So, this just ends like that? WithKilly drowning with the sphere?
What?
I don't understand, did I miss something? Is there a sequel?
Didn't end with Killy protecting the kid that was the NTG carrier?
>>135123414
What kid? He never found anyone with NTG.
>>135123304
He didn't drown,he made it out of the megastructure.
The surface has water.The kid has the NTG.
>>135123494
Did you... did you not read the last like, 2 pages? You can't do that shit with blame, man. Skip a page and you're FUCKED.
>>135123304
rescans when?
>>135123304
There's a short sequel which takes place some time after the ending.
Also, go read Blame! Academy while you're at it.
>>135123516
Oh, I thought that was an enemy in the background.
>>135123496
How do you know the Kid has TNG?
It's still disappointing as fuck, I wanted to see more the city, the outside world and what happens when he finds an NTG carrier.
>>135123723
It seems, you have to read it again.
>>135123723
>Oh, I thought that was an enemy in the background.
Anon, I'm afraid to say you may be blind.
>>135123723
There are hardly any lines of dialogue in it. And yet you still completely failed to read them.
>>135123723
Alright, in fairness BLAME! is pretty convoluted for a manga and the inaccurate translations don't help. You would be doing yourself a favour if you reread it though, and you might wanna read Nihei's other works (I recommend Biomega, Digimortal, and BLAME! Academy 1/2).
>>135123761
Alright so from what I understood.
>get to fairly high level (indicated by the rain if that is the rain)
>gets stuck injured in the pipeline for a very long time
>pipeline takes him outside of the structure
>floats upward towards surface and the child of the two Safeguards is born
>>>135123516 he's taking the child downward to the lower levels?
>>135123785
Yup. totally overlooked that.
>>135123836
The kid is the offspring of two Safeguards, how the fuck can it have NTG.
>>135123994
Is the child from the beginning Cibo's son?
Why are those faggots so sure her child has NTG.
>>135123723
>the outside world
There isn't any outside world. The city encompasses the entire solar system.
>>135124169
Yeah, that room Killy crossed that was a million kilometres or whatever used to be Jupiter iirc.
>>135124216
>million kilometres
It was only 140K km
>>135124216
>used to be Jupiter
No, the room was the size of jupiter.
>>135124392
Good thing I realised 'billion' was probably too big so I look less dumb than I could have.
>>135124412
Alright, yeah. Hell of a coincidence for a large empty room to be the size of a gas giant though, don't you think?
>>135123496
This guy's right.
I always thought the last chapter was pretty cool. You get to see him finally reaching the (presumably) edge of the megastructure where you get rain and all.
Of course the megastructure is so big it's not like you can't get rain and oceans inside, but the last chapter seemed special.
I'm currently reading NOiSE the one volume prequel to BLAME!, it should have more info on the City and it's size.
>>135124743
>Alright, yeah. Hell of a coincidence for a large empty room to be the size of a gas giant though, don't you think?
Yes.
The megastructure probably has multiple rooms like that
>>135124773
>you get rain and all
This is what he sees when he looks up after exiting that hole.
Somehow I doubt that is rain.
>>135124412
It is implied that it was Jupiter that was mined for resources
>>135124890
anon, this is the page just before that.
>>135124967
>gas giant
>mined
Btw in that time skip, Killy traveled for 255 years on foot.
It takes him 800 hours (a month) to reach the Fishermen tribe with the living elevator who is supposed to be a high speed connection.
>>135125002
Yes and he looks up and there is nothing but more concrete.
Why would there even be rain there? He's obviously far beyond Earth by that point.
>>135123723
>I wanted to see more the city,
I kinda agree with you for this. my favourite parts of the manga where when killy was just wondering around and finding the weird shit that has grown and evolved inside the city. like the society of feral loli clones or the weird giant A.I face. wish we could have had more of that.
>the outside world
you mean space? that's the only thing there is outside of the "city"
>>135123548
When Habanero and the rest of us get around to it.
>>135125039
There's no reason to believe that they couldn't mine a gas giant with the technology in the megastructure.
>>135125039
Wouldn't it have been mined for fuel to power the gravity furnaces or something?
