2003 that contains artwork from Tsutomu Nihei's works of Blame!, NOiSE, Wolverine: Snikt!, MegaloMania, and Dead Heads ...
that the scale of The City is beyond that of a Dyson sphere
Dyson sphere
A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure originally described by Freeman Dyson. Such a "sphere" would be a system of orbiting solar power satellites meant to completely encompass a star and capture most or all of its energy output...
, reaching Jupiter's planetary orbit (32.675 AU
Astronomical unit
An astronomical unit is a unit of length equal to about or approximately the mean Earth–Sun distance....
, or roughly 4,901,250,000 km); this is also suggested in scenarios such as Blame! vol. 9, where Killy finds himself having to travel through a room roughly the size of Jupiter
Jupiter
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with mass one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn,...
(roughly 143,000 km.).
Publication
The original JapaneseJapanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
manga was collected into 10 volumes (tankōbon
Tankobon
, with a literal meaning close to "independently appearing book", is the Japanese term for a book that is complete in itself and is not part of a series , though the manga industry uses it for volumes which may be in a series...
) by Kodansha
Kodansha
, the largest Japanese publisher, produces the manga magazines Nakayoshi, Afternoon, Evening, and Weekly Shonen Magazine, as well as more literary magazines such as Gunzō, Shūkan Gendai, and the Japanese dictionary Nihongo Daijiten. The company has its headquarters in Bunkyō, Tokyo...
's Afternoon KC division. In February 2005, Tokyopop
Tokyopop
Tokyopop, styled TOKYOPOP, and formerly known as Mixx, is a distributor, licensor, and publisher of anime, manga, manhwa, and Western manga-style works. The existing German publishing division produces German translations of licensed Japanese properties and original English-language manga, as well...
announced that it has licensed Blame! for U.S. distribution, with publication beginning in August 2005. After releasing the final volume in 2007, the series has gone out of print with several volumes becoming increasingly hard to find. In 2006 the Tokyopop distribution was nominated for a Harvey Award
Harvey Award
The Harvey Awards, named for writer-artist Harvey Kurtzman and founded by Gary Groth, President of the publisher Fantagraphics, are given for achievement in comic books. The Harveys were created as part of a successor to the Kirby Awards which were discontinued after 1987.The Harvey Awards are...
in the category 'Best American Edition of Foreign Material'.