Adventure-seeker Killy in the Cyber Dungeon Quest!
Holy Crap!
That was my first statement upon viewing the first volume of BLAME, a relatively new manga created by manga artist and writer . This series is a dark and morbid romp of surrealistic cyberpunk gothy fun , and I highly recommend it. The blood-spattering, head-explodey violence in BLAME probably earns it at least an R-rating, but personally I'd say it's a safe PG-13 due to lack of nudity or harsh language..
Anyway, BLAME revolves around the main character Killy, who generally spends his time in the story trying to reach the top of some kind of nasty, multi-thousand-level Cyber Dungeon, as the title so cleverly puts it. A lot of the story owes itself to the setting, which is pretty dark yet not angsty, which scores huge checks in my book. Dark and angsty is so overdone. Anyway, Tsutomu uses a lot of sharp contrast and scale in his backgrounds to set mood and location in his story, and his story-telling ability is fairly good as well. Interestingly enough, BLAME doesn't involve a lot of dialogue until later on in the story; however, without the dialogue, the plot becomes extremely puzzling.
Since I'm no good at this reviewing thing, I'll just tell you about all the neat stuff so you'll go out and buy it or something. BLAME takes place sometime in the far future, where humans somehow end up living at the bottom of the Cyber Dungeon mentioned earlier. As a result, the human race becomes rather pale and unsightly due to lack of natural sunlight and all. I won't summarize the entire plot for you, but the first two volumes of the manga start off just as a few short stories about Killy reacting to his environment. Usually Killy's environment includes large ugly cyborgs trying to turn him into meat paste every chance they get, as well as giant gooey maggot-caterpillars falling from the heavens and weird alarm system defense cyborgs with no
eyes and faces that drool a lot. The chicks ain't half bad either.
The most interesting thing however, is not all the weirdness, but Killy himself. He looks somewhat ordinary compared to his adversaries, but the guy takes an insane amount of punishment without being even marginally fazed or traumatized. For example, an extremely nastyugly chick-cyborg slams his head right through a thick concrete wall, and then after he pulls his head back out, he gets shot, then he falls five gabillion stories from somewhere high up, bouncing and scraping off a ledge here or there, until he finally ends up safely wedged between two twisted steel girders suspended over the chasm of the doom. By then of course, he's miraculously stopped bleeding and somehow all nice and healthy again. It
must be plot related. At any rate, Killy suffers amazingly fun amounts of
abuse throughout the manga and survives it all because he's the main
character.
The second craziest thing about this manga and Killy included, is Killy's weapon. Killy has some sort of small, pistol-like gun which is actually a "gravitational beam emitter." Prior to reading the translations I thought it was some kind of messed-up railgun, but either way they both appear to do the same amount of uber-damage. Every time a shot is fired from this unusual, rare and much-coveted gun, Killy experiences massive recoil that knocks him right off his feet. The damage done with this weapon is insane, but the effects are colossal. I want one.
Mind you, there's four volumes of this series out so far and Tsutomu is probably going to churn out a few more books. The plotline develops and more characters get introduced as the story goes on, so there's no threat of things getting boring. BLAME is special in how the characters are portrayed, but most important of all is how a sense of eerie quiet and uneasiness is created with the background imagery and imaginative monster design. Bla bla bla. Okay, so I'm terrible at writing reviews. Here are some sites to check out if you're interested in BLAME:
And I do hope you enjoy reading BLAME as much as I did. Yessiree. Thanks for reading! Cil out. :)
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Since I'm no good at this reviewing thing, I'll just tell you about all the neat stuff so you'll go out and buy it or something. BLAME takes place sometime in the far future, where humans somehow end up living at the bottom of the Cyber Dungeon mentioned earlier. As a result, the human race becomes rather pale and unsightly due to lack of natural sunlight and all. I won't summarize the entire plot for you, but the first two volumes of the manga start off just as a few short stories about Killy reacting to his environment. Usually Killy's environment includes large ugly cyborgs trying to turn him into meat paste every chance they get, as well as 
