Blame! (film)

Blame!
Film poster
Directed by	Hiroyuki Seshita
Produced by	Shuzo John Shiota
Written by	Tsutomu Nihei
Screenplay by	Sadayuki Murai
Story by	Tsutomu Nihei
Based on	Blame! by Tsutomu Nihei
Starring	Takahiro Sakurai Kana Hanazawa Sora Amamiya Mamoru Miyano Aya Suzaki Nobunaga Shimazaki
Music by	Yugo Kanno
Edited by	Hiromi Amanai
Production company	Polygon Pictures
Distributed by	Netflix
Release date	May 20, 2017 (2017-05-20)
Running time	106 minutes
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese

Blame! (stylized as BLAME!) is a 2017 Japanese CGI anime science fiction action film directed by Hiroyuki Seshita, produced by Polygon Pictures, written by Tsutomu Nihei and based on the manga series Blame!, which was written and illustrated by Tsutomu Nihei. It was released globally by Netflix on May 20, 2017.

Plot

In the distant technological future, civilization has reached its ultimate Net-based form. An "infection" in the past caused the automated systems to spiral out of control, resulting in a multi-leveled city structure that replicates itself infinitely in all directions. Now humanity has lost access to the city's controls and is hunted down to be purged by the defense system known as the Safeguard. In a tiny corner of the city, a little enclave known as the Electro-Fishers is facing eventual extinction, trapped between the threat of the Safeguard and dwindling food supplies. A girl named Zuru goes on a journey to find food for her village with a group of friends, only to inadvertently cause doom when an observation tower senses her and summons a Safeguard pack to eliminate the threat. With her companions dead and all escape routes blocked, the sudden arrival of Killy the Wanderer, on his quest to find a human who possesses the Net Terminal Gene, saves her along with Tae, her close friend.

Killy is brought back to the village, where he meets the two elders of the village, who express interest in him after they hear that he has been from '6000 levels below'. Killy even helps to assist with the village's food problem by passing them a large amount of rations. Abruptly, he leaves for the nearby area named by the villages as the Rotting Shrine, and followed by Zuru and Tae, he finds the spoilt machine-corpse of Cibo, a former scientist from before the disaster. Cibo reveals that it is her that built a shield generator that protects the village from the safeguard, and tells the villagers that it is possible to produce more of the rations by going to a nearby 'automated factory'.

Heeding her words, a group of villagers including Tae and Zuru travel to the automated factory in search of more rations. Arriving there, Cibo assists in logging into the system and produces a large amount of rations, much to the delight of the villagers. However, right after she produces a machine for Killy, the system rejects her log-in and builds multiple Exterminators to eliminate the villagers. Cibo, who remakes herself using the system in a cyborg form, leads the villagers, with Tae now having broken her arm, to a railway car and escapes back to the village. During the ride, Killy is knocked unconscious trying to save the villagers.

Arriving at the village, the villagers celebrate at the sudden amount of food. While holding the celebration, Cibo secretly wakes Killy up with only Zuru as a witness and leads him down towards the shield generator with the machine. While heading down, Tae takes her gun to the observatory platform and shoots the shield generator, whereupon it is revealed that the real Tae was killed and replaced by a cyborg representative for the Safeguard back at the factory. Sanakan, as she now calls herself, proceeds to kill multiple villagers, deeming them illegal residents.

Killy, realising what has occurred, runs back up to the village on his own. Cibo travels further down at a faster pace, where she sets the machine right next to the destroyed Shield Generator and connects herself to it. Back at the top, Sanakan is killing residents, but the village elders frantically lead the rest of the villagers to the top of the village where they resist her using their remaining weapons. Killy himself enters combat with Sanakan, who after knocking him down, notes that he is a body 'stolen from the Safeguard'. Killy is saved at the last minute by Zuru, who throws his gun to him; which he shoots and destroys Sanakan, but not before Sanakan destroys Cibo.

Cibo, in an alternate dimension, pleads with the Authority, which controls the Safeguard, to let the villagers go. Unable to do so, they allow her to edit their base of levels of the City, which disconnects the level below the village from Safeguard control.

Cibo, now functioning through her only remaining arm, leads the remaining villagers to a trans-level railway car, but right after the villagers get in, an observatory tower spots them. Killy throws the device which has been keeping him safe from the Safeguard to Zuru, upon which he says that he still wants to find the NetControl Gene, which enables human control of the Safeguard. The villagers are then able to escape.

At the end, Zuru's granddaughter narrates that the village still lives in the level below to this day, still waiting for Killy to find the Gene. She then says that Zuru still talks about Killy, to the point that he sounds like the last hope for humanity.

Cast

Production

Plans for a full-length CG animated movie were announced in 2007.^[1] However, this proposed CG film project was not released before Micott and Basara (the studio hired) filed for bankruptcy in 2011.^[2]

It was announced in November 2015 that the series would get an anime theatrical film adaptation.^[3] The film was directed by Hiroyuki Seshita and written by Tsutomu Nihei and Sadayuki Murai, with animation by Polygon Pictures and character designs by Yuki Moriyama. It was released globally as a Netflix original on the 20th of May 2017.^[4]

Release

Blame! was released by Polygon Pictures on May 19, 2017. It was made available to subscribers on Netflix on May 20, 2017.

On October 5, 2017, Viz Media announced at their New York Comic Con panel that they had licensed the home video rights to Blame! and plans to release the film on Blu-ray Disc and DVD on March 27, 2018.^[5] It was announced in June 2017 that the Netflix original Blame! movie would be receiving a sequel and it was already "in the works".^[6]

References

External links

• Official website (in Japanese)
• Blame! (film) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia
• Blame! on IMDb