>>135123959
>floats upward towards surface and the child of the two Safeguards is born
>he's taking the child downward to the lower levels?
please re-read the manga 3-5 times with all of the explanatory material available online for every fucking page next to you
I can't quite find another way for you to understand what this manga was about
Post your favourite page
>>135125078
If you don't see rain in pic related I don't know what to say to you.
It's not even as if rain is some earth-restricted phenomenon, although you don't even need to know that since it's clearly evident in the panel.
the rain was nano goop the builders used when starting new construction on a level. killy travelled so far he managed to find a place the builders hadn't really started working on yet and thus the edge of the city.
at least that's what i could get from what looks like google translated blame and so on pages where nihei gives more thoughts and insights into the shit that went on in blame. there's a site with some of the wonky translation floating around somewhere but it's usually posted in some Blame threads here.
>>135125039
I know Jupiter's a gas giant but that's what harvesting planets is called. It's not mining in the literal sense.
>>135125135
pic related
The City started out as a Dyson sphere harvesting the sun's energy. Eventually they created gravity furnaces and started getting power from there. As the City grew it's gravity started drawing more matter making the furnaces create more energy making the city grow even more in an endless cycle.
They may have even master energy to matter conversion seeing as the builder can create walls and columns out of nowhere
>>135125268
Some more stuff
>>135125078
>>135125183
It's "rain". The builders flood the levels that are currently under construction with certain fluids. The rain is the indicator that he is close to the "edge" of The City.
>>135125039
Jupiter doesn't exist anymore; the Builders consumed it long ago, thereby leaving a room roughly its size.
>>135125135
All of the materials used to build The City came from either the solar system or were originally energy converted into matter.
>>135125180
Did you mean to post the one at the opposite end of that scene, where he's gone and the Safeguard stands there on the other side in the silent emptiness? That one is far more poignant.
>>135124826
It actually has less, but more comprehensive information on the time scale and *how* The City was created.
>>135123994
>Safeguards
re-read the manga 3-5 times
>>135124166
no
because just like virtually everything else in Blame!, the reality happens off-panel
>>135123582
Blame! 2 does not explain anything about the original series. All it really does is tell us that Killy is the immortal "guardian" of The City.
>>135125268
>They may have even master energy to matter conversion seeing as the builder can create walls and columns out of nowhere
I always thought that was the case, since you have those 'charging towers' killy comes across several times in the story, and safeguard can materialize directly out of thin air as long as they are active. Figured they facilitated some kind of mass-energy conversion.
>>135123496
The surface isn't totally fluid if that's what you're implying, though I doubt think you are. We can clearly see land-mass (not to mention beaches, for some reason) at the end of Blame! 2.
>>135125268
>>135125304
This guy can probably handle any questions that aren't too obscure. If you have an obscure question though, feel free to ask.
>>135125091
>my favourite parts of the manga where when killy was just wondering around and finding the weird shit
This, for some reason all of that really reminded me of Dark Souls.
>>135125241
Makes perfect sense.
>>135125344
>Did you mean to post the one at the opposite end of that scene
Yea, it's probably a tie between the two. I just find the image of this river of light flowing through a dark featureless landscape deeply unsettling yet strangely calming in a way. I guess this feeling applies to the megastrucutre in general but much more strongly to the depictions of cyberspace such the endless meadow in Cibo's experiment and this.
>>135125451
>taking away the box that's locking him in place
why nihei, I thought it was a cool way to show the exterminator was so overpowered it could basically cast spells.
>>135125541
>why nihei
I find myself asking that a lot about his current art these days.
>>135125515
not him, but I like the scene because the netsphere is basically their version of heaven with how elusive it is in the story.
What little snippets you get to see of it like that meadow in the experiment were extremely poignant, and in pic related it's just sitting at the opposite bank of the river.
>>135125584
Well, I hear Gantz has a sequel now.
>>135125451
What am I looking at on the left?
>>135125596
what?
>>135125515
Yeah, love it. It was probably the best way he could have drawn the concept of the Netsphere as the reader and the characters understand it - the exact opposite of the extremely detailed, highly complex (in construction) megastructures. Simple strokes of black and white. A world completely incomprehensible to an "outsider". It's the unknown, unknowable things that terrify us the most.
