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Let's talk Blame! by Nihei Tsutomu
| You've got my interest OP, now you have my attention.
| BLAME! is fantastic as both a piece of sci-fi and as just scenery porn but I've always felt it off when people call it cyberpunk
| >>adc315 why so? It has all the things that made early cyberpunk: virtual realities, transhumanism, cyborgs, AIs, etc. It's just that the setting is eons apart from any of the most wet dystopic dreams most authors of the genre had.
| >>5cb81f I wholeheartedly recommend it. It may start a bit slow for some (though I enjoyed it since the start), but it picks up quite fast. The second volume is still one of my favorite parts.
| >>36a75c
That's the point, it's so far removed from any current reference point. I always see cyberpunk tied to the near modern day looking at how people and society change as new technology changes.
In BLAME everything's already changed and changed again and changed so many more times that you can't look at it and say "this could be us in 20/50/100 years".
High tech, low life you know?
| >>274791 oh, I see. That's exactly the reason I liked Blame! so much tbh. I still get a kick from "classic" works that feels far more familiar to our own context, but most of them seems to boil everything down to people having existential crisis, AIs going rogue, political conspiracies etc. I wanted to see something different, which is one reason why I enjoyed Va-11 and Eve no Jinkan: mixing SoL and CP elements gave an all new feel to old tropes.
| >>274791
The fact that Blame! extrapolated the boundaries of the "high-tech" aspect while still keeping somewhat truthful to its nature opened my eyes to where the genre could go if it was a little more daring nowadays.
I mean, when was it last that we had something truly groundbreaking? We sure had some really good works since the 2000s, but for a genre with such potential it's a bit sad that we are still lurking under the shadows of The Matrix to this day.
| I've currently only watched the film but now I'm interested in picking the Manga up.
| Love it~
| Honestly, while BLAME! is definitely on the far extreme end of Cyberpunk, I personally still consider it Cyberpunk when you consider whether or not high technology has *improved* the lives of those living in the megastructure.
The main difference though, is that instead of the rich and powerful using technology to oppress people, it's mostly just the powerful and insane, long since degraded super AI's, tbqh. Taking the chapters involving the "Husk People" shows that fundamental human nature, or rather most of its negatives, hasn't changed, even though society and humans as a species are so far removed from what we consider "normal."
My interpretation mostly comes from a strict definition of "high tech, low life," though, so your mileage may vary. To me, this always meant technology increasing at a breakneck pace, but serving only to oppress people, not elevate them. And Blame! felt to me from start to finish as a story of oppression.
Also! Y'all should be sure to check out Blame!'s prequel, "NOISE" as well. c:
| >>275868 and in Blame!'s case technology went at such a pace they almost completely lost control over it, lol
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| What are your thoughts on it?
I find it a bit sad how it is kinda left aside when talking cyberpunk. The Netflix adaptation didn't really made justice to the manga.
While I like the existential/political/mundane nature of the genre, I wish there was more works that took it to its weirdest possibilities. Blame! is so odd and different that after reading it I feel like there's very little that could surprise me now.