>>135125635
Well, I'm just saying that he probably feels like he has to radically change his art-style to stick out.
>>135125121
>>135123548
All in due time. Print has more problems than I imagined (in comparison to ebook, those guys got better source whilst I have to repair broken gradient tones). Or at least it's just the first chapter. Original manuscript was damaged, it seems. If you own it, you probably have noticed some kind of "burns" around the chapter.
>>135125640
I don't think the netsphere is a homogenous thing though, it was a meadow in the experiment with Cibo so it's probably more akin to a framework or concept like the "internet" or something, just a place where you can manifest or sculpt however you want.
The river in >>135125515 I took to represent the authentication process as whoever it was was trying to hack his way in. It's basically the login screen, although again the netsphere being what it is, even that doesn't necessarily have to have a set look, it could have been anything.
>>135125597
An extraordinarily rushed scan I made of the new volumes, in order to warn prospective buyers that Nihei made some very, very disagreeable changes to the original art. Not *many* changes, mind you - just a very select few that are entirely enraging. The majority of them deal with that sequence there.
If you have some access to the archive or something, you can find me ranting and posting more pictures from the same scene - Killy is standing around doing nothing for no reason, because the box is no longer there. He just stands there with his arm half-raised until Sanakan fires her arm to save him from something that (devoid of the box) he could have easily dodged himself.
If you don't, I might just post some of them.
>>135125541
I FUCKING KNOW RIGHT THAT WAS THE WHOLE POINT OF THE EXTERMINATOR, IT HAD LIKE A MOBILE STRUCTURE CONVERSION TOWER
I love BLAME! so much.
It's this amazing combination of extremely depressing cyberpunk set in the oppressive confines of megastructure showing the journey of someone we know nothing about trying to find something we don't fully understand.
We never get to really know and understand the characters or the world, but that's because it's simply too big and there's too much time.
I love the scenes where Killy and Cibo just walk through the structure in silence for chapter after chapter.
Also, KillyxCibo best pairing. Not even in a romantic way, just in the "we are stuck in this madness together and for whatever it's worth we find at least some solace in one another" kind of way.
And I've always enjoyed that Killy is portrayed and talked about by others as if he was some kind of unstoppable force of nature. You can hinder him for a day or a few hundred days, but in the end he'll be back on his feet continuing his journey which may never end really.
>>135125760
>Nihei made some very, very disagreeable changes to the original art.
Oh good.
Why get rid of the damn force field?
Why even change the art in that scene? It was already fantastic.
>>135125760
>the box is no longer there
He basically remove one of the coolest things in the fights.
That was some Bleach level of coolness.
>>135125718
That's kinda what I meant. Davinellulinvega is seeing what the Netsphere appears to be to someone who has yet to access the Netsphere, but managed to make it into the terminal. It's completely walled off and alien to him; he kept repeating that he just wanted to see the Netsphere once.
>>135125674
It's me again, peppermint. You should be able to tell from how I write. If you ever need help with something related to the physical release(other than translation of course), feel free to hit me up. I'll leave my email this time, like a smart person. Tangentially related - have you ever considered working on Baki Dou, or read any of Baki?
>>135125836
hence "death to nihei.png" in the earlier pic
>>135125893
It was the only thing that set apart that fight from any of Killy's other safeguard fights, really. He was completely at the mercy of the Exterminator for the time being. Plus, the Exterminator looked a thousand times more daunting in the original image.
>>135125905
Sure, I'll keep it in mind, though I think what I need is a person who can help redraw (missing parts from the spreads) very well.
As for Baki, no, I haven't read it yet. Backlog is a bitch, a huge one (scanlation one too). Aren't spinywhatstheirname working on it anyway? Albeit only for money.
My interpretation: Those things at the top are stars. Killy finally reached the outside of the dyson sphere, saw stars for the first time in his life and the sphere activated. The manga ends the exact second that Killy accomplished his mission. He just happened to be knocked out at the end, because of how close he was to never make it, and the last step of his journey was to be ejected to this swamp(?) at the outer edge of the megastructure. On the last page we see that Killy's next mission is to protect the child born from the sphere but that is another story. As for the child, from what I understand it was "born of two mothers" but the important part is that Cibo had been carrying the DNA sample from the only uncontaminated human they found in the entire megastructure: Seu. They had this sample for a while. They were looking for a place to analyze it. Seu had the net genes.
>>135126098
Yes, the spined-Jew is working on it for money. Unfortunately *appears* to be either ESL, dyslexic or both. Next to no punctuation, abysmally formatted English, etc, etc. Not to mention the anathema scan quality.
Figured if you were a fan of the series, you might have some interest in aiding me with displacing SpinyBack from his monopoly; guess not. Oh well.
Can you give me an example spread that you're looking at? Is it like that page 2 one with the wacky line differences, or something altogether different?
>>135126141
Thank you, yes, that is exactly what I've been espousing for the longest time. Now I know that there's at least someone else out there who read it the same way as I did. Except Killy wasn't really "KO", so much as he was missing a large chunk of his skull.
>>135123959
Killy, working for the Governers need to find a PURE human child with net DNA that lets them access the Net and control the Safeguards.
The ultimate point of the entire series is this.
In the end, through twists and turns, Cibo/Sanaka embryo is that pure un-corrupted human. But Killy has to bring it to a safe place for it to birth, a place where no Silicon Life can get their dirty fucking hands on, the very surface of the megastructure.
In the end, he accomplishes this task, and the last page with the girl in the gas mask and suit (to ward off corruption) is what Killy is escorting back in order to finally stop the safeguards from just fucking shit up left and right.
Blame! 2 one shot and NGE one shot both implied Killy and pure human netgene DNA girl successfully turned off the Safeguards. It still doesn't affect safeguard entities that are already in the world, but at least the net won't spawn endless bullshit into the world again, until someone else with net dna turns it back on.
>>135126293
Well, at this point I'm pretty sure Killy could recover from pretty much any injury short of desintegration, it's just going to take him ages to do it since he's an old model of safeguards. Probably one of the first.
>>135126335
Oh yeah, of course - we see his skull has (mostly) reformed and his eyes are open when the sphere activates. It just took ages upon ages for the chamber he was in to fill up with fluid.
>>135126311
You missed one of the subtlest points made in the manga, but are otherwise correct. Remember the defective Silicon that Cibo interrogates that mutters something about a plague? Remember the beginning of the manga, when the Silicon didn't actually physically harm the child they kidnapped from Killy, yet he was found dead anyway? There is a plague of unknown origins and design that has somehow spread throughout the entirety of The City - probably the Silicon's fault, but that's irrelevant - that infects and kills humans.
There is no known safe place from this "airborne" plague within The City, hence the child wearing the airtight suit on the last panel and why Killy needed to take the embryo to a place devoid of plague infection (the end of The City) in order to initiate its growth.
>>135126222
Ugh, I knew it was bad, but didn't know it was that bad. You won't be able to get rid of monopoly easily anyway. Think people paying for their shitjob will be happy that you started doing it for free? Nah, think twice, they'd be actually opposing it after sinking so much money into the series. On top of that, people in general don't care about quality as long as it's in English. This also applies to official publications, though I believe nowadays you people in US don't have it nearly as bad as it when Tokyopop was around.
As for the spreads, lemme dig one from the second chapter.
NOiSE answered a few more questions I had, I guess it's time to read BLAME NSE that is supposedly the sequel?
>>135126550
How was he alive than?
>>135126603
Best blame girl right there.
I was thinking that Killy is named Killy after the unix kill command... he's like the embodiment of kill -9
>>135126747
>not Cibo
That's not even funny.
>>135126810
>going for the obvious but wrong choice
>>135126588
NSE isn't really a sequel either. It provides a different perspective of the same world post-Blame!, really. What it really tells you is that the "world" is beginning to rebuild small-scale structures of government and tranquil civilization, with the occasional intervention of "higher-ups", as I might put it, who disable threats to ordinary citizens - threats that are deeply familiar to those who read the original Blame! series. The people in it have no clue what happened to the world, what the world is, etc, etc beyond "that's an old weapon system lol let's go touch it".
What confuses me, however, is that there are two versions of NSE and I'm not certain which is legitimately "canonical". I'm fairly certain one of them has fan-made narrative captions, but I cannot prove it due to lack of backed-up information in this fucking annoying internet dark age. I digress - the one that doesn't make spurious claims is the coloured one on Batoto.
>>135126222
>>135126562
Here's a quick clean from the original print. Stitching it was no problem at all, it's fitting almost perfectly.
Who else is hyped for the Polygon Pictures film adaptation?
>>135126883
Here's new edition (ebook, but print is the same). Missing stuff in the middle, as you can see. Every spread is missing abut this much, so difficulty varies, obviously. Even easy ones can be a bitch though, first chapter had spreentone matching only partially, so I had to redo all those panel blocks in the middle.
>>135126935
Never knew it was a thing.
Will probably suck. I don't think you can do justice to BLAME in animation.
Also, they will probably add music to parts where they travel through the megastructure when it's supposed to be silence except maybe for their steps.
>>135126733
Nihei flat-out said that he was making shit as he went along at the beginning recently, hence bizarre anomalous entities like the bionic dog and the giant flying electric manta rays. To that end, I don't really try to explain that much of what he did in the first volume. The most pragmatic and reasonable answer is that the people living in The City are simply not immediately exposed to the plague, but are close enough for it to be considered dangerous.
Consider: you wouldn't consider living in Uganda or Palestine "safe", regardless of whether you lived in a castle or a mud hut. The same theory applies, I think, to how the embryo responded.
>>135126935
mite b cool
I am still under the impression the kid form the beginning is Cibo's child.
>"The Net's Offspring"
>Silicons think he's pure
>Silicons want to use it to access the net
>Killy retrieves and protects the corpse
>delivers the corpse to someone
>the corpse is accepted and taken "back"
>>135126995
When you say new edition, do you mean the 2015 reprint?
>>135126995
Eww, gross. The fuck did they squish the image for though? The purpose of this print was to be larger, yes? Well regardless, I'll brush up on my photoshop skills, see if I can make that one look presentable. Gonna go look for the burns you mentioned in the first chapter right now actually, to make sure you didn't just get a bad copy or something..
>>135126935
How is that coming along anyway? Release date, etc? I heard lots about it when sidonia was airing but its been quiet on that front for some time now.
>>135127034
>Nihei flat-out said that he was making shit as he went along
Into the trash it goes, I'll just forget this ever happened.
>>135127135
The film adaptation was only officially announced last month.
>>135127014
Here's what they did for the Sidonia extra.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDA1bUkotIk
The final product is obviously going to look far more advanced than this, but you get the gist of what they're going for with just the clip.
>Also, they will probably add music to parts where they travel through the megastructure when it's supposed to be silence except maybe for their steps.
This is my ultimate fear for the adaptation. I hope so strongly in my heart that they won't do it, but I know they will just for the sake of "broadening their audience", or "not alienating newcomers to the franchise", or whatever the Japanese media equivalent of those phrases might be.
>>135127232
I hope they change up their killy model a bit, he looks kind of derpy to me in >>135126935
>>135127181
Forget what ever happened? The entire series? The only stuff he "made up" were only early chapters, homages, or just basic concepts that he wanted to use; and are the things you can easily tell were one-off occurrences. The chapter where Killy talks to the smiley-face insects that are controlled by the Governing Agency comes to mind.
The majority of the material was clearly thought out ahead of time.
Am I the only hipster to like the existing Blame! Anime (or webtoon or whatever ot is)?
>>135127103
Yes, shinsoban from 2015. I don't really expect most to know how Japanese people call different book editions over there, so I just used localized "new edition" everywhere. Of course, I could use scans from original print from 90's, but the quality difference is just too huge.
>>135127126
Fuck if I know.
As for the burns, they are everywhere, including ebook. They weren't scanning original books, they were working with his manuscript, which I suppose got damaged along the way after all these years (first chapter, I mean). You can easily notice it on page 22, left statue on the bottom got its face fucked up.
Also, for those who care, Sidonia v15 has two-page omake about Tanikaze's daughter in the future.
>>135127387
>Tanikaze's daughter in the future
is it interesting?
>>135127387
>Also, for those who care, Sidonia v15 has two-page omake about Tanikaze's daughter in the future.
filename
>>135125982
>>135127341
killy always looked derpy, it's just now it's based off nihei's current art style which makes everyone look like overfed bodied Yukkuri's.
>>135127438
Hah, there's no dialogue and she's in the middle of the battle with gauna, on surface of LEM-VII, I presume. No actual fighting is shown though, she's just thinking about how to proceed further.
>>135127387
I see the fucked up statue. Those'll be fun to work on, whoever ends up doing it.
>They weren't scanning original books, they were working with his manuscript
That returns me to the ever-asked question of whether or not they keep the original manuscript pages; which, in this case, is clearly yes. I wonder if he (or whoever has the legal rights to his manuscripts) would ever sell them. I would cherish the chance to purchase the original >>135125344 , you know how obsessed I am with it.
>>135127232
I hate it, it looks too clean, I also hate the lights in the structure.
It's supposed to be old, filthy and DEAD.
>>135127586
I agree 100%.
It should traditional and ugly/rough animation. Not this CGI shit.
>>135127586
The Megastructure is supposed to look clean. Viruses, bacteria, etc. are all destroyed by microscopic nanobots in the space that we perceive as empty. Builders are constantly consuming previously used materials and making new things with them. The Blame! world is creepy because it's exceptionally "clean"-looking but, as you said, dead at the same time.
>>135127232
i like the humming as the gbe is about to fire, I've always given it almost the exact same sound effect in my head whenever i read the manga.
hate the red beam, hate the smooth polished landscape.
>>135127725
I always figured the beam would be black, since it's basically a black hole cannon that collapses space in a straight line.
>>135127750
I thought it'd be white, actually. I'm not a particularly imaginative person, but it nonetheless seems appropriate for their darkly-lit and darkly colored world. I'm not much of one for needless subversion in a manga like this.
Aparently something like this exists in Japan.
>>135127650
This, it should be made with that "raw" old school style kind of animation and it would feel fantastic.
I doubt they'll be able to portray the loneliness and emptiness of the structure in a movie anyways.
>>135127860
Well well, this is a pleasant surprise. I don't think I've seen this art before in a Blame thread ever.
>>135127920
http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=54077889
>>135127887
They tried it with a series of OVAs, it didn't really work. Partially because of the abysmal budget, partially because it doesn't work.
>>135127584
This is no cell animation, man, it's not being sold off like that, as far as I know. Manuscripts are usually shown only at exhibitions. And while I don't remember them being sold off, I do remember them being present as the prizes in contests. I think Hayashida was giving some pages from Dorohedoro once back in the IKKI days.
And it's most likely in Kodansha's Raiders of the Lost Ark-like warehouse anyway, doubt Nihei kept it. It's not uncommon for mangaka to lose their shit after some time after all.
>>135127980
I know it's not like cell animation and how rare it is but if they knew where the pages were and were able to access them with relative ease, I'd assume they weren't stuffed in a crate in a warehouse; meaning they had some significance to some person involved in the production/distribution.
If they *are* stuffed in crates, and if I could find a mysterious benefactor, I could easily be coerced to go heist their warehouse(s). I have shockingly little to lose from trying.
>>135128156
Despite this being my post, I just noticed the crosses for the first time. The fuck is that about?
>>135128228
Isn't that the graveyard when Killy is transported to the future?
>>135128294
It is when he is the alternate timeline thing, but I don't remember there being a graveyard.
high quality scans where
>>135129094
>>135123548
>>135125451
>>135126883
>>135126995
We're working on it. The scans are good enough as they are for the purposes of reading, if you want the HQ stuff now, support the author and buy the volumes like we did.
>>135129171
thanks, but I won't buy now, customs might seize it so he can have something for exchange gifts on their christmas parties
>>135129206
Buy em later then. peppermint claimed a while back that this project could take years, so just know that
